Our guild was in full swing at our October meeting. ![]() Many members have been busy making block-of-the-month blocks, blocks for the decorative stitch exchange, and for our charity outreach initiatives, little preemie quilts and wheelchair lap quilts. ![]() Our guest speaker Wendy Foster Birch educated us on the usage of different types of threads and offered a multitude of tips and techniques for machine quilting. Wendy illustrated thread and machine quilting concepts with her entertaining and informative trunk show which featured her beautiful and creative art quilts and her love of free motion quilting. Her work is bright and is often inspired by nature. She uses a wide variety of materials in her quilts and all types of threads including cotton, polyester, metallic and her preference for varigated threads. Wendy kindly provided her detailed notes on thread usage and also a link to a Superior Threads Troubleshooting Guide. Wendy's quilts vary from traditional patterns to modern and often with a whimsical touch. Wendy's personal quest for a wide variety of threads led her to become a Superior Thread supplier. Her threads were welcomed at the meeting! More of Wendy's quilts are pictured in this gallery. Click or tap a photo to view it in full.
Congratulations to our guild members, Mary deVries and Brenda Payer who have achieved tremendous success and recognition with their prize winning quilts. Well done! Mary deVries' "Something from Nothing" star quilt received Grand Champion at the Renfrew and Cobden fairs. And Mary's "Granny's Stars" quilt received Reserved Grand Champion at the Renfrew Fair. Congratulations Mary! Brenda Payer has had a very successful year with multiple awards. Her applique quilt was awarded Grand Champion at Carp Fair in September. Brenda entered Northcott's 2 challenges in 2017. Her entry in the quilt of valour challenge placed second. This challenge was on display at Quilt Canada and the show visitors voted, This quilt will be donated to a veteran, Brenda also entered Northcott's Trans Canada Block Party Challenge and was one of 13 finalists in the open voting on the internet. And Brenda won Viewer's Choice at Quilt Canada for her entry in a modern quilt challenge. Congratulations Brenda! Welcome quilters! As I write this, fall is upon us. The foliage is starting to change as well as the weather. I hope you are inspired to capture some of that autumn beauty in a quilt to admire all year.
Last month, the challenges were announced and they will be fun to make and to see at the end of the year. Planning a quilt around a theme or pattern is a creative way to stretch your quilting imagination. Read about them and please consider participating! I have started planning my President's Challenge quilt which I will share with you as I go along. This month I will share my magazine inspiration image. The beach is my true happy place which is why I have selected this image. I hope you are looking for your inspiration image and will participate in the challenge. Our first retreat is coming up and I can see everyone is looking forward to the event. This is the opportunity to get away and focus on your quilt work, get some tips and tricks from fellow quilters and socialize with new and old friends. There is still some room available so if you are interested in attending, you can see Joanna Vlaming at our October meeting. Please don’t forget to sign up to bring something sweet or savory for sharing with other members at a meeting. I am certain that, like your quilts, you all have something great you can share. Just see one of our kitchen volunteers and let them know what you could bring (preferably nut free). Looking forward to seeing all of you at our October 25th meeting. Donna Sheaves President Our 2017-2018 guild season kicked off with lots of information about this year's exciting and creative challenges, a new decorative stitch exchange, and the opportunities to contribute important charity projects. We enjoyed a fascinating and inspiring presentation by Krista Zaleski, a local creative pattern designer, and long arm quilter. Krista took us along her quilting journey from her first quilt to her latest modern designs. Krista's quilts often feature curves and circles - all pieced. Krista is an active member of the Ottawa Modern Quilt Guild. Krista frequently mentioned the inspiration she took from Judy Laquidara's Patchwork Times blog. You can keep up with Krista's projects, read more about the quilts pictured here, and purchase her patterns on her blog. More of Krista's quilts are pictured in this gallery. Click or tap a photo to view it in full. ![]() Welcome to the Arnprior & District Quilters' Guild 2017-2018 season. Fall seems to have arrived quickly and I hope you find great inspiration for your quilts in the changing colours of our landscape. I am grateful for the opportunity you have given me to participate in the guild executive. I believe these next couple of years are going to be exciting. The executive met earlier this month and I can tell you each of them were implementing great ideas and I know you will be pleased. I will leave it to them to present their plans. One of my personal goals and interest is to increase our membership. There are many quilters of all level in our community and I would like to have them join our guild and share their experience and works with us. The people in our guild are truly friendly and inclusive so I know they would love to be part of our community. I would also like to see more youths get involved in our guild. I will develop a strategy and a plan to see how this can be done. I hope to have something to share with you by December. If you have any ideas on how we could improve the way the guild operates, events we should consider hosting or how we might increase our membership, the executive team is available and you can contact me any time to chat and share your ideas. As this year’s president, I am issuing a challenge to the members of our guild to design a project using a page from a non quilting related magazine or book as the inspiration. The challenge is to make a quilted project that relates to something on that page - it could be color related, based on a word or phrase on the page, based on a picture on the page, etc. When you submit your challenge project, I would like you to include the page from the magazine and a short write-up of how it related. I look forward to seeing all of you on September 27th at our first meeting of this season. Please don’t forget your beverage mug and your beautiful items for show and tell. The executive will provide the snacks. Donna Sheaves President Congratulations to our guild member Rennie Hickey for her prize winning quilt "Refuge" at Quilt Canada, the Canadian Quilters' Association (CQA) national juried show in Toronto, June 14-17. "My garden is my refuge for 3 months of the year and I often feel inspired by it for my creative endeavors! I wanted to capture how sunlight brings my garden to life and so this quilt came to be. I used raw edge applique, thread painting, and Inktense pencils in the making of this quilt." -- Rennie Hickey Rennie's "Album" quilt was entered in the TrendTex Challenge where the theme was "Stitching A Canadian Memory" . Best of Show was won by Colette Dumont of Saint-Romain, QCwith her beautiful "Fleur de Glace". And more photos provided by Brigid. Click on an image to view the entire photo.
