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The excitement of a new guild year was still very much in evidence at our October 23rd meeting amongst the 62 attendees which included 6 guests. We have 84 members registered this year and we especially welcome our 13 new members. Guest Melanie MacDonald
 Chasing Dreams  Bright Star         Click or tap on an image in this gallery of more of Melanie's quilts, to see the image in full. New Challenge The Block Party challenge was announced with fabric kits ready to go, and many were snatched up. See the Challenges page for details. Coffee Time Demo Mary DeVries was the break time demo lady and she attracted a crowd of interested observers.   Block of the Month The new format Block of the Month program resulted in a variety of interesting Churn Dash block creations. Members constructed an item of their choice in their choice of colours, and showed them at the meeting. Draws Our meeting wrapped up with our draws and as usual, some happy winners! Guess the number of pages in the library book: Liz G 50-50 draw: Betty R Gift Basket: Marion M Door Prizes: Penny C, Rennie, Cathy F, Debbie C, Eleanor, Marilyn R, Barb D, Marion M, Agathe, Jane E We kicked off our 2019-2020 guild season on September 25 with a high energy, information packed initial meeting led by our incoming president Frank McCarron. We heard about this year's exciting challenges, charity projects, Sew Days, and Block-of-the Month, and we saw lots of amazing quilts during our guest Jen Swallow's trunk show, and at Show-and-Tell. We were delighted to welcome 11 new members and one guest to our meeting, for a total of 67 attendees.  Guild President Frank McCarron Guest Jen Swallow Guest Jen Swallow First up was our guest Jen Swallow, the enthusiastic owner and operator of Happy Wife Quilting, an online and retail store located in the front of her home just outside of Carleton Place. Jen showed us many of her quilts that she has made, and illustrated some of her favourite tools that she used in making her quilts. Jen's colour choices illustrated her recommendation to use colours that we love, and included a quilt that brought her to this conclusion. Her quilts highighted her patience for fussy-cutting, and hand work, including hand embroidery and hand appliqué. She also included several quilts that are the product of the various classes that she teaches. Jen showed us a quilt with 2 layers of batting - one wool, and one cotton. She likes to piece her quilt backs to use extra fat quarters and scraps. And she included a quilt with a digitally printed Santa Claus panel to highlight the advantage of getting more than the standard 16 colours in in a fabric, and a more environmentally friendly manufacturing process. And she included a feathered star quilt made by her great, great (great?) grandmother. The many tools Jen showed us included a seam roller that can replace time at the ironing board, and a seam ripper that has made her a self-confessed expert seam ripper. And Jen recommended fabric manufacturer web sites such as Henry Glass & Co (and others) for free patterns for our projects. Click or tap on an image in this gallery of Jen's quilts, to see it in full. New!! Coffee Time DemoOur new coffee-time demonstration were introduced during the break by guild member Ada Gawlik who showed us how to make microwave bowls. Thanks Ada! We look forward to seeing other guild members presenting during the break at each meeting.   BOM Prize DrawAmanda Vajda drew the name of one of the 5 last year's Block-of-the-Month block winners who completed a quilt top or quilt from the blocks. The prize was won by Joyce Trafford for her quilt using the Festive Flocks blocks that she won at the March 2019 meeting. In Joyce's absence (due to her Carp Fair commitments), her friend Cathy Russell happily accepted Joyce's prizes.  Cathy Russell accepting Joyce Trafford's prizes  Joyce Trafford's "Festive Flock" block quilt DrawsOur meeting wrapped up with our draws and some happy winners!
