Our October 25th guild meeting was attended by 42 guild members and 5 guests.

Trunk Show
We were treated to an amazing trunk show by very creative and talented quilting sisters Cathy Price and Carol Darou. They make the most stunning quilts, each with its own interesting, and well told story. Carol and Cathy are very active and long time members of the Lanark County Quilters Guild and some of the quilts we saw were displayed at their quilt show in Smiths Falls in July.  And congratulations to Carol who placed 1st in the 'Books and Patterns' category at Quilt Canada in June. 
Carol and Cathy's colour preferences and quilting styles are often quite different and that was particularly evident in their different interpretations of various guild challenges.  Their trunk show featured about 40 of their creations and Carol and Cathy have generously allowed us to post a few photos of their work.

Thank you Carol and Cathy for a most fun and information evening.

Programs
The Tinners program kicked off with 12 participants.

And the 2nd Block of the Month (BOM) was revealed.  

Charity
Marilyn introduced the plan for our raffle quilt for our next "QUILTING IN THE VALLEY" quilt show in April 2025. Each participant will be given a 10" square of background material and we're to use our scraps to create a colourful bird block - pieced, appliqued, paper pieced or embroidered. The blocks are to be handed in at the April 2024 meeting, (early bird...) so there's time to finish and quilt another successful, beautiful Raffle quilt. 

We kicked off our 2023-2024 guild season with a well attended, information packed meeting on September 27.

The 20 1/2" strips of fabric that we were asked to bring to the meeting were the focus of a dice game where a player from each table went home with their winnings of a stack of fabric strips.

MORE
Our break provided an opportunity to get a close look at the church panels. visit the Library, indulge in a little shopping at Madonna's pop-up Paisleys shop, check out the BOM sample block, and grab a drink and a snack.
There was a very inspiring Show-and-Tell - photos.
The meeting wrapped up with the door prize and 50-50 draws, and the draw for the Library "guess the number of pages" book.
What a wonderful start to our new guild year!

We had a marvelous end to our first full post-Covid guild year with an action packed meeting on June 21st. The meeting was well attended by many of our guild members, the visiting members of the Quilters Guild of Renfrew and Area, and several other guests.
Books!
We welcomed Bert of Grantham Books as a visiting featured shop and his extensive display of quilting books.  We were all invited to come early to have a good chance to browse and purchase books...and browse and purchase we did!

Trunk Show
​First on the official agenda of the evening was a trunk show by some of our visiting guests from the Quilters Guild of Renfrew and Area. They brought along some stunning quilts and entertained us with their very interesting stories.

And yes this is our ADQG member Chris Gordon showing some of her work! Chris is a member of both guilds. Thank you Chris for organizing most enjoyable trunk show.

Thank you to our guests from the Renfrew and Area guild for coming to our meeting and especially to those who treated us to an excellent trunk show.

Social
The meeting featured a lengthy break for our yummy dessert buffet, a close up look at the trunk show quilts, more book browsing and buying, and some very social time.

Show and Tell
​There were still more quilts to see at our regular Show and Tell.
But it wasn't so "regular" after all as Brenda Davidson Payer showed us her amazing "Perfectly Imperfect" quilt freshly back from Quilt Canada, the 2023 Canadian Quilters' Association (CQA) national juried show in Halifax. Brenda was awarded first prize in the Traditional - Wall and Bed Quilt category. You can read more about it here on the CQA web site.
Congratulations Brenda!  Well done!

We're super excited that Brenda has volunteered to be our incoming guild Program executive so we'll be hearing lots from her over the next couple of years.
And after all of our work to complete projects for our quilt show, we were treated to a pleasantly surprising array of other stunning new quilts in Show and Tell.  These included the Tote-Me-Tote bags from our May workshop.

We were delighted when Anne Cruickshank and Joyce Murray stepped forward to announce that they are taking on the roles of co-presidents! Anne has previously been president (twice!) and Joyce has served in multiple executive and organizational capacities, so we are very well positioned for next year, and very grateful that they are volunteering for this crucial role.
And they didn't waste any time in getting started as Anne announced a Summer 2023 Presidents' Challenge to make a bag (any pattern, any size) and bring it to the September guild meeting. And the Tote-Me-Tote bags are NOT eligible!

