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With only a couple of days to go before our quilt show, there was a lot of excitement in the air at our April 2019 guild meeting.  Guest Speaker - Roslyn Hanes Our guest speaker was Roslyn Hanes, a self-taught quilter who lives in Kingston Ontario. She is a member of the Kingston Heirloom Quilter's where she claims she learned to do things properly. Ros also belongs to Limestone Quilters and the Cataraqui Guild of Needle Art. Pictorial quilts and abstract quilts are among Roslyn's favourites. She excels at both piecing and appliqué, although she prefers the latter. Her quilts are often embellished with hand embroidery. In 1990, Ros designed a quilt for the 50th anniversary of Nursing at Queen's University. It is now part of the quilt collection at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Ros is a very community minded individual who coaches high school field hockey, plays soccer and is involved in bringing back prison farms amongst other things. This was Ros' first ever publicaly presented trunk show and her quilting journey has been simply amazing. Read on to find out the significance of the magazines she's holding in this photo. Ros started her fabric art projects in the mid 1970s while living in the university city of Cambridge, UK where her husband was studying. From a Cambridge banner to quilts often inspired by nursery rhymes or children's stories, she was very creative in finding fabrics at affordable prices, and self-taught from books. Her simplistic, primitive, whimsical style emerged in her quilts.
 Three Little Kittens
  By 1980 Ros and her husband were living in Australia where Ros continued to be inspired by her environment and made this hand quilted piece that depicted local rock engravings. It was so popular that instructions were published in a magazine and a picture of the quilt was on the cover!  
 Ros' delightful baby block quilt also was pictured on a magazine cover, By the mid 80s Ros and her husband had moved to Kingston and Ros had joined the Kingston Quilters where she made this treasure map challenge quilt. Ros' preference for diamond shpaed pieces are often featured in her quilts. Ros was very much leading edge with her quilting designs and techniques and we were entertained and inspired by her interesting story and her beautiful creative quilts.  Draws
Our meeting wrapped up with our draws and some very happy winners! Block of the month: Patti Moore and Mary DeVries Guess the number of pages in the library book: Liz Carroll 50-50 draw: Ann Hunter Gift Basket: Dona Lamoureux Door Prizes: Pam Ross, Anne Cruickshank, Kathy Foster, Betty Rehbein, Cathy Russell, Blanche Leclair, Liz Carroll, Rennie Hickey, Bonnie Parker, Emma Russell What a lot of activity at this meeting! Our annual challenges were due and the quilts in all 4 of the challenges were displayed in preparation for the "viewer's choice" voting for the prize winners. Refer to the 2019 Challenges blog post for photos and results of the challenges. Guest Speaker - Gary Devries Gary Devries joined us to share his talents and passion with Quilt Inspired Wood Designs. Gary has been working as a cabinet-maker for 45 years. He began his career in London Ontario where he did his apprenticeship. In 1979 he moved to the Valley and was joint owner of Gary and Ron's Cabinet-Making. Since 2000 he has been working from home in a small business known as Gary's Wood Designs. He has enjoyed working with wood since early in his teens. He has made many interesting things from tables, beds, and cupboards to urns for ashes, gigantic chairs and event props.  Gary began his story by showing his fabric creations and sharing his entertaining stories about those projects. His first was a self taught, secretly made bed quilt to surprise his wife Mary, a long time quilter and very active member of our guild, as an anniversary gift.   Then Gary turned his attention and talents to his primary interest in working with wood to combine that with quilting. This is a very unique niche and his work is exacting and spectacular. He used familiar quilting terminology, including "on point" and "flying geese" in his descriptions of his work.  Gary uses many different colours and types of wood, mostly hardwood, including cherry, maple, ash, poplar, rosewood, walnut, ebony and teak. He reserves the most expensive woods for small accent pieces and he told us that quilting fabric is a bargain in comparison. If he's driving down a road and sees a pallet from a foreign country, he's thinking about the exotic wood the pallet is constructed of. He's also been known to go "dumpster diving" for wood!  Gary gets ideas for his designs from quilting magazines and from architecture. He builds from the inside out and does not plan out his full pattern ahead of time. Exacting carpentry skills and knowledge of geometry are required. Cuts are often made on an angle, for example to cut an oval from a circular piece of wood.  One of the many challenges in this work is clamping to ensure that he can glue the tiny pieces without them sliding all over the place. Gary uses a water based glue followed by a beeswax treatment, or heated vegetable oil. He also has to consider the placement of adjacent pieces of wood due to properties of specific types of wood such as colour bleeding and changes in colour over time. Because wood cleans itself these are ideal for use with food.          Smaller pieces of wood can be used for coasters and the smallest pieces in jewelry.