Guess the number of pages in the library book: Liz C 50-50 draw: Geraldine L Gift Basket: Paulette Door Prizes: Diane A, Patti M, Lori B, Tina M, Nancy H, Claudette T, Bonnie M After our exciting quilt show at the end of April we bounced back with lots of energy at our May meeting. And what a treat our Programs team had in store for us. Instead of one guest we had 4, all members of the Kanata Quilt Guild who each shared their quilts and their interesting and amusing quilting stories with us. Kanata Guild Trunk ShowOur first inter-guild Show-and-Tell was a huge success. The four visiting presenters from the Kanata Quilt Guild were introduced by our guild's Past President, Brigid Whitnall, who is the current president of the Kanata Quilt Guild.  First up was Beth who included 2 slab block quilts reminiscent of our past contributions to the Canadian Quilters' Association (CQA) for quilts for Ronald McDonald House Charities, in celebration of Canada's 150th birthday. Beth sells patterns and her lovely nature and geography themed quilts on her Etsy web site. She left us with the thought that "value is more important than colour." The first quilt that Beth showed was the Kanata Guild group quilt for their concurrent show at Quilt Canada. It was made by many members of the guild specifically for Quilt Canada in Ottawa, and it's the first quilt in the gallery below. Click/tap an image in the image gallery to see it in full. Then Lynn showed us her lovely quilts which included a shop hop quilt, and a mystery quilt in "the ugliest fabric in the world" (her words!) Lynn's Duck quilt is a David Taylor appliqué pattern. She has taken many of his workshops and made many of his patterns. Debbie was unable to attend our meeting but she generously sent along her stunning quilts for Lynn to show us - a row-by-row farm themed quilt, a round robin quilt with multiple borders, and a French General star block quilt. Judy was up next and blew us away with her 19th century patterns with vintage and Civil War fabrics of beautiful needle turned hand applique and hand quilting. Her hexagon quilts were interesting too - many of us were reminded of the fun we had learning how to make hexie blocks at a guild activity several years ago. This amazing trunk show was finished up by Leslie, the "colour lady". Leslie's travels, her work around the world with aboriginal peoples, and her interest in endangered species was in evidence in her quilts. Her animal sampler quilt was a President's Challenge. Kanata Guild Trunk ShowDrawsAnd as usual our meeting wrapped up with our draws and some happy winners!
50-50 draw: Liz Carroll Gift Basket: Katrina Kahn Door Prizes: Dawn M, Geraldine L, Gwen P, Mary M, Lynn J, Amanda V, Betty R, Joan M, Nancy H, Rennie H, Pam R With only a couple of days to go before our quilt show, there was a lot of excitement in the air at our April 2019 guild meeting.  Guest Speaker - Roslyn Hanes Our guest speaker was Roslyn Hanes, a self-taught quilter who lives in Kingston Ontario. She is a member of the Kingston Heirloom Quilter's where she claims she learned to do things properly. Ros also belongs to Limestone Quilters and the Cataraqui Guild of Needle Art. Pictorial quilts and abstract quilts are among Roslyn's favourites. She excels at both piecing and appliqué, although she prefers the latter. Her quilts are often embellished with hand embroidery. In 1990, Ros designed a quilt for the 50th anniversary of Nursing at Queen's University. It is now part of the quilt collection at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Ros is a very community minded individual who coaches high school field hockey, plays soccer and is involved in bringing back prison farms amongst other things. This was Ros' first ever publicaly presented trunk show and her quilting journey has been simply amazing. Read on to find out the significance of the magazines she's holding in this photo. Ros started her fabric art projects in the mid 1970s while living in the university city of Cambridge, UK where her husband was studying. From a Cambridge banner to quilts often inspired by nursery rhymes or children's stories, she was very creative in finding fabrics at affordable prices, and self-taught from books. Her simplistic, primitive, whimsical style emerged in her quilts.
 Three Little Kittens
  By 1980 Ros and her husband were living in Australia where Ros continued to be inspired by her environment and made this hand quilted piece that depicted local rock engravings. It was so popular that instructions were published in a magazine and a picture of the quilt was on the cover!  
