Quilters among crafters, artisans displaying wares

Saskatoon Quilters’ Guild members Dorothy Boran and Berna Ostapovitch have been quilting for about 18 years.

On Wednesday at the Saskatoon Ex, they spent a few hours demonstrating their craft, while showing off a few of their finished quilts.

Ostapovitch said she usually does more traditional quilting, but she also does a bit of everything.

“There’s so many different techniques and things you can do,” she said. “But I try to do new something new most times.”

Boran often ventures into the more modern techniques, like ice dyeing and screen printing. “It’s a way of getting fabulous colours that you can’t predict,” she said.

In ice dyeing, the fabric is pretreated to accept the dye, then placed on the bottom of a container, followed by a layer of ice and a sprinkling of dye. The process is continued with more layers of fabric, folded differently.

“The one at the bottom gets the most dye, because as the ice melts, it carries the dye down through. But you do then have coordinated pieces of dyed fabric that can be used in a project,” Boran said.

The arts showcase has been fairly slow this year, despite the heat, she noted. “The one year there were people coming in with sweat pouring off.”

“And if it’s raining there would be more people,” added Ostapovitch. “(But) I thought there’d be more people inside because it is hot.”

Visitors to the Ex can head inside to Hall A to see various different kinds of fine art, creative art, and photography in the Saskatchewan Arts Showcase.

In addition to quilting and other art pieces, the showcase features Greg Burke’s Model Ships Through the Ages, Fingertech Robotics and their battling robots, scale model racing cars from Ultra R/C Hobbies, and more.