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Our quilt guild closed out 2017 with our annual Christmas potluck dinner and meeting. As always, there was an extensive and delicious selection of main course foods and desserts.   L to R: Donna (guild president), her sister Pat, and Chris The hall was festively decorated with a Christmas tree and several of our members' Christmas and holiday themed quilts.   
   After dinner we welcomed special guest Reverend Andrew Love of Grace St. Andrew's United Church in Arnprior who introduced us to "Arms for Hugging", a project for the seriously ill that we will be working on in 2018.  Reverend Andrew Love A huge thank you is extended to all of the guild members who completed wheelchair lap quilts for residents of The Grove Nursing Home in Arnprior. Several of these colourful and creative quilts are pictured below.  Wheelchair Lap Quilts And a big thank you to guild members who have been making little preemie quilts for the babies in the Rich Little Special Care Nursery at the Civic Campus of the Ottawa Hospital.    Preemie Quilts by Gwen Pennings Thank you for all the wonderful quilted placemats you made this past fall which I was very honoured to deliver just before Christmas. 15 placemats to the Arnprior Meals on Wheels program to be given with the Christmas meal. 10 placemats to be given with freezer meals to seniors in the Fitzroy Harbour and Constance Bay areas by the West Carleton Community Service Centres in affiliation with the Western Ottawa Community Resource Centre (WOCRC). It took everyone’s individual work to make such a big impact on our community. I want to share this note that I received: Gwen, I wanted to send an email to express my thanks on behalf of Western Ottawa Community Resource Centre and some lucky seniors in our community for the beautiful placemats made by your quilting group. The last week before Christmas I had the opportunity to deliver meals and soup and your beautiful placemats to many seniors in our community. The placemats added such a warm and personal touch, the seniors who received them were surprised and genuinely pleased someone had gone to so much work to make such a pretty gift for them. I am sure that as those folks sat down to eat their meals over the holidays they were able to look down at those placemats only to be reminded we are a caring community and their day would have been brighter for it. Heidi Wieler Service Coordinator-West Carleton Western Ottawa Community Resource Centre  Heidi Wieler, left with guild's Gwen Pennings  Placemats and food for Arnprior Meals on Wheels clients by Gwen Pennings Thank you for the 16 wonderful quilted wheelchair lap quilts you made this past fall which I was very honoured to deliver for the residents of The Grove Nursing Home in Arnprior just before Christmas.  Wheelchair lap quilts at our December guild meeting     'Twas the night before Christmas, Quilters version
'Twas the night before Christmas, And the quilts were not made. The threads were all tangled, the cookies delayed. The stockings weren't hung, the pantry was bare. The poor weary Quilter, was tearing her hair. Stacks of fat quarters, tipped over in streams. Visions of Log Cabins, had turned into dreams. When what to her wondering eyes should appear, But a bus full of quilters with all of their gear. They went straight to work with just a few mutters, Sorting and stitching and brandishing cutters. The patterns emerged from all of the clutter, Like magic the fabrics arranged in a flutter. Log Cabins, Lone Stars, Flying Geese & Bear Tracks Each quilt was a beauty-even the backs. Her house how it twinkled, her quilts how they glowed. The cookies were baking, the stockings were sewed. Their work was all done, so they folded their frames, And packed up their needles, without giving their names. They boarded the bus, and checked the next address. More quilts to be made, another quilter in distress. She heard one voice echo, as they drove out of sight, Happy quilting to all and to all a good night! Author Unknown Donna Sheaves President We saw lots of quilts at this meeting from our guest speaker Sherri Hisey, our own members' show-and-tell, and completed preemie quilts, along with many participants in block-of-the-month and the decorative stitch exchange.  2 of the new preemie quilts And Mary deVries shared some of the work done at the recent sew day for the raffle quilt for our 2019 quilt show. Here are 2 completed "around the town" blocks designed by Mary. Read more about this very productive day in an earlier blog entry.   Sherri Hisey, our guest presenter is a quilt designer with her own company Border Creek Station patterns. Sherri shared with us the importance of balance in a quilt's visual space, how to keep it simple when decoding the math and some basic rules of thumb of quilt designing, and guidelines for setting quilts and borders. Getting it together in a unique and personal way is key to Sherri's distinctive teaching style-- there is always a way to process your creative thoughts and ideas into a finished project just let your imagination soar! We appreciated her very detailed hand out that documents various terms such as coping (the addition of fabric strips that build up or correct sizes of blocks, quilt centres, or borders to achieve a desired size), along with "quilt math". And her tips such as photocopying a quilt pattern in black, white and grey, to really see the design values, and volume (the difference between the lightest and darkest fabrics in a quilt to ensure sufficient contrast), and to help you decide where you need print and solid fabrics. Sherri's quilts showcased a number of her quilt patterns, many of which she brought along to sell.                    Click/tap an image in the gallery below to see it in full. |
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