March Meeting Highlights

Our annual "garage sale" was a great way to start off this meeting with many interesting items to choose from to fill those inevitable gaps in our own stashes! Many members wore happy smiles as they loaded up on new goodies.

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Lana Dean gave us an update on the charming log cabin quilt with the creative farm scene on the back which she showed us at our February meeting. She made the quilt along with a number of other quilters for auction at the Ottawa Valley Farm Show in mid March. It was sold for a whopping $7,600 which was all donated to CHEO (Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario.)

Log Cabin raffle quilt

Farm scene on back

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Our guest presenter, Barb Leffering, traveled to Arnprior from Cameron ON (near Lindsay) to share her quilting journey and her quilts with us. 
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Her opening line "I used to be a hooker but now I'm a stripper" certainly caught our attention. She had demonstrated rug hooking at the CNE, and then when her sister introduced her to quilting in 1995 she was hooked on quilting.

Barb's story and quilts proved her to be practical and thrifty, and very willing to experiment and try new techniques.

She was very inspirational "Mistakes happen to people who have been quilting for a long time too."

Barb shared many tips with us including:

• "There's always a way to make it work out. For example add an extra border."
• Use soaps (not detergent) to wash quilts and fabric. She uses Synthapol or Vintage Textile soak.
• Turn fabric over and use the wrong side for a softer colour.
• Make quick flying geese illustrated below in her Grow Chart quilt using the method from the book Five-minute Quilt Blocks, one seam flying geese blocks by Suzanne McNeill​

Grow Chart quilt

• Alter what you see in colour using sashing and borders as illustrated in these 2 quilts with blocks constructed of the same colours.

• Use book panels in quilts as an alternative to making books

​Barb's son is fascinated by wolves as evidenced by these 2 quilts in her collection.

​Barb finished off her captivating show with her personal Canada 150 quilt project in which she included the crests of the 3 provinces in which she's lived: Ontario, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia.

Barb owns the Quilters Inn quilt shop in Cameron ON where she also teaches classes and does long arm quilting for others. See Barb's Facebook page for more information. www.facebook.com/QuiltrsInn 

Enjoy these many more photos of Barb's quilts and other items that she shared with us.