Arnprior & District Quilters' Guild Newsletter - November 2020
President's Message
Howdy All!
I hope this newsletter finds everyone healthy and well in our Covid times. It’s a challenge to get out and about in these masked, socially distanced, washing our hands often (while singing “Happy Birthday” twice to time it properly).
So this is part of what is on my sewing table right now. I have begun a quilt (84”x84” in size). There are 3,974 pieces that will eventually be a quilt top.
Paulette and I are different in our quilting styles and interests. Paulette loves smaller, quicker projects that suit her attention span. She loves projects that work up quick and show quick beautiful results. She makes a lot of table runners and placemats and such (and quilts too from time to time). I make mostly king-sized quilt tops. Any pattern I see I envision as a king-sized quilt. My problem is that right now I have about 1,500 projects in my backlog because I keep seeing more and more quilt ideas that I file away. And we have a box full of quilt tops (flimsies as some call them) filed away for when the day comes that we own a longarm of our own.
Have you attended one of our Zoom on-line quilt meetings? Less than half of you have. I know that on-line meetings aren’t the same as “in person” meetings, but until the Covid restrictions are eased quite a bit they are the best we can do. Last month we had quite an interesting trunk show from Bill Stearman. The great feature of the speakers we can get via Zoom is that we can get speakers from literally anywhere in the world because we aren’t paying for travel.
We hope to see you all at our November Zoom meeting. We are far from “Zoom Wizards” but we are learning more and getting better at it every month. We should master it completely about the time we ditch it and go back to “real meetings” hahaha.
Stay safe and keep quilting!
-- Frank McCarron, President
Program Notes
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November Meeting This month (November 25) our guest speaker is Bonnie Rankin. Bonnie is a previous President of the CQA (Canadian Quilters' Association) and is presently our area representative. She plans to speak a bit about CQA and answer any questions you may have. Additionally she will give us a truck show. December Meeting For the December meeting we thought it would be nice to do something different and so we ask you to be present with a beverage and let's have a Show & Tell. There are two ways to participate. You can simply show your quilts or you can take pictures of them, send these pictures to the guild and they will be shown on the evening of the meeting. You will be able to talk about your quilt at that time. And don’t think you have to show just one quilt. I’ll bet some of you are making Christmas gifts and that also would be fun to see. I know many of you who were not present at the park in early September will have finished your Black and White and Presidents challenges. Love to see them. And don`t forget, we have door prizes! I use my phone to participate in the Zoom and can simply walk around my house and show you what I have to show. I thought I could lay out my treasures but some of you may choose to get together with another and display that way. I can see who is present and I will ask you if you have anything to show after the initial pictures have been presented. Remember December is supposed to be party night. Let's try to have fun. Block of the Month We hope some of you are participating in our Mystery Block of the Month. Every month we are presenting a 9 ½ inch block. In the end you will have a cute little wall hanging. It will be fun to see how different they will all look considering the colors you chose. More information and patterns Covid Challenge We also had asked for a Covid Challenge. I’m sure many of you already have one of these. The challenge: Make something completely from scraps. No shopping allowed. I suppose it doesn`t have to be scraps, as long as you used up material you had on hand. Hopefully by the end of this quilt year we can get together and see these challenges in person. -- Joyce Murray 2021
We have an exciting line up for you to start off the new year. First we have Peter Byrne as our guest speaker for the January meeting. Peter lives in downtown Toronto and is a member of both the Toronto Modern Quilt Guild and the York Heritage Quilt Guild. His quilts have been shown at Quiltcon and he has several quilts to be shown at the June 2021 CQA show in Toronto. This year’s show will be virtual, but let’s hope the show for 2022 in Vancouver will be live and we will be able to view Peter’s quilts in person. I encourage everyone to check out Peter’s website. Then for our February meeting, we have Karen Brown as our guest speaker. Karen also lives in Toronto and has a website called justgetitdonequilts.com Check it out, you will enjoy her whole attitude towards quilting. I found her through her YouTube videos and find them very helpful. Karen also has a YouTube video called ‘Let’s talk about quilt shows' with Peter Byrne which introduced us to Peter. Next for our March meeting, we are lucky enough to have Jackie White from CQA. Jackie lives in Sudbury and has a website called jackiewhitequilts.com Through CQA, Jackie is presenting us with blocks and instructions for her newest project called Cov-recome on a weekly basis. Check out her projects, it is a good way to be productive while we are self-isolating in our sewing rooms. -- Sue Hodgins 2020-2021 Meeting Dates are listed on the Schedule page
October Highlights
You can take a look at the October 2020 Meeting Highlights blog post for photos of our guest Bill Stearman and his stunning quilts. |
Our November guild meeting is on Wednesday November 25 at 7 PM. We hope you'll join us on Zoom. Watch your email a day or 2 before the meeting for instructions for connecting to this meeting.