 Ros' delightful baby block quilt also was pictured on a magazine cover, By the mid 80s Ros and her husband had moved to Kingston and Ros had joined the Kingston Quilters where she made this treasure map challenge quilt. Ros' preference for diamond shpaed pieces are often featured in her quilts. Ros was very much leading edge with her quilting designs and techniques and we were entertained and inspired by her interesting story and her beautiful creative quilts.  Draws
Our meeting wrapped up with our draws and some very happy winners! Block of the month: Patti Moore and Mary DeVries Guess the number of pages in the library book: Liz Carroll 50-50 draw: Ann Hunter Gift Basket: Dona Lamoureux Door Prizes: Pam Ross, Anne Cruickshank, Kathy Foster, Betty Rehbein, Cathy Russell, Blanche Leclair, Liz Carroll, Rennie Hickey, Bonnie Parker, Emma Russell What a lot of activity at this meeting! Our annual challenges were due and the quilts in all 4 of the challenges were displayed in preparation for the "viewer's choice" voting for the prize winners. Refer to the 2019 Challenges blog post for photos and results of the challenges. Guest Speaker - Gary Devries Gary Devries joined us to share his talents and passion with Quilt Inspired Wood Designs. Gary has been working as a cabinet-maker for 45 years. He began his career in London Ontario where he did his apprenticeship. In 1979 he moved to the Valley and was joint owner of Gary and Ron's Cabinet-Making. Since 2000 he has been working from home in a small business known as Gary's Wood Designs. He has enjoyed working with wood since early in his teens. He has made many interesting things from tables, beds, and cupboards to urns for ashes, gigantic chairs and event props.  Gary began his story by showing his fabric creations and sharing his entertaining stories about those projects. His first was a self taught, secretly made bed quilt to surprise his wife Mary, a long time quilter and very active member of our guild, as an anniversary gift.   Then Gary turned his attention and talents to his primary interest in working with wood to combine that with quilting. This is a very unique niche and his work is exacting and spectacular. He used familiar quilting terminology, including "on point" and "flying geese" in his descriptions of his work.  Gary uses many different colours and types of wood, mostly hardwood, including cherry, maple, ash, poplar, rosewood, walnut, ebony and teak. He reserves the most expensive woods for small accent pieces and he told us that quilting fabric is a bargain in comparison. If he's driving down a road and sees a pallet from a foreign country, he's thinking about the exotic wood the pallet is constructed of. He's also been known to go "dumpster diving" for wood!  Gary gets ideas for his designs from quilting magazines and from architecture. He builds from the inside out and does not plan out his full pattern ahead of time. Exacting carpentry skills and knowledge of geometry are required. Cuts are often made on an angle, for example to cut an oval from a circular piece of wood.  One of the many challenges in this work is clamping to ensure that he can glue the tiny pieces without them sliding all over the place. Gary uses a water based glue followed by a beeswax treatment, or heated vegetable oil. He also has to consider the placement of adjacent pieces of wood due to properties of specific types of wood such as colour bleeding and changes in colour over time. Because wood cleans itself these are ideal for use with food.          Smaller pieces of wood can be used for coasters and the smallest pieces in jewelry.
  Draws
Our meeting wrapped up with our draws and some very happy winners! Block of the month: Joyce Trafford Guess the number of pages in the library book: Paulette McCarron 50-50 draw: Paulette McCarron Gift Basket: Nicky Barham Door Prizes: Geraldine Lynn, Donna Curtis, Suzanne deJoode, Anne Cruickshank, Margaret Fisher, Karen Maheral, Barb Devries, Nicky Barham, Katrina Kahn, Joyce Murray Challenges are projects with a particular theme where guild members can showcase their creativity and imagination. Issued at the beginning of each quilt year, challenges are open to all members. All members are encouraged to try at least one of the challenges each year. Due at the March 2019 meeting, guild members voted for their favourite quilt in each challenge, and prizes were awarded based on the "viewer's choice" voting results. Guild members were encouraged to display their quilts at the April 2019 quilt show. Silhouette Challenge
Winners 1st: Tie - Mary DeVries & Joanna Vlaming 3rd: Shirley Fedoruk  From Left: Mary DeVries, Joanna Vlaming UFO Challenge This project completes an Unfinished Object – any quilting projects you have that are unfinished!! A before picture of where your project is at present must be included with your entry This challenge has 2 objectives:
Winners 1st: Shirley Fedoruk 2nd: Emma Russell 3rd: Tie - Gwen Pennings & Rennie Hickey  From left: Gwen Pennings, Shirley Fedoruk, Emma Russell, Rennie Hickey President's Challenge - Shining Star Preemie Quilt
