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Once again our generous and talented guild members made Christmas themed items for local residents. Christmas stockings and holiday placements were donated to Arnprior Meals on Wheels that were delivered with the Christmas meal. Placemats featured Christmas themed fabric on one side and something interesting on the other side so they can be used year round.
 Christmas placemats, stockings and gift bags The festive gift bags were donated to the Arnprior and District Food Bank, to be filled with toiletries and other goodies and distributed with the Christmas food hampers.
Three beautiful Bethlehem Star block quilts made by our guild members were recently donated to the Safe Shelter for Youth program which is offered through Family and Children's Services of Renfrew County. The quilts will be distributed to local couch surfing homeless youths. Representatives of the Safe Shelter for Youth program were delighted to accept our donations which were made just before Christmas. For more information about the important work of this valuable program refer to their web site.   Two Sew Days were held in May to work on the Bethlehem Star block quilts that will be donated to various local charities, including the Arnprior & District Memorial Hospital, and couch-surfing homeless youth in Arnprior. Led by our charity project co-ordinators, Ada Gawlik and Jane Wickware, some dedicated guild members gathered in the lovely bright, recreation room at Island View Suites, a retirement residence in Arnprior, to sew away. They made excellent progress and assembled 3 quilt tops. They also welcomed visits by a number of the residents of Island View.    This stunning quilt raised $1,250 for equipment purchases for the Arnprior & District Memorial Hospital at the Arnprior Regional Health Foundation’s recent annual "Knight in the Maritimes" dinner. Pam Ross, the delighted purchaser, is pictured at the dinner with her new quilt which was displayed on the stage throughout the evening.  Many guild members have contributed to this project from its design, fabric selection, making the individual blocks, assembling the top, quilting it on the long arm, and attaching the binding.  The completed quilt  Completed quilt top  Backing fabric and thread!  Almost done! Three of our charity quilts were recently donated to First Step Options, a pregnancy resource centre in Pembroke ON dedicated to supporting women and couples with unplanned pregnancies. One quilt will be offered in a silent auction to raise funds for this charity, and the other two will be given to clients.  Donalee Loback of First Step Options with the quilts    It was a pleasure for me to recently deliver 4 beautiful Canada-themed quilts from our guild to Quilts of Valour Canada to honour our veterans and Canadian Forces Military Services and to say that we appreciate their service for our country and that we are thankful for our freedom. These quilts include leftover "slab" blocks from quilt tops assembled for the Canadian Quilters' Association's 2017 Big Quilt Bee that delivered quilts to Ronald McDonald Houses in Canada. Our members completed the tops, added batting and backing, quilted them, and finished them off with binding. The quilts were gratefully received by the Ottawa Area Region, Quilts of Valour, Canada. "Your quilted hugs of comfort are given to injured members of our Canadian Forces – male or female; Army, Navy or Air Force; commissioned or non-commissioned – all ranks." -- Gwen Pennings, VP and Charity Projects     We kicked off the new year with our annual hands on charity project night at our January meeting. It was a very busy evening with three activities to choose from:
Thanks to all of the members who took kits for blocks for the auction quilt at our December meeting and then brought in the completed blocks.  Laying out the blocks for the hospital auction quilt  Joanna joining the blocks      Completed centre section of the auction quilt - Awesome!  Arms for Hugging  Millie modeling Arms for Hugging   Our guild receives a lot of generously donated fabric so there was lots of fabric to cut up and assemble into kits for wheelchair lap quilts and preemie quilts. It was a whirlwind of activity with many hands (and cutters) at work!  Cutting fabric for wheelchair & preemie quilts  Vice president Gwen kicking things off    Fabric for preemie quilts is coming together into kits for members to pick up and assemble.  And here are some completed kits for members to pick up to make wheelchair lap quilts  Click on an image in the gallery below to see it in full. This lovely quilt stand was generously donated to us and won as a door prize by this lucky lady.  And 9 darling preemie quilts were donated bringing our total for the year to 33. Several of them are included in the gallery below. Thanks for your generous donations to this important initiative. Click on an individual image to see it in full. 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    Our guild was recently enlisted to make a quilt to assist the Arnprior Tim Hortons outlets in raising funds for their Send a Kid to Camp programme. They provided a number of Tim Hortons themed t-shirts, and guild member Marilyn Erskine got to work in piecing them into a quilt top. Brigid Whitnall, guild president, then quilted it and adding binding to produce a stunning and fun 60" x 70" quilt! The quilt was presented to Tim Hortons employees Anne Marie St. Michael and Lori McGrath by Marilyn and Brigid on May 25th, It was offered in a silent auction where it sold for an amazing $500 with all proceeds going towards sending kids to camp. Wednesday May 31, 2017 is Tim Hortons Camp Day when 100% of the proceeds from coffee sales will "brighten a kid's future".  From left: Anne Marie St. Michael, Marilyn Erskine, Brigid Whitnall, Lori McGrath  May guild meeting show-and-tell |
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