August end-of-Summer out-of-town Meeting

The summer has been a bit slow, both on this blog (ahem, sorry about that) and at the guild in general. Many people had vacations, summer plans, prior commitments etc that kept them from our monthly meetings. So attendance was a little low. Which is neither here nor there, merely a fact as the short, precious summer rushes by us. But we wanted to wring one last little bit of sun-filled goodness out of the final weekend before school starts and a different kind of business and routine settles upon us. And so, we had our last meeting of the summer in a bit of a different location.

One of our guild members invited us to visit her "up North", though really, it was just an hour outside of the city. Nature obliged us with a beautiful day of spectacular Summer weather. Hot and sunny and just about perfect. 

We started with a little lunch.

I meant to take pictures of all the lovely food that people brought, but was so excited to be eating that I forgot all about my camera and by the time I pulled it out all that was left was corn cobs and chicken bones! 

But I managed to get some pictures of dessert. A Lime Tart with a Graham Cracker and Ground Almond Crust topped with Meringue. (I used the recipe that can be found here. It was very easy)

And delicious!

After the eating, and a LOT of talking, we decided to get around to one of the regular meeting features: show-and-tell. Doris Lovadina-Lee showed us this lovely little wall-hanging. Its quite small; 12" x 16", and has been made by Doris for the Canadian Quilter's Association's themed show: It's Time for Colour. The 40 pieces in the show, all made by award winning quilters will travel across Canada from January 2015 to May 2015 and end up in Lethbridge Alberta in June 2015 for Quilt Canada. Along the way they will be shown in Ontario, B.C., Manitoba, the Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia and P.E.I. with more information on exact show locations to be announced later on the Canadian Quilt Association blog. The quilts in the show will all be available for sale at $200 each (plus tax). All proceeds from the show will be donated to the Children's Wish Foundation of Canada.

This is a beautiful piece with a little hidden surprise under the leaf. A little fabric Pupa! The piece is entitled "Chrysalis Awakening".

              

Andrea Vander Kooij, our host for the day, finished this mini quilt top. The other guild members suggested that she should make a dress out of it. 

Doris had some other exciting news. See this book? Look inside...

She is a contributor to it! Congrats Doris!

Once business was done, there was other relaxing fun to get to.Or perhaps the not-so-relaxing fun of riding the zip line across the pond, which both Rebecca and Sabrina were both brave enough to try. 

 But for the non dare devils among us, there was always drinks on the dock. 

I feel like this picture sums up the day. The sun sparkling on the water, a glass of wine, and a quilt. The quilt was made by Andrea, out of random reclaimed home-decor weight sample scraps. It was made about three years ago, but was brought to this meeting for the sole purpose of laying on a dock in the sunshine and risking both dirty feet and wine spills. It was a baby quilt at one time, so it was up the the challenge. 

We never ran out of things to talk about. 

And after a lovely day, we walked back up the lane-way to our cars, where most of us braved the traffic to drive back to the city. We decided that this should be an annual event, and maybe even be expanded to being a quilting retreat weekend. We'll keep you posted on potential dates for that next year. And perhaps with the arrival of fall and the return to our regular routines that we'll see lots of our members at next Month's meeting at the Workroom on September 28th.