The November meetings were separated by almost a week due to the calendar but were both well attended as members were keen to hear our first guest speaker since before the COVID pandemic. Suzanne Paquette spoke to us about her journey into creating modern memory quilts and showed examples of her work, many retrieved from the families who commissioned them.

Suzanne first explained how she embarked upon creating these memorable quilts after a career in hat making and costume design. After working for Cirque du Soleil in the merchandising department, creating souvenirs for audience members, she heard about memory quilts and was hooked. With little experience in quilting, she made her first memory quilt with her husband’s and son’s clothing.

These quilts are all about “capturing meaningful moments”, emotion and storytelling. The fabrics she uses are steeped in memories and she spoke about the three most common reasons that people wish to create a memory quilt, joy, grief and family memories. Because so much depends on the owners reaction to the finished quilt, Suzanne spends a lot of time getting to know about the family and the story behind the desire for the quilt. She aims to put herself in the shoes of those asking for the quilt, to look at the fabrics chosen and to let that dictate the design of the quilt.

As you can imagine this can take a lot of time. Suzanne estimates that each quilt will take her between 30 to 60 hours depending on the size, design and number of fabrics included. She recommends documenting and photographing every stage of the process, including each piece of clothing before cutting. The fabric also has to be prepared by washing, pressing and cutting. It may need stabilizing with starch or a backing.

Her quilts are modern (something we learned about last month) and have many of the signature characteristics such as asymmetry, negative space, improvisational piecing and bold colours.

The main takeaways of her highly engaging presentation about creating these quilts were that empathy is the heart of design, the materials provided must come first and dictate the feel of the finished quilt and that time spent preparing the materials will save time and effort in the end. Finally she gave us some tips on how some of the sample clothing items brought by members could be prepared and used in a quilt. Many of us took the chance to buy our own signed copy of her book to provide lots of happy reading (and sewing) for the dark evenings ahead.

After the coffee break, the business part of the meeting covered news about the spring show, the DDO fundraising stall and the great success of the cross body bag workshop. The finished purses were shown in show and tell. There was no time for icebreakers and we were reminded that the December meeting will include an ornament exchange and a finger food party. Wear your holiday finery and watch out for details in the newsletter.

Both of the October meetings started with a program presentation on Modern Quilting presented by Nicole and Caitlyn. This was followed by the Quilty Icebreakers (more on that later), a very brief business catch up and show and tell. Julie also presented the results and prizes for the 2022-23 UFO challenge.

Diving straight into the program section we had a thorough rundown of the history of the modern quilt movement and the quilt styles deemed to be its precursors. Members can find a link to the PowerPoint presented at the meeting on the program page of this website, including the references and details of the books mentioned. It seems that although the Modern Quilt Guild was founded in 2009, quilts in this style have been around since the 1800s. Several elements came together to make this type of quilt more popular in recent years among these are the increased interest in design, the availability of digital camera technology, social media and the changes in the fabric industry.

So what makes a quilt modern? It seems there are certain characteristics which define a modern quilt although not all of them need to be present in a single quilt. The presentation highlighted each of these giving examples drawn from our own guild photo archive and using the quilts of more than 50 of our members. What a rich source of inspiration we have at our fingertips. Thanks to both Nicole and Mélanie for doing this research and spending long hours searching in the archives.

At the end, the consensus seemed to be that we don’t need to label ourselves as traditional or modern, probably we are all influenced by this movement to some degree. Looking at the quilts presented at the meeting, members didn’t always agree on their classification. In the end, isn’t it all about self expression and not labelling, about trying new things and facing new challenges. After all our theme this year is “Curiouser and curiouser”

Quilty icebreakers this month asked about seam rippers. A very necessary item of equipment for some of us. Many people had a couple of these and many had more than 10. However at the day meeting Richard and Lorraine got the title of the most seam rippers with “at least 50” and Brenda had the most exclusive. A beautiful hand made seam ripper using the handle of a knife and inscribed with her name. The other icebreakers were questions on how many times you would pull out and resew a seam. Many said 3 times but others said until the fabric was no good any more.

The last item on the agenda, after quickly dealing with guild business and pickle jar winners was Julie and the UFO challenge. She showed the final submissions and then announced the winners. All of the participants got a prize and a rosette with Annette taking the grand prize. Well done everyone. Time for a break from UFOs maybe, at least until next year?

PS Happy Thanksgiving everyone 🦃

September means a new year of quilting begins and everyone is happy to be back in person at Centennial Hall. The weather is hot and steamy and the mood is buoyant as old friends meet each other at the evening and daytime meetings at Centennial Hall.

It certainly looks like its going to be a busy year. Our theme this year is “Curiouser and curiouser”, inspired by Alice in Wonderland, and the exciting new program aims to broaden our horizons. We have been instructed to “look outside of the box” and discover new techniques and new ways of looking at old favourites.

The meeting included an overview of the new look website as well as details of the upcoming challenges retreats and workshops. Several members displayed their projects completed during the past year and pictures of these are available in the photo section of the website. Also the “Pickle Jar” made a welcome reappearance and several members went home with some swag! Delicious treats were enjoyed by all (remember your mug for future meetings) and some took the opportunity to borrow library books or browse through magazines and some archival photos.

In addition to all of this activity, we were introduced to “Quilty Icebreakers”. These were a lot of fun as many admitted to having collections of quilting related items. The categories were irons, scissors and sewing machines and it seems you can never have too many of any of these. The winners confessed to having 11 irons, 42 pairs of scissors (strictly for quilting) and 14 sewing machines of various ages and types. Wow! Thank you for sharing these pictures of your collections.