Canada Day in Edmonton is party day. I have been spending the day celebrating in some way for some 30 years now. I have the good fortune to live near the river and the walking trails in the valley are easy for me to access.
Since my granddaughter has been small I have had a party during the day and guests create something to remember the day. When she was small we created maple leaf stamps using a cut potato. T-shirts were provided along with fabric pens. Each guest created their own t-shirt to remember the year and to wear to see the fireworks.
Now friends join me for the afternoon and dinner. I find/design something that they can do to celebrate the day. Last year I found a pattern from Patch Abilities and set to making it mine. I changed the dimensions based on some wool that I had to recycle and created a base. I used up all the wool I had which was enough for 6 bases. The back edges of the wall hanging were reinforced with fused red cotton so that the bases wouldn’t need a backing. Patterns of stars and different sized maple leaves went into the project box. My MP Linda Duncan provided little Canada Day pins. I assembled letter beads spelling CANADA. A variety of red and white fabrics, beads, threads and ribbon were added. A good friend let me spend a morning going through her Arc boxes for red and white buttons. (Yes she double checked to see if there were any valuable one in what I chose.) So now the project box was a treasure trove of delights to entrain on Canada Day.
My project proved to take more than one afternoon to complete so we worked on them again this year.
Photos are of Kathy, Sonja and me with our wall hangings. I was delighted with the creativity that each person employed with placement of the elements and with the variety of embellishments and the fun of seeing each one. Kathy did more than her fair share of french knots. Sonja used a new (to us) coral stitch. Her sequins made quite a splash and when I saw that both of them had embroidered veins on one of their maple leaves I was inspired to go back and add to my own. Hope that you enjoy and are inspired.
The fireworks were the best ever and the lighting up of the High Level Bridge to the strains of O Canada recorded by the Edmonton Symphony was a real celebration of community in celebration for our country.
Elinor Burwash Designs 
Glad you ca use the button. I guess I will have to come up with something new for next Canada Day.
Elinor, thank you again for hosting such a grand Canada Day celebration. I love my wall hanging and wonder if I ever will truly be finished embellishing it as I just sewn on the new button that I bought in Hinton.
Nice work! I was a student at the UofA several years ago, so I spent few years in Edmonton, I love the river, Victoria park …., I brought me back good memories. Your fabric work is great.