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Guild members were targeting completion of their mystery quilt tops for our May meeting 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.  Quilters received 4 sets of instructions, each for one or 2 rows, with the final set revealing the overall layout, and instructions for sashing and the decorative pieced borders. Fabric choices were made by each quilter. The next step is to complete our quilts in time to display them at our quilt show in 2019. And that includes any quilt tops which were still works in progress in May! Here are some close up photos of the quilt tops.      Sadly our guild has lost a longtime quilter and guild member Edna Snyder who passed away in December at the age of 90. Obituary Edna and her daughter Marilyn Erskine have been members of our guild since the guild's founding, with her daughter Joyce Murray (our guild treasurer) joining later. Her daughter Jackie has been quilting for many years, and her youngest daughter Lori has just started quilting. Edna was recognized as our Quilter of Distinction at our 2017 quilt show, and she participated in our recent Sew Day in November along with her daughters Joyce Murray and Marilyn Erskine, both members of our guild.  Quilt Show 2017  Left to Right: Marilyn, Edna, Joyce, Betty at Sew Day, November 2017 Joyce and Marilyn have kindly shared some memories of their mom and her passion for quilting. I remember when Mum started quilting. We didn’t call it quilting then, but just sewing, as she made blankets from old wool coats to keep us warm. Wish I had some of those now. She was always a sewer and would enter shirts, PJs, and dresses in the local (Carberry) fair, and usually win the prizes. My brothers always had matching shirts and PJs, which would be passed on to younger siblings. They never seemed to wear out. It was much later when times became easier and time more available that she started quilting. She was very proud of her hand quilting and for many years it wasn’t a quilt if it wasn’t hand quilted. No wonder it took me so long to take up quilting myself. I knew I would never hand quilt. My daughter Kelly is also a quilter with amazing talent for colour choice and fine work. Mother was proud to have a granddaughter involved in the ‘cult’. -- Joyce Murray For as long as I can remember Mom was a sewer and a quilter, starting out more from necessity than anything else. Cutting out squares from old wool suits, sewing them together, backing this with flannel was the beginning of her love to sew. She grew up during the war years where everything had a use. Clothes were repurposed into our new clothes. I remember a blue pinafore dress made for me which won first prize at the local fair. This was a big deal in the 50's. Mom's Singer Featherweight was always running. Clothes for seven children, home accessories and Christmas gifts. One gift for Christmas that I still have is a reversible red corduroy/black felt skating outfit. (Wish I could still fit that.) So more formal quilting was a natural progression to her love of sewing. After our father died in 1983, she moved back to Arnprior, joined Emmanuel Anglican Church to sing and the Arnprior Quilt Guild to sew. The quilts began to come, fast and furious. In the following years she made no less than sixty full size quilts, many wall hangings and dozens of baby quilts. Her favourites were the most colourful. Every child (7), grandchild (20), and great-grandchild (16), received a piece of her work. Many more quilts for “Quilts of Valour”, women’s shelter, and little preemie quilts for the babies in the neo-natal unit at the Civic Campus of the Ottawa Hospital were sewn. Always busy, criticizing herself if she didn’t have a project on the go. Like all quilters her home was full of material, unfinished patterns and accessories. She used that Singer Featherweight as her main machine until she died. The more modern Husqvarna never did work properly!