Do send along your photos for the December 9 holiday meeting Show & Tell to us at arnpriorquilters@gmail.com
There's no need to re-send any photos that you sent us for the spring- summer virtual Show and Tell. We'll show all of those photos at the meeting and we look forward to hearing your stories about them. 
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Quilt Canada 2020 Guild Member Challenge
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Voting is over for the CQA 2020 "Gateway to Adventure" Guild Member Challenge and here's the winning entry. Congratulations to Joan Dupuis-Neal of the Manitoba Prairie Quilters. This challenge required using Kona’s Jungle green fabric. Quilts in this challenge are normally displayed at Quilt Canada but since it was cancelled this year, the show was online and we all had the opportunity to vote for our favourite entry. You can see photos of all of the projects here. |
And once again congratulations to Emma Russell who represented our guild with her entry “Experience the Great Outdoors”. We are so proud of Emma for showcasing our guild.
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Advertisers
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Thank you to our 2020-2021 advertisers! Your support funds our Communications budget which includes the hosting of this web site. We are very grateful for this financial support. To our guild members, please support our advertisers. You can click/tap on any of the advertisements in this newsletter to access the vendor's web site. These vendors are also listed on the Links page. -- Janet Brownlee, Communications & Newsletter Editor |
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Charity
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Christmas Projects - Drawstring bags, and placemats To date we have received 38 bags and 13 placemats, thank you so far to those who have already handed them in! Hopefully we all have time to finish up these projects and deliver them to Sew Inspired by Monday, November 30th. More information Update New Community Charity Request Thanks to Anne Cruickshank who contacted us, we have a new community charity project to announce and rollout in January! If anyone else knows of any other community charity that we could help out with, just send the guild an email with the info. It is great to see our guild use our skills to help out our community! Charity Block - Pick up Sticks Please note that we won't be asking for your completed blocks or handing out any new white background material until the new year. The feedback we have received so far is positive; "fun", "easy", "look great", and "want to do more!". If you haven't had a chance to try this block yet, please stay tuned, in January we will have more background material cut up and ready to go. I can't wait to see what these blocks will look like put together! Don't forget to save any leftover strips and include them when you return the block so they can be used as a key border. New Charity Group Member I wish I could announce a new Charity group volunteer, but sadly to date no one has come forward. Jane has been so kind to stay on temporarily until someone steps in, so please give some thought to volunteering and doing your share to help out. I do realize that during these uncharted times of Covid, people are reluctant to step forward, however the fact remains that our charity work is still needed in the community. I can assure you that we don't do any work without adhering to the Covid regulations. Take care, Vickie MacNabb and Jane Wickware, Guild Charity Group |
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Welcome back Lucy
I’m back in Ontario after four wonderful months in Cape Breton. Hope everyone had a good summer and are now back quilting. While at the cottage I had a chance to quilt with the Evergreen Seniors at the Senior Clubhouse in Port Hawkesbury. I asked them if I could share a little of their story and some pictures, and of course they said I could.