This was also our night to thank outgoing president Vickie for her excellent leadership for the past 2 years, including leading the committee for our recent very successful quilt show. All very well done Vickie, and very much appreciated.

Draws
The meeting wrapped up with our draws and some happy winners!
Guess the Number of Pages in the 2 library books - Jane W
Gift Basket - Joanna V
50-50 Draw of $57 - Nancy
Door Prizes  - Diane A, Shirley F, Tina M, Allison K
Free 2023-2024 Guild Memberships - Brenda G, Shirley F
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Thank You!
​A huge thank you goes out to everyone who brought the desserts, and to Joyce T and Wendy FB for doing kitchen duty - setting out the food and cleaning up afterwards.

​-- Janet Brownlee

Our 3 "challenges" for this year wrapped up at our April 2023 guild meeting, with these projects all completed in time for our end of April Quilt Show. There was an amazing display of quilts and other items and we voted on our favourites with the winners awarded prizes.

This year we were given the opportunity to make the following guild-sponsored projects: 

• A Block of the Month quilt
• A Mystery Quilt
• A challenge to making something, anything, from the leftover fabric from the Mystery Quilt.

All 3 projects were suitable for all skill levels.
Thank you and congratulations to everyone who took on these projects and a big shout out to the makers of the prize winning pieces.
Volunteers Emma Russell and Mary deVries did an awesome job of leading and coordinating these activities. Thank you both!

This year's Block of the Month (BOM) featured 12 blocks, each finishing at 12", and each block was made from sixteen 3½” Half Square Triangles (HSTs). We made two blocks each month, with instructions for the first two being posted in August and the last two in January.
Emma and Mary brought their sample blocks to the fall in-person guild meetings. While they both used a single colour scheme - Mary's were blue, and Emma's were fall orange shades, we were encouraged to choose our own colours and use a single colour scheme like they did, or to vary our colours from block to block.
Participants assembled the blocks into the design of their choice along with borders, additional blocks, or background fabric.
​Photos of the blocks and the instructions are available here. 
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The winners were:
1st  Allison Kubiseski
2nd  Brenda Davidson-Payer
3rd  Mary Moss

Here are the prize winning quilts.

The instructions for the blocks were made available in 3 parts from September through November 2022 and in December the mystery was revealed in the assembly instructions. This was a lovely pattern that made up at 36" square.
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The winners were:
1st  Debbie Cauvier
2nd  Joanna Vlaming
3rd  Elizabeth Couture

​Here are the prize winning quilts.

We rounded out this calendar year and our fall in person meetings with the welcome return of our traditional potluck Christmas meeting.
The hall was festively decorated with your charming Christmas themed quilts.

A highlight of the evening was the Christmas gift exchange game that Vickie organized.  The game started with everyone choosing one of the gifts from the stage and choosing a number that determined the order of play. ​

On your turn you had the option of opening the gift you selected, or to trade it, still wrapped, for a gift already opened by someone else. There was a lot of laughter and trading until we all had an opened gift. 

And we even captured a rare photo of Emma, our talented and dedicated photographer, when she handed her camera over to Vickie!

Our Show & Tell included several beautiful seasonal items and other lovely creations.
You can see photos of all of the quilts on the Show & Tell page.

Thank You!
​A huge thank you goes out to Joyce T and Tina M for doing kitchen duty -  setting out the food and cleaning up afterwards. And to Vickie for organizing the evening and for the fun gift exchange game!
​
-- Janet Brownlee, Communications

This Charity workshop evening on Wednesday November 23rd was a huge success, both in the camaraderie and the amount of  work that was done by the 33 attendees.  It was a very active and busy hands on meeting making Christmas gift bags and placemats, and preparing materials for these and other guild Charity projects. We enjoyed meeting and talking to people we hadn’t talked to before or for a long time, including our 2 brand new members, Lucy and Nadine who were attending their first meeting.

