Sign up for our VIRTUAL workshop with Karen Bolan on Saturday, March 25 & Sunday, March 26, from 1 to 4 p.m. EDT each day.
Members and non-members welcome. Sign up today using our Google form.
The workshop fee is $70 CAD, plus the Cool as a Cactus PDF pattern purchase.
We’ll complete at least one block and one side panel of Karen’s Cool as a Cactus pattern in class. Registrants will get a link to a video about selecting fabrics for this beautiful quilt.
There has been a change and Berene Campbell of Happy Sew Lucky will be speaking to us on March 13. If you recognise that name, it is because Berene was behind the Mini Mod block swap we did a couple years ago!
Berene is a modern quilt designer, speaker and community project instigator. (Here is a great article about Berene’s community projects.) Her quilting and sewing patterns feature inspiring messages of positivity and hope, with the goal of making the world a kinder and more peaceful place. A “collective energy” enthusiast, Berene uses quilting to corral fellow creatives to work together for change. These projects include collaborative community installations, fundraisers for social justice causes, and the Handmade Collective Awards – a bursary fund set up for the maker community to fund awards for BIPOC and 2SLGBTQ+ students. In her talk Berene encourages leaning into discomfort and tells the story of how her work has evolved by embracing the emotional ride that the past few years have been for us all.
To quote Berene from her website:
“Quilts hold the spirit of their makers, and the secrets of their thoughts pondered while stitching. They are beautiful treasures that provide us with warmth & comfort, but they can do more for us if we so choose. Quilts can be posters for our ideas, messengers of our messages, and uniters of our communities. They hold great power.”
You can learn more about Berene on her blog, Instagram and YouTube! See you at 7 pm on Monday, March 13th. New members may join for the rest of the year (through June) for only $17.50.
Please remember you can send your Show and Tell photos anytime to TwilightSimcoe@gmail.com
We are looking forward to hearing from Maria Shell at our February meeting. Maria will be sharing her presentation, Patchwork to Artwork: Journey of an Alaskan Quiltmaker.
If you’d like to join us but aren’t a member (yet), you can join us for the remainder of the year for half-price – $17.50.
Maria is an award-winning quiltmaker and teacher. She has become known for her vibrant, grid-based art.
You can learn more about Maria on her website, Tales of a Teacher or in this Create Whimsy Interview.
We are excited to announce our virtual workshop with Karen Bolan!
Saturday, March 25 & Sunday, March 26
1 to 4 p.m. each day
$70 plus purchase of the PDF pattern
Registration is now open for all quilters. Sign up through our Google form.
Are you intimidated by curves but love precision piecing? Start the Cool as a Cactus quilt in class, featuring pieced curves, a unique border treatment, and a colour palette that features transparency.
The class will begin with an exercise in creating transparency effects; then, we will work from paper templates to accurately cut and piece large-diameter curves. Learn to cut and precisely piece large-diameter curves from templates, assemble a quilt top with pieced borders, and plan a colour palette that includes a transparency effect.
Students must purchase the digital pattern at https://www.karenbolan.com/shop/p/cool-as-a-cactus-quilt-pattern. Leave class with at least one block and border complete.
At the next TQG meeting on Monday, January 9, Elizabeth De Croos will join us to talk about patchwork traditions in Korea. The Zoom “doors” open at 6:30, and the meeting starts at 7 p.m. Hear about pojagi, jogakbo and patchwork traditions, the story of Korean women who developed these utilitarian art forms and how they fit into Korean history and culture. See many samples of wrapping cloths, fabrics and techniques and discover the similarities and differences between pojagi and quilting.
Elizabeth started sewing as a child and has always been interested in various needlecrafts. In 2009, she took her young family to South Korea, where she had the opportunity to learn pojagi – a traditional Korean art form that goes back thousands of years.
Upon returning to Canada, Elizabeth developed techniques for similar patchwork using a sewing machine and materials more readily available in the west. Her batik window hangings look like stained glass in the sun.
She works with this technique in her home base – Epida Studio. Her pattern line is called Epida Designs, and she publishes pojagi patterns and traditional quilting and embroidery patterns. She teaches live workshops both in person and virtually and has on-demand courses.