Other years they numbered around 16 and had two quilting frames with one Queen size quilt on one frame and two smaller quilts on the other!
Due to Covid only a few dear souls came out on Monday and Thursday afternoon 1 o’clock to 4 with a tea break at 2:30. Not only can these gals quilt they are excellent bakers! Edna and Rita are 85 , Annie is older and Doris is the youngest. Rita and Edna never use a thimble but the others do. Connie is a retired school teacher and the leader of the group.
The group started in 1996 , they took over a beautiful well lit room at the Seniors Centre that was the library. The library was moved to another room as not many were coming in to read, only to take a book or two home.
They make two queen size quilts a year which they raffle and then they quilt for others or make quilts that they sell at the local craft sales or donate to a good cause. This way they can raise money for the centre and raise money they do!
I am honoured to be allowed to quilt with them in the summer. Every quilt is inspected by Annie and mistakes are all corrected before Connie does the binding.
They not only quilt and bake but attend the local ceilidh. They all live in their own homes except Rita who lives in an apartment and are all cancer survivors! A wonderful group of Seniors! Fun, and full of life!
Here are a few pictures I took.
-- Lucy, Co-Librarian
Edna, Doris, Annie, Connie , Rita
Lucy (left)
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Brigid on Cutting Stations
More creative furniture uses!
As I sat down to write this, I realized I had mentioned Cutting and Ironing stations and had not addressed those subjects fully. I was quite prepared to talk fabric - but let’s park that til the new year (I need at least that long to clean that area!) I will do cutting stations this month and ironing stations (way more than just an ironing board!) next month.
This is really where we get into ergonomics of your sewing area.
• Work triangle... Over the past 10 years, I have had at least three different setups for my sewing area as furniture has been changed and moved around. The one thing that is consistent is a comfortable work triangle. The work triangle is your distance between cutting, sewing, ironing. Are you tripping over other things to get to any of these key areas? Are they creating extra steps for nothing. My current triangle is a little wonky, but it works for the space I have.
• Accessibility and height of the furniture. Are you having to bend over a table that is too low to do your cutting? Could you add bed risers to the legs to give you proper height? If you spend a couple of hours a week quilting and your body is crying out in pain, what could be done differently to lessen the pain?
When I started quilting, we had an old kitchen table that I used as my cutting surface and my area for pinning quilts. I had read about pinning quilts, using bulldog clips around the outside edge of the table. Here’s a YouTube video on the subject (he does a large quilt at about 8 min mark). I could not attach clips to the thick sides on the table, so we bought a 4 x 8 sheet of mdf, used a router to smooth out the edges and it was larger than the table so I could use the bulldog clips. To prevent the top from sliding, we put foamy shelf liner between the table and the mdf. It flattens after a few years, but is a very inexpensive buy. I am tall, so I eventually invested in bed risers to raise the table to a good height for me. This was an inexpensive solution for me at the time, and it worked very well for many years. For me, it was much better than pinning on the floor and gave me lots of room when I was cutting fabric, or trimming quilts.
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Fast forward 9 years, in the current area I did not need the large surface for pinning and had seen some friends using sit-stand desks as their cutting tables. I liked that idea, and happened to be at Ikea when they were getting rid of a bunch of these very desks in the “Asis” area. Lucky me! I wanted the electric version and managed to get one. It’s compact compared to what I had before, but I like the flexibility of having it lower or higher depending what I am working on. I can have it at table height, bring my chair over and sit at the table or I have it higher up for cutting. Did you know, your elbow should be at 90 degrees when holding your rotary cutter? When I can have people over (that will happen eventually!), it’s easy to adjust the height for someone else to use. I have only had 1 King Size quilt to trim that was awkward for this table, but I now have a kitchen island for that! My house multitasks!!
