Lethbridge Quilt Canada 2015 Needs You!

Help Wanted:

As with every Quilt Canada, a request comes out for members and guilds and everyone to make a "gift" that will be given out at the Saturday night dinner/banquet.



This year the LOC from Lethbridge has chosen a tablet bag. Directions for this bag are on the CQA/ACC website.



 


One of our CQA/ACC Regional Reps (Marvella Smith from Northern Ontario) has already been busy - Here is a collection of tablet bags that she has made and will send on to Pjam Swen, of Lethbridge, AB in time for the show.


 



Don't these look great!
Get your friends or guilds together to spend a fun day making these neat bags.

Send completed bags before March 31, 2015 to:
Pjam Swen,
#1507 22 Ave.,
Coaldale, AB T1M 1E4  

Best Friends Forever (BFF) - Member Challenge

Another member challenge, called Best Friends Forever (or BFF) is underway. We'd like to see how you interpret this theme in quilt form. Who or maybe what are your "Best Friends". What kind of things do you do/share together? Show us your quilts depicting your best friend(s).
PS this challenge is open to individual and professional members of CQA/ACC.


  Your amazing quilt entries will get published on our blog or in The Canadian Quilter magazine and you might win a fabulous prize too. Thanks to our great sponsor - Sue Aylseworh of Quilting Confections of Windsor, ON.
Our judge will select a first, second and third prize. 
**** (see below for prizes)
Deadline to receive quilt picture(s): December 5, 2014.

 How to Enter:
Send photos of your quilt, any size and any shape, based on the theme “Best Friends Forever”. It must be quilted and bound or closed along the edges. You can use any embellishments. 
Take high resolution (1 MB) digital pictures of your quilt. (see Tips below)
You should take 2 pictures - one of your quilt and one of a close up of a small area. Then email them to: diratlarge@canadianquilter.com along with your CQA/ACC membership number, name, email address, a brief description of your quilt, and any copyright information.


  


 By entering your quilt(s), you are giving CQA/ACC permission to use your entry. This includes archival records for CQA/ACC, all aspects of CQA/ACC online social media, The Canadian Quilter magazine and/or other publications and advertisements created by CQA/ACC. The image will not be shared beyond these areas unless permission is requested of CQA/ACC and it is shown that the requester intends to use the image to promote CQA/ACC.

Tips on Photographing:
Use a well lit area. Have no background distractions. Take a high resolution photo of at least 1 MB jpeg.  Ensure that no part of the quilt is cut off in the picture. Hang your quilt on a wall to take this photo (for best results). Also include a close up of a small area.

Round Quilt Kit

Prizes:


1st:    Kit for a quilt top called Circle 'Round, including the pattern and all fabrics. 

 

Easy Peasy Strip Quilt Kit

Brick Kit

2nd:   Kit for a strip quilt called Easy Peasy Strip Quilt. It includes die cut strips in cheerful colours, background fabric and instructions. 





3rd:    Kit for a small quilt top, about 30" square called Brick. The kit includes beautiful batiks and binding.
   

 

It's Time for Colour - Our Tour

It’s Time for Colour!   

We are pleased to present a Gallery to showcase the quilts in our first-ever travelling quilt show called It’s Time for Colour!   The quilts will crisscross Canada, travelling to most provinces and the Northwest Territories from January 2015 until May 2015.

The quilts are being assembled in Victoria, BC for the cross-country tours. While waiting for all the quilts to arrive, a few pre-tour viewings have been arranged on Vancouver Island.

The travelling quilts were made and donated by CQA/ACC members who have won awards at the National Juried Show within the last three years. Without their generosity – and creativity - we would not be able to host this event.
 
 


In the Gallery you can view the travelling quilts, meet the quilters and see if a quilt is still for sale.  You will also find information on how to purchase the quilts and greeting cards. Touring schedule will be available soon as more details become firm.

Proceeds from the sale of the quilts and greeting cards will be donated to The Children’s Wish Foundation of Canada at Quilt Canada 2015 in Lethbridge.  We plan to grant the wishes for several children with life-threatening illnesses.


