September 2019 Meeting Recap- Carol Ann Graham

We had a pretty packed meeting in September--it's that amazing time when we have to review the by-laws of the guild, and hold elections for next year's executive!

By-laws and Election Call

Karen reviewed the proposed by-law changes, and a Policy Paper on promotion and support on the guild's social media platforms.

Once that was done, Adrienne made the call for elections. At the time of the meeting, all five of the executive positions were open for the 2020 year. Each of the current position holders got up and gave a brief description of their duties, and took any questions.

Block Lotto

Becky demonstrated the last block lotto of the year, which is a shorter one, and only ran for a month. Blue and White crosses, scrappy and using mid-blue range fabrics-fun!

Charity Quilt Update

All the blocks were due in this month, and they look great! We had a brief discussion about the full arrangement of the blocks, and Karen took them off to assemble them into a completed top! Thanks to everyone who contributed blocks, and really got in the spirit of it!

Carol Ann Graham- Slow Sewing

We had a great talk from Carol Ann Graham, although she was very soft spoken, so I was on the edge of my seat to hear all the great things she had to say! She started off by telling us about how she got started in quilting, hand sewing on the TTC as she carried out her daily commute. To this day, she's still all about the hand quilting--and it show! The quality of her stitching is amazing!

She showed us a selection of her quilts, which was a lot of fun, and then moved on to talking about why she loves to hand sew, and some of the tools she finds really useful. Carol Ann said that she enjoys every aspect of the process for each of the projects that she starts, and especially enjoys the quiet, portable nature of the sewing, and that it encourages technical excellence, as well as the way that it encourages a different relationship to fabric consumption. This really echoed with me, as I also love to do hand sewing (although I still love my sewing machine!!), especially the fabric consumption aspect, since I am trying really hard to sew with what I have.

In terms of tools, Carol Ann shared some of her favourite things.

Thread: 100% cotton, 35 weight, sashiko threads/needles, pearl cotton (quilting weight threads)

Marking: pencils, pins (marking from the back)

Other: she likes to use beeswax and thread conditioner which prevents bearding or shredding on the threads, and uses a frame for quilting, favouring a cube snap frame, although there are a number of good quality quilting frames available.

She also had some interesting suggestions for recent resources:

Slow-Stitch: Mindful and Cotemplative Textile Art by Claire Wellesley-Smith

Making magazine

Show and Share

We had a fair bumper crop of show and share this month! I couldn't quite find the sheets (yes, I am being pretty bad with this lately! ), so hopefully I have got the attributions correct! If there isn't one, it's because I couldn't figure out what the quilt was called, and who it was from (so, feel free to let me know, and I will update the blog!!)

Christina showed us this finished quilt from her pattern "Love me Not" (which was a raffle prize this month-the pattern, not the quilt :):

Adrienne Showed us this fab baby quilt that she finished (her own design!):

Shannon showed us this beautiful Feathers Quilt that she finished:

Laura showed us this cool quilt that she made assisted by Pre-Quilt:

Xandra showed us this double sided quilt (both sides!):

Brandon, one of our new members showed us this really graphic flying geese quilt (apparently this is his current "obsession", so I think we might be seeing more of these from him!).

Peter showed one of the quilts that he had hanging in his exhibition at Quilts at the Creek, Night Sky. You can't really tell from the picture, but the quilting (as ever!) is incredibly dense in a number of different colours, and brings a cool extra dimension to the finished quilt!