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Keep in mind that if you use a Go Cutter, a Scan and Cut, or some other cutting device, you want to have a stable, solid surface to operate from. I talked a while back about my metal cart for the Go Cutter. It’s stable enough for me to use the smaller dies, I move the Go to a table top for the large dies. I have that foamy shelf liner under it for added tack.
There was a lot more to say about cutting than I expected... please, no matter where you cut, please please always close up your rotary cutter between cuts. We don’t want any accidents!
Until next month - when we look at pretty ironing stations!
-- Brigid Whitnall, Past-Past President
There was a lot more to say about cutting than I expected... please, no matter where you cut, please please always close up your rotary cutter between cuts. We don’t want any accidents!
Until next month - when we look at pretty ironing stations!
-- Brigid Whitnall, Past-Past President
Blocks from the Past
One of my responsibilities in my Communications role for the guild is to monitor the guild’s email account. Every so often I'm surprised when an especially interesting message arrives and that happened earlier this fall. The message was from Marion Conger who I remembered was a guild member when I joined the guild, and for several years after that. And many of you will remember Marion too.
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Hi, my name is Marion Conger and I was a member many years ago. In my sewing room clean up I came across a bag of quilt blocks from a Guild Challenge ("Africa" - 2009). I think I was president that year. We had a speaker who gave us fabric (hand dyed / batik from Africa). I think this was to be a charity raffle quilt. Names are on the blocks, pretty sure some ladies would recognize their blocks. Anyway that is the story. Despite being very embarrassed at still having these, my conscience forces me to admit this. I would to mail them back to the Guild. Who could I send them to?
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After my LOL reaction to the message, and a brief email exchange with Marion (which included the discovery that Marion and I both attended Nepean High School in Ottawa, and that she lived 4 streets over from me, and that I was long gone from Nepean by the time she was there), I picked up a fat brown envelope from Marion at her house in Ottawa.
The envelope contained 15 blocks, backing fabric, and 2 unclaimed fabric kits. The blocks are stunning!
Marion subsequently dug up this information about the challenge in a guild newsletter.
The envelope contained 15 blocks, backing fabric, and 2 unclaimed fabric kits. The blocks are stunning!
Marion subsequently dug up this information about the challenge in a guild newsletter.
Kits received by the challenge participants
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Backing fabric
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There are names on the backs of several of the blocks and 3 are current guild members.
Here are photos of those 3 blocks and Marion’s. Do you recognize yours?
Here are photos of those 3 blocks and Marion’s. Do you recognize yours?
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You can see photos of all 15 blocks here. Perhaps more of you will recognize blocks you made.
I'll be passing these blocks along to Vickie in the new year so stay tuned for the next phase of this project.
And special thanks to Marion for making the effort to get these blocks to us.
-- Janet Brownlee, Communications
I'll be passing these blocks along to Vickie in the new year so stay tuned for the next phase of this project.
And special thanks to Marion for making the effort to get these blocks to us.
-- Janet Brownlee, Communications
Face Masks
I've come across these Canadian web sites which provide the latest recommendations and research for cloth face masks.
:: Government of Canada
:: Evidence/Science-Informed Cloth Face masks
Do you know of any web sites to add to this list?
Have you made any 3-layer face masks? If so, what did you use for the 3rd layer?
Are you planning to make Christmas themed face masks?
Please send along any information that we could share with our guild members.
I offered to make a Hallowe'en face mask for our 10 year old granddaughter but she politely declined saying that it wouldn't be worth my effort for just one day!
This was is favourite Remembrance Day face mask. So classy and it reinforced the importance and solemnity of our annual day of remembrance.
-- Janet Brownlee, Communications
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An invitation...
Do you have a story or a tip you'd like to share with us? Just send it along and I'll be delighted to include it in a future newsletter. And a VERY BIG THANK YOU to Brigid and Lucy for sharing their stories with us this month, and to Frank, Vickie, Joyce, and Sue for their guild updates. -- Janet Brownlee, Communications & Newsletter Editor |