  Draws
Our meeting wrapped up with our draws and some very happy winners! Block of the month: Joyce Trafford Guess the number of pages in the library book: Paulette McCarron 50-50 draw: Paulette McCarron Gift Basket: Nicky Barham Door Prizes: Geraldine Lynn, Donna Curtis, Suzanne deJoode, Anne Cruickshank, Margaret Fisher, Karen Maheral, Barb Devries, Nicky Barham, Katrina Kahn, Joyce Murray Challenges are projects with a particular theme where guild members can showcase their creativity and imagination. Issued at the beginning of each quilt year, challenges are open to all members. All members are encouraged to try at least one of the challenges each year. Due at the March 2019 meeting, guild members voted for their favourite quilt in each challenge, and prizes were awarded based on the "viewer's choice" voting results. Guild members were encouraged to display their quilts at the April 2019 quilt show. Silhouette Challenge
Winners 1st: Tie - Mary DeVries & Joanna Vlaming 3rd: Shirley Fedoruk  From Left: Mary DeVries, Joanna Vlaming UFO Challenge This project completes an Unfinished Object – any quilting projects you have that are unfinished!! A before picture of where your project is at present must be included with your entry This challenge has 2 objectives:
Winners 1st: Shirley Fedoruk 2nd: Emma Russell 3rd: Tie - Gwen Pennings & Rennie Hickey  From left: Gwen Pennings, Shirley Fedoruk, Emma Russell, Rennie Hickey President's Challenge - Shining Star Preemie Quilt
Winners 1st: Anne Cruickshank 2nd: Eleanor Kenny 3rd: Janet Brownlee  From left: Eleanor Kenny, Janet Brownlee, Anne Cruickshank Quilt Show Challenge - Modern Quilt This is the project for our April 2019 quilt show. It can be any project that exhibits modern quilting style - a quilt, wall hanging, runner, table topper, pillow, bag, etc. Refer to this description of a modern quilt on The Modern Quilt Guild web site. More characteristics of a modern quilt:
Winners 1st: Anne Cruickshank 2nd: Mary deVries 3rd: Jackie Lavictoire  From left: Anne Cruickshank, Mary DeVries, Jackie Lavictoire
   Show and Tell We saw a large number of very interesting quilted creations at Show and Tell - our members have been very busy since our last meeting back in December. We saw several lovely bags, a finished Mystery Quilt (a 2017-2018 activity), and many others including a pair of slippers! We're looking forward to showcasing these items and many more in our fast approaching April 27-28 quilt show. See Show and Tell Photos  Charity Prepared kits were snapped up for a charity quilt for the palliative care room in the Arnprior & District Memorial Hospital. And 13 new preemie quilts were donated. Draws
Our meeting wrapped up with our draws and some very happy winners! Block of the month: Debbie Cauvier Guess the number of pages in the library book: Janet Brownlee 50-50 draw: Liz Gray Gift Basket: Nicky Barham Door Prizes: Anne Cruickshank, Mary Moss, Pat Campbell, Deb Clarke, Marilyn Robert, Debbie Cauvier, Louise Wainright, Janet Brownlee We finished off 2018 with our annual Christmas potluck dinner meeting on December 12. Food was compliments of guild members with surnames M-Z and the assortment of main course items and desserts were delicious.  Special thanks to the members who brought along their festive seasonal quilts and wall hangings to decorate the hall.  The word puzzle games were challenging and fun for those who participated while others were too busy chatting and eating! And the latest creations of our guild members were shared at Show and Tell.    Donna brought along a large assortment of door prizes and the lucky winners were: Claudette Traill, Elizabeth Couture, Louise Vandenberg, Mary DeVries, Betty Rehbein, Anne Cruickshank, Joanna Vlaming, Nicky Barham, Jan Smith, Pat Bell, Mary Cohan-Pekarchuk and Dawn Madson. Other lucky winners - Guess the number of pages in the library book: Jan Smith 50-50 draw: Paulette McCarron's mom Hazel who was visiting us Gift Basket: Gwen Penninngs