Our final meeting of the quilt guild 2016-2017 season featured a delicious pot luck dinner and a great opportunity to visit with fellow guild members before our summer break. Show and Tell, as always, featured several lovely quilts made by our talented guild members. And we easily surpassed our goal of 25 Canada 150 themed preemie quilts for the tiny babies born in 2017 and cared for at the Rich Little Special Care Nursery at the Civic Campus of the Ottawa Hospital. A selection of these adorable little quilts were shown at the meeting and are pictured below. Thanks to everyone who made one or more of these lovely quilts! The meeting and dinner was enjoyed by 55 guild members and one guest. Many members registered early for next year and 2 very lucky members were rewarded when their names were drawn to win free memberships. Due to the success of the quilt show fundraising, an extra free membership was offered this time. Congratulations to Barb Devries and Marilyn Erskine! Happy summer everyone and we look forward to seeing you in September! ![]() This newsletter blurb is coming to you live from Quilt Canada. I have seen a few people from our guild as well as folks from the Ottawa area. This is my second day here and there is so much to talk about and be inspired by. I would like to highlight the Youth Challenge. I was blown away by the quilts. A group from Belleville worked with 10 youth aged 5 and up and created some fantastic pieces. They worked on PD days and went through machine safety, cutting and then piecing and appliqué. I have long wanted to get a group like this underway and feel inspired to do so in our area. Then there's the Trend Tex challenge where I saw work by one of our members. The Ottawa Modern Guild has a special exhibit as do Quilts of Valour, Fibre Art Network, and Cantik Batiks. Of course, what would a quilt show be without shopping! I may have done a bit of that! Getting to guild business, I want to thank everyone who came forward for next year. I look forward to sitting in the audience for a while... I will try to keep up with my UFO's and have things for show and tell. Enjoy the summer & happy quilting, Brigid Whitnall President Laura Piggott on Modern Quilting
Laura's fast moving and inspirational presentation was peppered with many tips that included:
Quilters mentioned by Laura who have inspired her and who are prominent in the modern quilting community included:
![]() Laura is an Ontario Certified Teacher and quilt workshop leader. Her workshops focus on originality, creativity, colour theory and improv piecing. You can find Laura on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/wafflekisses/ or #wafflekisses, and her older web site Laura's quilts are pictured below and included innovative modern Advent calendars, and her sailboat quilt which was headed off to Quilt Canada. Tim Hortons T-shirt QuiltOur guild was enlisted to make a quilt to assist the Arnprior Tim Hortons outlets in raising funds for their Send a Kid to Camp programme. They provided a number of Tim Hortons themed t-shirts which Marilyn Erskine and Brigid Whitnall made into this 60" x 70" quilt which they shared with us at show-and-tell. Moving ForwardAll of the executive and key volunteer positions were filled for next year. They assume their responsibilities on July 1. Special thanks to Past President Anne Cruikshank for her work in recruiting people for these very important jobs.
Our guild was recently enlisted to make a quilt to assist the Arnprior Tim Hortons outlets in raising funds for their Send a Kid to Camp programme. They provided a number of Tim Hortons themed t-shirts, and guild member Marilyn Erskine got to work in piecing them into a quilt top. Brigid Whitnall, guild president, then quilted it and adding binding to produce a stunning and fun 60" x 70" quilt!
The quilt was presented to Tim Hortons employees Anne Marie St. Michael and Lori McGrath by Marilyn and Brigid on May 25th, It was offered in a silent auction where it sold for an amazing $500 with all proceeds going towards sending kids to camp. Wednesday May 31, 2017 is Tim Hortons Camp Day when 100% of the proceeds from coffee sales will "brighten a kid's future". |
Categories
All
Archives
April 2024
|