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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.    There were 8 ladies in the last of this year’s workshops on Saturday May 11. 12 had signed up but only 8 could make it to the class. Chris Gordon instructed and the ladies spent more than half the day cutting and gluing villages together. This workshop involved a lot of patience and creativity. I think the majority enjoyed learning a new technique, based on the work of Karen Eckmeier. -- Chris Gordon    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
 On Saturday Dec 3rd, 13 keen ladies took a workshop at Island View Suites taught by Bridget O'Flaherty from Perth. The ladies had selected either the chickadee or cardinal as their pattern for the day, and Bridget taught them how to do Easy Peasy Thread painting by Numbers. The finished projects were about 8 inches square. -- Chris Gordon   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 The Big Bag workshop was held on Saturday November 10th. Seven quilters arrived at Glad Tidings Pentecostal Church, where Johanne Vajda instructed us on how to construct a "Big Bag". This bag is excellent to bring small or large quilts to "Show and Tell" or a large amount of stuff to a workshop or retreat. Pockets for either side of the bag were constructed prior to the workshop. Whether you use orphan blocks or make one specifically for the pocket it is interesting to see the workmanship and dedication in the finished product. By the time everyone left, the bags were virtually complete. A good time was had by all and they left feeling accomplished. Johanne provided handles and bottoms for those of us that required them. The variety of fabrics, colours and textures was very wide. Interesting how a bag can look so different depending on the fabric chosen. They all turned out beautifully. Hopefully members will be able to inspect them at our next Show and Tell. -- Johanne Vajda      |
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