 Despite some snow earlier in the day in this very snowy November, there was a good turnout for our meeting. Grace Noel  Our youngest guest speaker ever was Grace Noel, an aspiring and already accomplished surface pattern designer from Almonte. Grace is pictured here wearing a skirt she made from her own fabric design. Grace started off by explaining that "surface pattern design" is art that is specifically created to be repeated across a surface of material. That material includes fabric or wallpaper, and the designs can be florals, geometrics and a host of other designs that we see in our fabrics. Her work involves colours, themes, scale and much more. The repeat factor was her initial challenge which she has now mastered. Grace's designs are often inspired by nature and vintage items - she's particularly fond of calicos from the 1930's. Grace draws her designs by hand using any medium at hand including markers, pencils, pastels, crayons or paint. She then scans and uploads the design to her computer and edits it using Adobe Photoshop. Grace achieved an early success during her final year in her design program at Algonquin College. She secured a placement at Moda (Moda!!! we were really impressed by this!) and her project was to design a collection of fabrics to celebrate Canada's 150th birthday which was coming up in 2017. She described the iterative design process where she submitted designs to Moda, and then modified them based on their feedback. This process repeated through a few cycles. She showed us designs that both did and didn't make it into the set of final 5 designs that comprised the 21 piece fabric collection. She was understandably very excited to see her name on the fabric selvages! Grace's current goal is to extend her designs to home decor items and to sell her designs to manufacturers. And she would also like to make a quilted item of Grandmother's Flower Garden blocks.  You can view and purchase Grace's over designs, currently numbering over 190, at her Spoonflower online store, www.spooonflower.com/graceful and follow her on her blog www.creativelygraceful.blogspot.ca And please do remember her request that if you ever make something with her fabric, to send her a photo of it to creativelygrace@gmail.com We were delighted to meet Grace. She was an interesting, entertaining and excellent presenter who clearly has a bright future ahead of her. We wish you much success and happiness Grace! And we'll be eagerly following your progress towards your current and future goals.
Charity We had an excellent response to our late-ish request for placemats and Christmas gift bags. Thanks to everyone who contributed to these important Christmas outreach initiatives, and to Anne Cruickshank for coordinating this endeavour.
An amazing 85 fabric gift bags were also donated. These will be filled and distributed by the Arnprior and District Food Bank in their Christmas parcels.
 And 14 beautiful little preemie quilts were donated, bringing our total to 46. These will be distributed to babies in the neo-natal unit at the Ottawa Hospital, Civic campus. Check out our Charity page for more information about all of these outreach initiatives. Show and Tell Show and Tell featured an impressive large number of our members' quilts and other quilted items! Everyone must be gearing up for the holiday season with gifts and other decorative items. We also saw several lovely completed big bags from the recent Big Bag workshop whose participants were very excited that they completed the bag at the workshop! Click/tap to see Show and Tell photos and photos from the workshop. Draws Our meeting wrapped up with our draws and some happy winners!