The greatest gift our mother gave me was this love of sewing. At ten years of age I received my first sewing machine. She taught me how to copy a pattern and we would sew together at the large kitchen table, she with her Singer and I with my manual machine. By twelve I was allowed to use her Singer. So with Mom's passing, there’s many unfinished projects for us to finish for her. All that material was split up between four daughters and charities. Have we got our work cut out for us! Mom was a true Worker Bee, quietly doing what needed to be done, never expecting anything in return. She loved going out, anywhere, but certainly mostly to material shops. Mom surprised a daughter of mine with her own Singer Featherweight and was quite anxious to know how she liked it. Now there’s another sewer/future quilter in our midst and so the tradition continues. -- Marilyn Erskine  Edna and her daughter Lori at our guild's 2017 quilt show Edna's four daughters surprised her with this beautiful family memory quilt for her 90th birthday in April 2017. This gift of love was pieced by Marilyn and Joyce, quilted by Jackie, and Lori helped with the binding.  Family quilt Grandson David Snyder's quilt always hangs in his living room in Australia to remember his grandmother Edna.  David Snyder's quilt in Australia 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    Congratulations to our guild members, Mary deVries and Brenda Payer who have achieved tremendous success and recognition with their prize winning quilts. Well done! Mary deVries' "Something from Nothing" star quilt received Grand Champion at the Renfrew and Cobden fairs.  And Mary's "Granny's Stars" quilt received Reserved Grand Champion at the Renfrew Fair. Congratulations Mary!  Brenda Payer has had a very successful year with multiple awards. Her applique quilt was awarded Grand Champion at Carp Fair in September.   Brenda entered Northcott's 2 challenges in 2017. Her entry in the quilt of valour challenge placed second. This challenge was on display at Quilt Canada and the show visitors voted, This quilt will be donated to a veteran,  Brenda also entered Northcott's Trans Canada Block Party Challenge and was one of 13 finalists in the open voting on the internet.  And Brenda won Viewer's Choice at Quilt Canada for her entry in a modern quilt challenge. Congratulations Brenda!  Congratulations to our guild member Rennie Hickey for her prize winning quilt "Refuge" at Quilt Canada, the Canadian Quilters' Association (CQA) national juried show in Toronto, June 14-17. "My garden is my refuge for 3 months of the year and I often feel inspired by it for my creative endeavors! I wanted to capture how sunlight brings my garden to life and so this quilt came to be. I used raw edge applique, thread painting, and Inktense pencils in the making of this quilt." -- Rennie Hickey  Photo by Brenda Payer  Refuge by Rennie Hickey  Photo by Sarah Rodger Rennie's "Album" quilt was entered in the TrendTex Challenge where the theme was "Stitching A Canadian Memory" .  Album by Rennie Hickey Best of Show was won by Colette Dumont of Saint-Romain, QCwith her beautiful "Fleur de Glace".  Fleur de Glace by Colette Dumont   And more photos provided by Brigid. Click on an image to view the entire photo. Our Quilting in the Valley 2017 featured over 340 quilted items made by members of our guild, the memorable Canada 150 exhibit of unique quilts made by eastern Ontario quilt guilds, door prizes, vendor mall, tea room, and our "Quilter of Distinction", Edna Snyder who recently celebrated her 90th birthday! To visitors to our show, thank you for coming and we hope that you enjoyed your visit. And to our guild members who provided quilts for the show, volunteered over the weekend, or on the organizing committee, all your contributions were truly appreciated. Show visitors voted for Viewer's Choice, Best Baby Quilt, and Best Other Quilted item. Prize winners are pictured below  Rennie Hickey's "Summer Beauty" double bed quilt was voted "Viewer's Choice"  Shirley Cavanagh's "Baby Blessings" quilt, made for her daughter, was voted "Best Baby Quilt"  Mary DeVries' "Lone Pine" framed wall hanging was voted "Best Other Item"  The Raffle Quilt was won by Pam Gavinski of Braeside Congratulations to Brenda Payer, a longtime member of our guild, and quilter extraordinaire for winning first place for handquilting at the International Plowing Match Quilt Show in Harriston, ON this summer. Here's Brenda and her beautiful quilt. This is awesome and we are so proud of you Brenda.   Today we launch our new web site! It introduces a new look, information about our upcoming 2016-2017 Quilt Guild programs and activities, and lots of information about our guild and our quilts.
The organization of the information is a little different - I invite you to take some time to explore the site. Photos from our 2015-2016 Show-and-Tell are now available - see ACTIVITIES. A new feature is this BLOG. Watch this space for breaking information, including posts with photos from our guest presentations at our meetings. We'll also post the President's monthly messages on the blog so they will always be available for your future reference. The September 2016 newsletter is now available - you can also access it from the top right of the HOME page or under RESOURCES. The archived newsletters have not been completely moved over to this new site - this will be added over the coming weeks and accessible under RESOURCES. We'll be adding more bling to the site now that we have the basic information here. Watch for more visual pizzazz unfolding over the next little while. And we would love your feedback on this new site. Please contact us by email arnpriorquilters@gmail.com - you can even write your message within the web site on the CONTACT page. Or let us know at our meetings. And if you notice any malfunctions - broken links - spelling errors, or anything else, please do let us know so they can be corrected. Now that we've launched the site, we're ready to add more information. We welcome your ideas for additional content. Enjoy! -- Janet Brownlee, Communications |
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