You can get to the Gallery anytime if you go directly to our blog and press the tab "It's Time For Colour - Gallery" in the pink bar.

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Meet the Teachers 1

I have elementary school aged children at home, and I know every fall, when school begins again, they are anxious about who their teacher will be.  Meeting the teachers is something they are eager to do.  We are in October now, so they are past that stage for this year.
But we haven’t met our Quilt Canada teachers for the June show yet!  There are 6 highly skilled teachers on the line-up this year.  I’ll start with the first three today.

Weeks Ringle

Our first teacher for this week is Weeks Ringle.  Many of you will probably already know who she is, but I’ll give you a brief bio.  Weeks Ringle, along with her husband Bill Kerr, have been on the quilting scene for quite some time.  She and her husband founded the Modern Quilt Studio in Oak Park, Illinois.  Their studio launched the first ever magazine dedicated exclusively to modern quilting, Modern Quilts Illustrated, in 2011.  They have written numerous books together and lecture and teach throughout the USA, Canada, and internationally. Weeks blogs at Craft Nectar.  She will be teaching two one-day classes and will also be lecturing on Friday evening.  

Joanne Flamand

Up next is Joanne Flamand, a long-arm quilter.  Like many of us, she started sewing clothes and curtains before she made the transition to the wonderful world of quilting.  Her friends and family were the first recipients of her new found craft.  She made the upgrade from her trusty Pfaff to an APQS Millennium and hasn’t looked back!  We can all be extremely envious of the fact that she has studied with some amazing quilting instructors, namely Deloa Jones, Claudia Pfiell, Karen McTavish, Sue Patton, Matt Sparrow, and Kim Caskey.  I’m sure anyone who takes her class will benefit from the expertise she has learned from them.  Joanne has a studio, Sparrow Studioz, in Edmonton, Alberta.

Margie Davidson

Last for today, but certainly not least, Margie Davidson, also based in Edmonton, is a quilt artist and surface designer.  She has a Bachelor of Education and many art courses under her belt and quilters are some of her favourite students.  She loves to encourage individual creativity in her classes and uses colour theory and design principles to help that along.  Margie is a certified CQA/ACC Quilt Judge and in 2013, she had the distinction of receiving the Teacher of the Year award from CQA/ACC. 
Shena Boes
LOC

Lollygagging through Ontario

Well our journey has started.
I tried to leave St. Catharines (home of QC2014), but couldn’t do that before I visited Niagara Heritage Quilters’ Guild for their first meeting of the year.  Noshi Gulati was their speaker for the evening - what an amazing woman - she makes her own patterns using math calculations and pictures, uses her scissors (not a rotary cutter) to cut her fabric and does most of her work by hand.

I took another look at Niagara Falls before starting out on the road. While I was in the Falls, I visited Rainbow Country Quilters and helped to measure the inches of their Show & Tell quilts.Then another stop at Kindred Spirits Quilt Co. to thank Michelle for sponsoring our Member Challenge - The Dog Days of Summer, to tell her about the entries that I had received so far and to tell her about the new challenge (coming soon on this blog).

Down the QEW highway, I headed for Toronto and then up the 400 highway towards Sudbury - my first destination stop. Or at least that’s what I had planned.      
 

Since I’m “lollygagging”, I decided to stop off at the member guild, Durham Trillium Quilters’ Guild (Oshawa), for a quick visit and then onto Quilting Corners Guild in Alliston. I missed their first meeting on the 1st Tuesday of September, but they told me all about it. Along with the usual speaker, BOMs, challenges and, of course, Show & Tell (and measuring inches), their Community Outreach were making comfort quilts for My Sisters' Place, a local women and children’s shelter and pillowcases for Mathew’s House, a local hospice.

Every day I'm getting more inches, but I need quite a few more to get to Sudbury. Hopefully, with the cooler weather, our quilters will get back to sewing and bringing in their Show & Tell to measure inches.

Stay tuned for next month's lollygag through northern Ontario visiting a few more guilds and shops.