Block of the month: Joyce Trafford Guess the number of pages in the library book: Johanne Vjada 50-50 draw: Claudette Trail Gift Basket: Nancy Hayley Our guild meeting on October 24th was attended by 63 guild members, and our guild now has 84 members. This was the first meeting where one of our newly formed member groups assumed responsibility for many aspects of our meeting. This included setting up the hall for the meeting, bringing the snacks, assisting during the meeting with the guest speaker presentation, and show and tell, and completing the clean up. It was a resounding success and thanks and kudos to everyone in the Flying Geese group, led by Vickie MacNabb for a job very well done! Members generously donated 20 new preemie quilts, when combined with the 12 collected at our September meeting, now bring our total for this season to 32. Thank you! Preemie Quilt Photos Guest Speaker Our meeting kicked off with very a interesting trunk and slide show by Bridget O'Flaherty, a local award winning fibre artist from Perth, known for her stunning large landscapes created with thread. With an environmental and sustainable focus, Bridget explores the use of local, organic and natural hand-dyed fabrics and materials in her works. Bridget’s fibre art is inspired by nature and biodiversity. She is passionate about our environment and creates intimate connections to the landscape. She conveys fragile aspects of eco-systems and advocates for awareness of species at risk, native and invasive species in nature and sustainable materials in textiles. Bridget was initially inspired by her mother, a seamstress, costume maker, and quilt shop owner. It was on an epic 2 week family driving trip to Banff and back that Bridget fell in love with landscapes. Her early quilts in the mid 1990's were leading edge modern quilts, and she had early success in getting her pieces into quilt shows. But it wasn't long until she pursued her interest in creating landscapes. She took courses by Joen Wolfrom and Ann Byrd and then she started creating her stunning large, typically 5 feet by 3 feet, landscapes. Using her sewing machine, Bridget builds up layers of multi-coloured thread 'drawing' to convey her landscape art. Bridget's Web Site     Bridget enjoys incorporating traditional quilting components into her landscape and nature art as evidenced in photos below.     Due to various family issues Bridget took a 10 year complete break from her quilting focus and passion. After sharing details of this journey with us Bridget offered us the great advice that it's OK to spend time on your crafts when you find yourself in challenging life situations, so you are better able to give to those who need you. Her passion and energy for her fibre art eventually returned and Bridget has since fully 9mmersed herself in her craft. With renewed energy she is further embracing natural fibres to the point of shearing sheep on her neighbour's farm, washing, carding and felting the wool herself. For practical (time and financial) reasons Bridget now focuses more on smaller pieces which she sews with a 6 inch hoop on a domestic sewing machine. Bridget has expanded her reach into the quilting community by teaching courses, she has her own YouTube channel, and she will be teaching courses at the upcoming Quilt Canada show in Ottawa in June 2019. Bridget will be returning to Arnprior on Saturday December 1st to lead a workshop on "easy peasy" thread painting.  
   PresentationResponse from our guild members to our invitation to provide financial support to our past president Brigid Whitnall and her husband Ken who lost their Dunrobin home in the September tornado was amazing. Mary deVries provided a very impressive money tree to which members secretly attached cash and gift cards in the far corner of the kitchen prior to the meeting. Brigid was surprised, pleased, and a bit overwhelmed when we presented it to her after she briefly spoke to us about their experience. Read Bridget's story in her own words in our October 2018 newsletter. Thank you to our guild members for your generosity.!  From left: Brigid Whitnall, Mary deVries, and president Donna Sheaves DrawsOur meeting wrapped up with our usual draws and some happy winners!
Block of the month - 30 blocks: Julie Carroll Guess the number of pages in the library book: Lori Bottriell 50-50 draw for $57: Chris Gordon Gift Basket - Suzanne deJoode Door Prizes - Brenda Greely, Mary DeVries, Sue Hodgins, Marilyn Erskine, Joanna Vlaming What a delightful welcome back to our guild meetings we enjoyed in September after a summer long break. In addition to hearing about this year's challenges, workshops, and retreats, we were delighted to see our fellow members' quilt projects in Show-and-Tell, and the first Block-of-the-Month. Guest Judi MillerThe meeting kicked off with our guest speaker, local textile artisit Judi Miller. An analytical organic chemist at the Canadian Conservation Institute, Judi specializes in natural landscape art pieces. Inspired as a child by her mom's friend's leading edge embroidered tree picture, Judi exhibits her artistic expression in free motion machine embroidery.
