WORKSHOPS One of the benefits of membership is workshops where we learn new techniques and have fun! Margaret Brown is our new Workshop co-odinator! Feel free to contact her if you have any ideas for classes and workshops
Due to the Corona Virus, we have had to cancel previous workshops. Workshops and Groups will resume when we are safe again to meet as a group! Keep safe!
APPLIQUE CLUB Applique Club meets the 1st Wednesday of every month from September through and including June upstairs at Rome's. We give instruction in the various methods of applique and provide challenges to the members to help reinforce their new skills. We bring instructors in to showcase their expertise and encourage our ongoing members to share their knowledge with quick demos. We enjoy the company of visiting quilters who drop by to see what we are up to. Feel free to check us out!
COMFORT QUILTS Comfort Quilts is a subgroup of our approximate 125 member quilt guild. The quilts we make are donated to various organizations and charities within the city. Individuals on a journey through a life threatening illness may also receive a quilt. This important charity work is allotted a yearly budget from the guild to purchase supplies, our largest expense being the batting. The fabric we use to make the quilts is almost all donated to our group from guild members and the public. "Upstairs at Romes" generously donates their large working space on a monthly basis so we can meet as a group to work on these quilts. We meet there the second Wednesday of each month from 10am until 3pm, September to June. As a thank you to Romes we all purchase our lunches within the store. For new and returning members who are looking for a place to meet other quilters in a more intimate setting, our group may be just what you're looking for. The ladies who come are quilters at all levels, and more often than not most of us learn something new every time. We especially invite beginner quilters to join us. If you have the time and want to do some charity sewing we would love for you to join us!
DOG BEDS Twice a year we gather up the scraps that have been donated make dog/cat beds for local shelters and veterinarian offices. We sew, sort, stuff and sew these bags then drive off and deliver them to the organizations who can use them! Our last sew day we made 150 beds! We meet upstairs at Rome’s on the day designated by Nadene House. Keep an eye out for the next date!
FIBRE ARTS GROUP This is our sixth year of exploring and experimenting. Each month is a different theme and a technique on which to work. We try to complete at least a small art quilt using these techniques. We meet monthly and begin by showing our last month’s efforts over morning coffee and then start to play with the new idea or technique. Ideas come from different sources. A member might read about a technique, or see a demo or volunteer to share something she has tried. We have felted wool, painted and shrunk Tyvek, explored zentangles and confetti techniques, coloured on fabric, manipulated, foiled, sun dyed, chemically dyed and shrunk fabric. We work in a lot of places with a variety of supplies. We have crowded around tables to observe each other, sun dyed on a patio, dyed fabric outside in the summer and hung a rainbow on a fence to dry. We even worked in a garage with marbling dyes in kitty litter pans! No matter what the result, we have a great time, share so much with each other, push and inspire each other to move in different directions and often out of our comfort zone. Lunch time is break time... It has become our pattern to plan and discuss our next adventure over a bowl of the host’s yummy homemade soup along with other goodies that are brought to the gathering. Extra space, equipment and facilities are often needed for our play days. As a result, our group is capped at seven. Marilyn Maki, Heddys Stevenson, Sharon Robbins, Jeannette Sorokopud, France Fisher, Nancy Sachro, and Jane Turgeon EQ WE DO GROUP Electric Quilt 8 (EQ8) is a computer quilt design program, which enables quilters to design and visualize a quilt or block before making it. It gives options of editing size, experimenting with different fabric colours and quilting designs. Print your own patterns – paper pieced or templates, figure out the yardage needed, add borders ... the list goes on and on. So how can you learn to use this excellent tool? We try to meet monthly a various locations. Each member has EQ8 loaded onto a working laptop. Sometimes we work through a prepared lesson, other times we work through a design challenge a member brings to the group. Beginning and experienced users alike always go home having learned something new. We have been meeting for a few years and we are so grateful to experience Electric Quilt together. As they say, “the devil is in the details” and using EQ monthly helps us to practice using detailed steps and getting the big picture to look just the way we want. This group is open to new members with the program installed on a laptop who would like to learn, experiment and design with EQ. Cathy Norris, Jane Turgeon, Rejeanne Santoro, Sandie Hrycyk, Elizabeth Clendenning, Elizabeth Gray