November Teaching Stations

A major purpose of a guild is to share knowledge that will help all of us be better quilters.  To this end we occasionally have teaching stations and the members rotate between them.

Station #1 was dealing with practicing good physical positioning - ergonomics.

Station #2 taught the basics of making a mitered border.

NEXT MEETING DECEMBER 13th - 6 PM

• Pot Luck Supper - don't forget to bring not only your food item, but also your plate(s) and cutlery.  We want to avoid washing dishes at the church.
• A Christmas craft-making session will follow the meal.
• Bring the pillowcases and any other items you wish to donate to Martha House women's shelter.  Sharon has generously offered to deliver them to the shelter.
• Bring some extra cash.  We will be offering for sale some of the estate items from Christine.
• REMINDER - The Kleenex Box Challenge will be due at the January meeting.

October's meeting

Is this the cutest little quilt, or what?

One of our members (our President, actually) took the BIG prize at the Caledonia Fair with this beauty - hand quilted!

Our guest speaker was Karen from the Quilted Cardinal quilt shop.  She gave us a wonderful trunk show, and brought a ton of items from her shop.

Karen has plenty of classes running, so check out her web site if you want to learn a new technique.

November 8th: we will be running two 'demo' stations - one will teach Mitered Borders and the other will teach Sewing Ergonomics.  The meeting starts at 7 pm.

Season Startup

We made a quilt for the Caledonia Fair. This is a fundraiser for the fair and will be raffled off.

Show & Share in September is always pretty substantial.

Apparently, the members were inside getting their projects finished all summer.

Lots of cozy couches this fall.

Little kennel quilts.  The Quilt Pattern Magazine has taken this on as their (ahem) PET PROJECT.
Link HERE for info.

These are the touchy-feely quilts for people with alzheimers.  They are made for nursing homes, and help people with dementia who need to fidget with something.  Fabrics are very tactile - courderoy, velvet, satin, fleece.

OUTREACH
We invite the members to make pillowcases for women or children which will be collected at the December meeting. These may include an inexpensive gift if you wish.  The plan is to deliver these to Martha House, one of the women's shelters in Hamilton.  They are also in need of linens such as bedding and towels.  Again, if you wish, donations of personal care items are always appreciated.  All collected items will be delivered to the shelter after the December meeting.

The guild will be having two challenges this year.  The first one will be due at the January meeting.

CHALLENGE #1 - The Kleenex Box Challenge
Many kleenex boxes were collected and the members made a selection from the pile.  They will make a quilt based on either the colour scheme of the box, or the theme of the box.  Minimum size the quilt must have a perimeter of at least 144".
Challenge #2 will be introduced later.

PROGRAM:

• October meeting:  the Quilted Cardinal quilt shop will be our guest speaker.  Bring money.  Not that you need any more fabric, ha ha ha.
• November meeting:  two teaching stations - one for Mitered Borders and one for Sewing Ergonomics.
• December meeting:  Christmas pot luck supper.  After supper we'll have a Christmas craft project.  Donations for the women's shelter will be collected, too.

New Season Starts Wednesday Sept. 13th

If you want to see what we're all about please join us Wednesday evening - we start at 7 pm.
Meeting information is located on the right hand sidebar.

NEW:
Fill in the "Follow By Email" slot (over there on the right hand side) if you'd like to be notified when this blog is updated.

the June Challenges & Summer Meetings

So, I missed the June meeting because I was in Toronto at Quilt Canada.  I had my spies taking pics at the meeting!

QUILTS COMPLETED FROM THE PANEL CHALLENGE
We've got 16 quilts made from panels that will be donated to Victim Services.  The plan is to have a representative come to our September meeting to receive the quilts and give us a short talk about what their organization provides to the community.

These are the two WINNERS from the Panel Challenge.

There seems to have been TONS of submissions for the Canada 150 Challenge.

We had four WINNERS for that challenge.

Hah.  Just wait until September, ladies, to see what your CHALLENGE will be for the coming year.

JULY AND AUGUST

We don't have meetings in the summer, but we DO have sewing days on our regular meeting dates.  Click on the Meeting Dates 2017 page (at the top) to see what's happening and when.  Then we'll see everyone back in September for the start of our new season!

May & June

May saw the return of one of our founding members - Margaret Mackenzie.

She came to teach us a thing or two about colour.