Judi works often from her own photographs, often taken on her extensive travels including Great Britain and Italy. She finds inspiration wherever she travels, and in local landscapes.    Judi likes using Kona cotton, or other fabric background, sometimes painted, and a large stash of amazing Italian linen that she inherited. She uses EQ Printables to print a photo onto her fabric and then quilts over it. She uses 3 different weights of cotton thread, which can be pressed. Judi uses an 8 inch embroidery hoop, an embroidery needle. Her techniques can be used on a domestic sewing machine by dropping the feed dogs and using a darning foot. She uses a straight stitch on grasses which are frequently featured in her pieces, and she also uses a zig zag stitch. Her pieces are often 10 inch by 4 inch and are framed under glass so she doesn't have to cut off the thread ends! Judi often produces a series of pieces, including a series of 12 from scenes in Old Chelsea. This is efficient since she uses the same colours. Judi takes enjoyment from fostering many connections is local and international art communities, with photographers, painters, ceramic artists and other textile artists. She has particularly fond memories of a 3 week self-directed residency in Wales. Judi enjoys meeting people and she participates in many shows which she advertises on Facebook. She connects to the wider community through Instagram and Pinterest. Read and see more about Judi Miller's work and her upcoming shows on her web site. ActivitiesMary deVries and her team kicked off this year's activities, many of which are trageted for our upcoming quilt show in April 2019. Read more on the Activities page. All guild members are encouraged to show your work at our show, which is an important source of income to fund our charity work, and our other guild activities. At Show and Tell we saw 6 pieces constructed from blocks won from last year's Block-of-the-Month program. To motivate the winners to complete a project using the blocks, a draw was held for a gift bag. The lucky winner was Barb deVries. Photos of the 6 quilts Thank you to of the participants: Liz Gray, Betty Rehbein, Emma Russell, Mary deVries, Joanna Vlaming.
Our meeting wrapped up with our usual draws and some happy winners!
Guess the number of pages in the library book: Amanda Vajda 50-50 draw: Karen Maheral Gift Basket - Suzanne deJoode Door Prizes - Barb Hare, Joan Miller, Liz Carroll We welcomed 4 new members to our guild, for a total of 76 registered members. Attendance was 52 guild members and one guest.
  The challenges this year were:
Members voted for the winner of each challenge. And the winners are.... Recycled Denim Challenge, from left 1st Mary DeVries 2nd Emma Russell 3rd Patti Moore  Container Challenge, from left 1st Chris Gordon 2nd Julie Carroll 3rd Vickie MacNabb  President's Challenge, from left 1st Rennie Hickey 2nd Vickie MacNabb 3rd Mary DeVries  It's been a great guild year - have a wonderful summer, happy quilting (hopefully on projects that will be on display at our April 2019 quilt show), and we look forward to seeing you in September. A lot was jam packed into this meeting! It started with the presentation of the quilt that we made for the Arnprior Regional Health Foundation’s auction at the imminent annual "Knight in the Maritimes" dinner to raise money for equipment purchases for the Arnprior & District Memorial Hospital. Guild members Brigit Whitnall and Gwen Pennings are pictured with the quilt and the ARH Foundation's Christine Waite (right.)   We also saw the completed quilt that will be raffled off at our upcoming 2019 quilt show. Many of us worked on the whimsical town blocks at a Sew Day in November and another in January. The top was then completed by Mary DeVries and Rennie Hickey (who also designed it), and it was quilted by Shirley Cavanagh. It is stunning!  Many Threads Bind us Together ... Community This was the target date for completing the tops of the mystery quilts that we've been working on since the fall and what a treat it was to see 17 beautiful tops of the All About Town row quilt. And at least one quilt was completed.  For more photos of these awesome quilts see the Mystery Quilt Tops blog post. The library book and magazine sale was a huge hit. In addition to materials from our own library, there were a large number of books and magazines donated to us by local resident Joanne Mitchell from her late mother-in-law Isabel Johnston's extensive collections. Read more about Isabel, an accomplished quilter and founding member of the Ottawa Valley Quilt Guild in our May 2018 Newsletter.   ,The main activity of the evening was the second of our hands on learning activity nights where we learned hand sewing techniques for embellishing our quilts. As at the February meeting, 4 techniques were offered - wool applique, 3D pinwheels, hand stitches for embellishing crazy patch quilts, and hexagons, and we learned the 2 that we didn't learn previously, providing ample time to learn each new technique.    |
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