Winners 1st: Anne Cruickshank 2nd: Eleanor Kenny 3rd: Janet Brownlee  From left: Eleanor Kenny, Janet Brownlee, Anne Cruickshank Quilt Show Challenge - Modern Quilt This is the project for our April 2019 quilt show. It can be any project that exhibits modern quilting style - a quilt, wall hanging, runner, table topper, pillow, bag, etc. Refer to this description of a modern quilt on The Modern Quilt Guild web site. More characteristics of a modern quilt:
Winners 1st: Anne Cruickshank 2nd: Mary deVries 3rd: Jackie Lavictoire  From left: Anne Cruickshank, Mary DeVries, Jackie Lavictoire
   Show and Tell We saw a large number of very interesting quilted creations at Show and Tell - our members have been very busy since our last meeting back in December. We saw several lovely bags, a finished Mystery Quilt (a 2017-2018 activity), and many others including a pair of slippers! We're looking forward to showcasing these items and many more in our fast approaching April 27-28 quilt show. See Show and Tell Photos  Charity Prepared kits were snapped up for a charity quilt for the palliative care room in the Arnprior & District Memorial Hospital. And 13 new preemie quilts were donated. Draws
Our meeting wrapped up with our draws and some very happy winners! Block of the month: Debbie Cauvier Guess the number of pages in the library book: Janet Brownlee 50-50 draw: Liz Gray Gift Basket: Nicky Barham Door Prizes: Anne Cruickshank, Mary Moss, Pat Campbell, Deb Clarke, Marilyn Robert, Debbie Cauvier, Louise Wainright, Janet Brownlee We finished off 2018 with our annual Christmas potluck dinner meeting on December 12. Food was compliments of guild members with surnames M-Z and the assortment of main course items and desserts were delicious.  Special thanks to the members who brought along their festive seasonal quilts and wall hangings to decorate the hall.  The word puzzle games were challenging and fun for those who participated while others were too busy chatting and eating! And the latest creations of our guild members were shared at Show and Tell.    Donna brought along a large assortment of door prizes and the lucky winners were: Claudette Traill, Elizabeth Couture, Louise Vandenberg, Mary DeVries, Betty Rehbein, Anne Cruickshank, Joanna Vlaming, Nicky Barham, Jan Smith, Pat Bell, Mary Cohan-Pekarchuk and Dawn Madson. Other lucky winners - Guess the number of pages in the library book: Jan Smith 50-50 draw: Paulette McCarron's mom Hazel who was visiting us Gift Basket: Gwen Penninngs
 Despite some snow earlier in the day in this very snowy November, there was a good turnout for our meeting. Grace Noel  Our youngest guest speaker ever was Grace Noel, an aspiring and already accomplished surface pattern designer from Almonte. Grace is pictured here wearing a skirt she made from her own fabric design. Grace started off by explaining that "surface pattern design" is art that is specifically created to be repeated across a surface of material. That material includes fabric or wallpaper, and the designs can be florals, geometrics and a host of other designs that we see in our fabrics. Her work involves colours, themes, scale and much more. The repeat factor was her initial challenge which she has now mastered. Grace's designs are often inspired by nature and vintage items - she's particularly fond of calicos from the 1930's. Grace draws her designs by hand using any medium at hand including markers, pencils, pastels, crayons or paint. She then scans and uploads the design to her computer and edits it using Adobe Photoshop. Grace achieved an early success during her final year in her design program at Algonquin College. She secured a placement at Moda (Moda!!! we were really impressed by this!) and her project was to design a collection of fabrics to celebrate Canada's 150th birthday which was coming up in 2017. She described the iterative design process where she submitted designs to Moda, and then modified them based on their feedback. This process repeated through a few cycles. She showed us designs that both did and didn't make it into the set of final 5 designs that comprised the 21 piece fabric collection. She was understandably very excited to see her name on the fabric selvages! Grace's current goal is to extend her designs to home decor items and to sell her designs to manufacturers. And she would also like to make a quilted item of Grandmother's Flower Garden blocks.  You can view and purchase Grace's over designs, currently numbering over 190, at her Spoonflower online store, www.spooonflower.com/graceful and follow her on her blog www.creativelygraceful.blogspot.ca And please do remember her request that if you ever make something with her fabric, to send her a photo of it to creativelygrace@gmail.com We were delighted to meet Grace. She was an interesting, entertaining and excellent presenter who clearly has a bright future ahead of her. We wish you much success and happiness Grace! And we'll be eagerly following your progress towards your current and future goals.
Charity We had an excellent response to our late-ish request for placemats and Christmas gift bags. Thanks to everyone who contributed to these important Christmas outreach initiatives, and to Anne Cruickshank for coordinating this endeavour.
An amazing 85 fabric gift bags were also donated. These will be filled and distributed by the Arnprior and District Food Bank in their Christmas parcels.