She brought about four thousand fat quarters for us to play with.

Then, (horrors!) she made us figure out how to turn our cell phone cameras to Black & White.

We had so much fun.  And hopefully, we learned a little something too.

June 14th will be our season-ending pot luck supper.  The challenges are due and will involve PRIZES.  Bring your own dishes & cutlery to keep the washing up to a minimum.  And food.  Don't forget to bring food.

April's meeting

Our guest speaker in April was Cynthia (with her husband/assistant Bill) from Cherished Pieces Quilt Shop in Tillsonburg.

Cynthia gave us an informative and entertaining demonstration of a couple of rulers, then opened up 'the shop' so we could spend some money. 😃

Coming up on WEDNESDAY MAY 10TH

Join us for Margaret Mackenzie.  Margaret is one of our founding members although she now lives up in the Kawarthas.  We can look forward to a lesson on COLOUR THEORY.
The meeting starts at 7 pm.  See you then!

March Donation Quilt Tops, and Emergency Program Idea

The program plan for our March meeting was to have a sewing bee to stitch up a bunch of donation quilt tops.  The process started back in January when I bribed a guild friend with supper and wine.  She came over and helped me put together kits for quilt tops, using the blocks that have been collected over the years.  Here is one of them laid out on my workroom table.  I took a photo of the layout and enclosed it in the Ziploc baggie with all the 'parts'.

Our guild president squared up all the half-squares and stitched the top together.

We got started on sewing EARLY in the afternoon.  By 5 pm it was apparent that there would be nothing left to do when our meeting started at 7 pm.
The program lady in charge (me!) said a few bad words and searched around pleading for help.  Lots of "sure I'll help you - whatever you need" but no "here's an idea for tonight...."

We started with a show 'n tell of the completed tops.

Three completed tops from the half-squares that were collected during a few years worth of swaps.  There is still ONE MORE that needs another hour of sewing.

A sampler from the 'sample' blocks that are required when someone presents Block of the Month.

Somebody won the Block of the Month but donated the blocks back to the guild.

Some of the members enjoying the impromptu quilt show.

EMERGENCY PROGRAM IDEA
Steal... I mean BORROW a flip chart from the church.  Have the members discuss and doodle ideas for quilting some of the tops.  We had some wonderful ideas and some pretty good doodles.

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APRIL MEETING INFO:
Cynthia and Bill from Cherished Pieces Quilt Shop will be attending with a demo/lesson and product for sale.  Bring cash. 😁

February - pattern link & donation quilt

Last week's meeting was a small trunk show by two members, with demonstrations on how to make a few quilt blocks using either 2 1/2" strips or 5" squares.  Many of the members wanted instructions for the Disappearing 4Patch, so here is a LINK to the video by Missouri Star Quilt Company.  If you prefer a written tutorial, HERE is one by Material Girl Quilts.

Here is a pic of the block from Quiltingboard.com, and some suggestions for rearranging the bits after you've cut the 4patch apart.

Next month on Wednesday March 8th we will be stitching on donation quilts.  There are eight kits all ready to go.  Sewers, cutters, pressers, and quality control will all be required. 😉 This is a great opportunity for anyone who would like to have more exposure to sewing quilt blocks together.

DONATION QUILT

This was a Block of the Month that one of our members won, but had no use for.  The blocks were assembled into a quilt top by a generous member.  Then another generous member volunteered to quilt it, and yet another completed the binding.  This is going to the Quilts of Valour organization.

January goings-on

We were HAND QUILTING.

Well, I should say we were learning.

Three of our members who do a lot of hand quilting were generous enough to bring in the necessary items to teach us how to get started, how to continue on, and how to end off.  As usual, I got wrapped up in what was going on and didn't get proper photos until everyone was packing up.

IN FEBRUARY:
We will be having a small trunk show with lessons and demos on how to use the fabrics we've been swapping over the past couple of years.  Our focus will be Charm Squares and 2.5" strips.

Details:
February 8th

• sewing on your own projects from 9:30 until 5:30 ($5 cost for those who wish to attend)
• dinner catered by the Church Ladies 6 pm.  You must be pre-registered for this, $15 cost.
• meeting 7 pm - 9 pm.  Non-members are quite welcome to attend, we have a $5 visitor fee charged at the door.  You should arrive at least 5 minutes before start time.