A lot was jam packed into this meeting! It started with the presentation of the quilt that we made for the Arnprior Regional Health Foundation’s auction at the imminent annual "Knight in the Maritimes" dinner to raise money for equipment purchases for the Arnprior & District Memorial Hospital. Guild members Brigit Whitnall and Gwen Pennings are pictured with the quilt and the ARH Foundation's Christine Waite (right.) We also saw the completed quilt that will be raffled off at our upcoming 2019 quilt show. Many of us worked on the whimsical town blocks at a Sew Day in November and another in January. The top was then completed by Mary DeVries and Rennie Hickey (who also designed it), and it was quilted by Shirley Cavanagh. It is stunning! This was the target date for completing the tops of the mystery quilts that we've been working on since the fall and what a treat it was to see 17 beautiful tops of the All About Town row quilt. And at least one quilt was completed. For more photos of these awesome quilts see the Mystery Quilt Tops blog post. The library book and magazine sale was a huge hit. In addition to materials from our own library, there were a large number of books and magazines donated to us by local resident Joanne Mitchell from her late mother-in-law Isabel Johnston's extensive collections. Read more about Isabel, an accomplished quilter and founding member of the Ottawa Valley Quilt Guild in our May 2018 Newsletter. ,The main activity of the evening was the second of our hands on learning activity nights where we learned hand sewing techniques for embellishing our quilts. As at the February meeting, 4 techniques were offered - wool applique, 3D pinwheels, hand stitches for embellishing crazy patch quilts, and hexagons, and we learned the 2 that we didn't learn previously, providing ample time to learn each new technique.
![]() Our April meeting was highlighted by guest Jan Kittle's presentation on using rulers when quilting and we also got a sneak peek at her latest pieces which she made for the Common Thread Quilt Show in Ottawa over Mother's Day weekend. Jan is the owner of The Pickle Dish shop in Carleton Place and she says "it's wonderful to have a quilt shop under your bed"! She offered a lot of great advice about quilting with rulers.
Here's Jan's beautiful quilt ruler sampler that she had whipped together for her visit to our guild to highlight ruler work. And she brought many lovely quilts to show us. Click or tap on an image in the gallery to see it in full.
A very well kept secret is the very talented Valerie Miller of nearby Renfrew, who combines distinctive fabrics with traditional artistry and contemporary style to create table. pillow, and wall covers, each individual and unique. She was our guest speaker at our March meeting and her trunk show highlighted her lovely and distinctive fabric creations. Valerie's "Origin and Evolution" presentation highlighted how she evolves her designs from an initial idea to a final piece by making small incremental changes and never throwing anything away! She often starts out not knowing what the final design is going to look like and designs as she goes.
Valerie was inspired by her very creative and resourceful grandmother and her great-grandmother's quilts. Valerie creates dramatic pieces by very often using a dark coloured background to pop the colours on top. She uses a very thin and somewhat stiff compressed batting, and a cotton backing and very minimal quilting of the layers - just enough to hold it together. The batting is sewn to the top and then turned to produce a refined, tailored finish. Guild members were delighted that Valerie offered her patterns, kits and batting for sale. For more information see Valerie's Quilted Covers web site. On Tuesday March 6th 10 eager quilters arrived at Glad Tidings Pentecostal Church, where Johanne Vajda instructed us on how to construct a "Big Bag". This bag will be excellent to convey large quilts to "Show and Tell", or a large amount of stuff to a workshop or retreat. Pockets for either side of the bag were constructed prior to Tuesday. By the time most of us left our bags were virtually complete. That is MY kind of workshop. Johanne provided handles and bottoms for those of us that required them. The variety of fabrics, colours and textures was very wide. Hopefully members will be able to inspect them at our next Show and Tell. -- Chris Gordon Click/tap an image in the gallery below to see it in full.
Our learning activity night was our chance to learn some new hand sewing techniques for embellishing our quilts. With 4 new techniques offered - wool applique, 3D pinwheels, hand stitches for embellishing crazy patch quilts, and hexagons, we had a chance to learn 2 at this meeting and we'll learn the other 2 at the May meeting, providing ample time to learn each new technique. We wasted no time in getting down to work! Half of us learned wool applique and hand stitches for crazy patch quilts. And the other half learned 3D pinwheels and hexagons. Instructors Mary DeVries, Brenda McLeod, Joanna Vlaming, along with Brigid Whitnall and Donna Sheaves (who stepped up at the last minute in place of an ailing Chris Gordon) did a great job teaching us.
It was a big month for preemie quilt donations - 17 beautiful new little quilts. And we heard a touching thank you from a grateful mom whose premature daughter received a quilt in the fall of 2016. We enjoyed the photos of her daughter as a newborn covered by the quilt and another as a one year old sitting on her quilt! On Saturday February 10th 11 keen quilters met with Mary DeVries to learn different ways to paper piece. We produced trees by the traditional paper method, sew-through-the-paper-on-the-line. Then we stepped up to more complex 8 part stars. Eventually we tried a freezer paper method which allows a pattern to be reused and we made strips of Flying Geese. Lots of detailed work, great fellowship at the Glad Tidings Pentecostal Church, where there are no stairs to have to lug machines up or down. Thanks Mary for a job well done with endless patience. -- Chris Gordon Click or tap on an image in the gallery below to see it in full. Three of our charity quilts were recently donated to First Step Options, a pregnancy resource centre in Pembroke ON dedicated to supporting women and couples with unplanned pregnancies.
One quilt will be offered in a silent auction to raise funds for this charity, and the other two will be given to clients. It was a pleasure for me to recently deliver 4 beautiful Canada-themed quilts from our guild to Quilts of Valour Canada to honour our veterans and Canadian Forces Military Services and to say that we appreciate their service for our country and that we are thankful for our freedom.
These quilts include leftover "slab" blocks from quilt tops assembled for the Canadian Quilters' Association's 2017 Big Quilt Bee that delivered quilts to Ronald McDonald Houses in Canada. Our members completed the tops, added batting and backing, quilted them, and finished them off with binding. The quilts were gratefully received by the Ottawa Area Region, Quilts of Valour, Canada. "Your quilted hugs of comfort are given to injured members of our Canadian Forces – male or female; Army, Navy or Air Force; commissioned or non-commissioned – all ranks." -- Gwen Pennings, VP and Charity Projects We kicked off the new year with our annual hands on charity project night at our January meeting. It was a very busy evening with three activities to choose from:
Thanks to all of the members who took kits for blocks for the auction quilt at our December meeting and then brought in the completed blocks. Our guild receives a lot of generously donated fabric so there was lots of fabric to cut up and assemble into kits for wheelchair lap quilts and preemie quilts. It was a whirlwind of activity with many hands (and cutters) at work! Fabric for preemie quilts is coming together into kits for members to pick up and assemble. And here are some completed kits for members to pick up to make wheelchair lap quilts Click on an image in the gallery below to see it in full. This lovely quilt stand was generously donated to us and won as a door prize by this lucky lady. And 9 darling preemie quilts were donated bringing our total for the year to 33. Several of them are included in the gallery below. Thanks for your generous donations to this important initiative. Click on an individual image to see it in full. On Thursday January 10, 2018, 18 ladies arrived at Providence Point to begin their time of quilting and fellowship. We arrived with the weather fairly mild and left with ice on our cars and cold. We did not let the cold affect our time quilting. The food was delicious and a good time was had by all.
We worked on our individual projects, and we also made some blocks for the quilt that our guild is donating for auction to benefit the Arnprior & DistrictMemorial Hospital. -- Joanna Vlaming, Program - Retreats |
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