 And 14 beautiful little preemie quilts were donated, bringing our total to 46. These will be distributed to babies in the neo-natal unit at the Ottawa Hospital, Civic campus. Check out our Charity page for more information about all of these outreach initiatives. Show and Tell Show and Tell featured an impressive large number of our members' quilts and other quilted items! Everyone must be gearing up for the holiday season with gifts and other decorative items. We also saw several lovely completed big bags from the recent Big Bag workshop whose participants were very excited that they completed the bag at the workshop! Click/tap to see Show and Tell photos and photos from the workshop. Draws Our meeting wrapped up with our draws and some happy winners!
Block of the month: Joyce Trafford Guess the number of pages in the library book: Johanne Vjada 50-50 draw: Claudette Trail Gift Basket: Nancy Hayley Our guild meeting on October 24th was attended by 63 guild members, and our guild now has 84 members. This was the first meeting where one of our newly formed member groups assumed responsibility for many aspects of our meeting. This included setting up the hall for the meeting, bringing the snacks, assisting during the meeting with the guest speaker presentation, and show and tell, and completing the clean up. It was a resounding success and thanks and kudos to everyone in the Flying Geese group, led by Vickie MacNabb for a job very well done! Members generously donated 20 new preemie quilts, when combined with the 12 collected at our September meeting, now bring our total for this season to 32. Thank you! Preemie Quilt Photos Guest Speaker Our meeting kicked off with very a interesting trunk and slide show by Bridget O'Flaherty, a local award winning fibre artist from Perth, known for her stunning large landscapes created with thread. With an environmental and sustainable focus, Bridget explores the use of local, organic and natural hand-dyed fabrics and materials in her works. Bridget’s fibre art is inspired by nature and biodiversity. She is passionate about our environment and creates intimate connections to the landscape. She conveys fragile aspects of eco-systems and advocates for awareness of species at risk, native and invasive species in nature and sustainable materials in textiles. Bridget was initially inspired by her mother, a seamstress, costume maker, and quilt shop owner. It was on an epic 2 week family driving trip to Banff and back that Bridget fell in love with landscapes. Her early quilts in the mid 1990's were leading edge modern quilts, and she had early success in getting her pieces into quilt shows. But it wasn't long until she pursued her interest in creating landscapes. She took courses by Joen Wolfrom and Ann Byrd and then she started creating her stunning large, typically 5 feet by 3 feet, landscapes. Using her sewing machine, Bridget builds up layers of multi-coloured thread 'drawing' to convey her landscape art. Bridget's Web Site     Bridget enjoys incorporating traditional quilting components into her landscape and nature art as evidenced in photos below.     Due to various family issues Bridget took a 10 year complete break from her quilting focus and passion. After sharing details of this journey with us Bridget offered us the great advice that it's OK to spend time on your crafts when you find yourself in challenging life situations, so you are better able to give to those who need you. Her passion and energy for her fibre art eventually returned and Bridget has since fully 9mmersed herself in her craft. With renewed energy she is further embracing natural fibres to the point of shearing sheep on her neighbour's farm, washing, carding and felting the wool herself. For practical (time and financial) reasons Bridget now focuses more on smaller pieces which she sews with a 6 inch hoop on a domestic sewing machine. Bridget has expanded her reach into the quilting community by teaching courses, she has her own YouTube channel, and she will be teaching courses at the upcoming Quilt Canada show in Ottawa in June 2019. Bridget will be returning to Arnprior on Saturday December 1st to lead a workshop on "easy peasy" thread painting.  
   PresentationResponse from our guild members to our invitation to provide financial support to our past president Brigid Whitnall and her husband Ken who lost their Dunrobin home in the September tornado was amazing. Mary deVries provided a very impressive money tree to which members secretly attached cash and gift cards in the far corner of the kitchen prior to the meeting. Brigid was surprised, pleased, and a bit overwhelmed when we presented it to her after she briefly spoke to us about their experience. Read Bridget's story in her own words in our October 2018 newsletter. Thank you to our guild members for your generosity.!  From left: Brigid Whitnall, Mary deVries, and president Donna Sheaves DrawsOur meeting wrapped up with our usual draws and some happy winners!
Block of the month - 30 blocks: Julie Carroll Guess the number of pages in the library book: Lori Bottriell 50-50 draw for $57: Chris Gordon Gift Basket - Suzanne deJoode Door Prizes - Brenda Greely, Mary DeVries, Sue Hodgins, Marilyn Erskine, Joanna Vlaming |
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