Marilyn and her set up crew had many work stations clearly labeled and ready for us to quickly get started on various activities from cutting fabric for Christmas gift bags and placemats, sewing gift bags and placemats, attaching bindings to placemats, attaching the drawstrings to the gift bags, assembling kits to make fidget quilts, cutting batting for preemie and other Charity quilts, and ironing, ironing and more ironing in the kitchen!

A number of completed Charity items were brought to the meeting.

Thanks to all who participated in this big work evening. And an extra thank you to those who took home works-in-progress to finish off for our Christmas donations.

​Show and Tell
We  took a break for Show and Tell. Photos here

Our first Sew Day in a very long time was held on Thursday November 17, 2022 and was enjoyed by 15 members of our guild. The venue was the very pleasant hall at Bethel St Andrew's United Church in Fitrzoy Harbour that offered plenty of space to spread out, and bright natural light flooding in through the windows. A fun day of sewing with fellow guild members! Attendees brought their sewing machine, tools, project(s) and lunch.  Coffee and tea were provided and there was no charge to participate. They had great fun working away at various projects in the company of fellow guild members.

A big thank you to Nancy for arranging for our free use of the church hall, to Vickie for organizing the Sew Day, and to Gwen for teaching her popular notebook cover project.

Program
The meeting featured demonstrations of 5 different types of appliqué to help us learn new techniques, or to brush up on some we may not have used in a while. Unlike other types of workshops we have had in the past, there was no need to bring any supplies. Instead we watched the demonstrations and hopefully learned from them and were inspired to take on an appliqué project.
The excellent demonstrations were given by 5 of our talented guild member volunteers who also provided samples of their own stunning appliqué work and answered our many questions. 
​
Rennie showed us wool appliqué.

Allison showed us the starch method and wowed us with her light box.

Christine showed us the interface and turn method and her hand appliqué technique.

Joanna showed us raw edge appliqué which we could examine on her various sample pieces.

Brenda showed us the needleturn method which we could examine on her beautiful quilts.

Thank you to all of our appliqué instructors for your excellent demonstrations and for sharing your knowledge with us. Your efforts, including the preparation for the evening, were very much appreciated.

2021-2022 BOM Challenge
Our last year's 2021-2022 Block of the Month program wrapped up with a display of 6 quilts and voting for our favourite.

Emma and Gwen were the respective winners of the 1st and 2nd place gift certificates from Sew Inspired.

See the BOM Challenge Blog post for more information about this BOM program, and close up photos of all of the quilts.

Show and Tell
Show and Tell was started off with a fun and creative seasonal piece by new member Wendy! It's such a treat to be seeing our members' stunning creations and hear their stories in person again.
See the Show and Tell page for photos of all of the show and tell projects.

Block of the Month & Mystery Quilt
Mary and Emma brought along samples of the 2 October Blocks of the Month.
See the Block of the Month page for details of this year's Half Square Triangle BOM program and instructions for these and all of the blocks.
And see the Mystery Quilt page for instructions and details for this intriguing project.

Draws
The meeting finished up with draws and some happy winners!
Guess the Number of Pages in the book - Emma R
Gift Basket - Debbie C
50-50 Draw of $35 - Mary C-P
Door Prizes $20 gift certificates from Textile Traditions - Jo P and Mary deV

We wrapped up our 2021-2022 Block of the Month / Challenge at our October 2022 in person meeting.

This Block of the Month (BOM) was a celebration of our guild's 20th anniversary and consisted of blocks from the past years' blocks of the month. Each month our BOM coordinators Johanne and Amanda spun a wheel on our Zoom screens to select a block for that month from a large selection of past blocks. And then they reached into the pile of blocks they had made, and showed us that month's winning block. This BOM evolved into a challenge to see how creative our guild members could be to make these random blocks, of differing sizes, and incorporate them into a quilt. There were no restrictions on the fabric used in these quilts.
The results were amazing!

The prizes (gift certificates to Sew Inspired) were awarded based on viewers' choice voting and the winners were:
1st Emma Russell
2nd Gwen Pennings
The voting resulted in a tie for second place and Emma was asked to choose the piece of paper with the tie-breaking quilt number.
Once again our guild members inspired and impressed us with their creativity in fabric and colour selections, placement of the blocks, and their impressive piecing and finishing skills. 
​Well done!

Here are the winning quilts.