You can see tutorials and inspiration at epidastudio.com.
Are you thinking about your quilting in the New Year? Here are the updated dates for your meetings and our workshops! You can find a printable copy here!
Tina Curran will be presenting her lecture, My Design Process – From Concept to Quilt, at the next TQG meeting on Monday, December 12, at 7 p.m.
Tina Curran has been a quilter for over 25 years. Her work has earned multiple blue ribbons and the rank of Master Quilter at her local quilt guild in Glendale, CA. Her quilts have hung at major quilt shows, including Road to California (Ontario, CA), the AQS quilt shows in Lancaster, PA and Paducah, KY and the International Quilt Festival in Houston, TX. Tina’s work has been featured more than 20 times in quilt magazines (Quilters Newsletter and Quiltmaker) and in three books (including Ricky Tims’ Kool Kaleidoscopes).
She has been designing patterns since 2002, began giving quilt lectures in 2012 and started teaching her designs in quilt guild workshops in 2013. In 2015, she started a free monthly email newsletter to chronicle her adventures in quilting, which is read by thousands of quilters around the world. And in 2021, she started hosting her own virtual quilt workshops for the fans of her quilt designs.
Her work can be seen on her website at tinacurran.com. Her patterns are sold in her shop on Etsy.com (tinacurran.etsy.com) and have sold to quilters in all 50 of the United States and more than 30 foreign countries.
Joanna Dermenjian will present some of her findings about the quilts made by Canadian women and children during WWII at our next meeting on Monday, November 14.
As an independent researcher and life-long maker, Joanna is investigating women’s domestic and charitable making in cloth and fibres. She is interested in how women have used stitching, both historically and in the present day, to nurture and restore themselves and to create a community with other women for individual and collective well-being. She also explores how women’s everyday domestic textiles and tools reveal stories about their lives, particularly in the 20th century.
Joanna’s research has led her to rediscover a poorly documented quilt-making operation by Canadian women during the Second World War – hundreds of thousands of quilts made by women and children and donated to the British Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS) and the Canadian Red Cross to distribute to soldiers, civilians and hospitals in Britain and Europe.
There are new AccuQuilt dies and mats at the Maker Space at the Simcoe Branch of the Norfolk County Public Library! The complete list is below and you can download it here!
The library has the 12” Qube which cuts all the components for 6” and 12” finished blocks. All the HSTs and Quarter Squares making up all the traditional blocks. And companion blocks like the chisel (think stitch and flip corner on a rectangle) and the very popular Drunkard’s Path! The newest shapes are at the bottom and include “hard to cut accurately shapes” like clamshells, small hexagons and equilateral triangles for EPP, an apple core and the orange peel, Peter to Pay Paul.
At the Simcoe Branch of the library, you must ask at the main desk to use the AccuQuilt cutter in the Maker Space. You’ll need a library card. The cutter is on the counter, and the dies and mats are in the cupboard. There is room to use a cutting mat and your rotary cutter, but it is easier to pre-cut your fabric strips at home. This second file, The NCPL AccuQuilt Cutting Reference Guide, will help you decide how wide to cut your strips for most efficient and least wasteful cutting. It’s essential to have the crosswise or lengthwise grain aligned properly. If you are making a big quilt, test a few blocks first!
You can cut 6 layers of quilting cotton at a time and if lots of sections are not cutting, look for a cutting mat that isn’t so used. The dies don’t get dull but the mats do wear out! Take a small pair of scissors to trim your cut pieces.
If you’d like to make a speedy 6” HST quilt, you can find a tutorial here! If you want to find all this AccuQuilt information in a few months, use the search bar on the right side of the website. Search “AccuQuilt”!
If you would like an easy way to find out the pre-cutting directions for one of the dies you have at home, find the die on the Accuquilt website and click the “Details” section, underneath the photos. You may also take one of your dies to the library to use the electric cutter. Just bring a mat if it is a non-standard size.
Are you having relationship problems with your sewing machine? Is there tension in the air? Is the honeymoon over? Maybe you and your machine only need to learn to communicate more clearly.
Let Bernie be your counsellor and help you discover how to understand what your sewing machine is trying to tell you. Learn how to get it to do what you would like it to do. End the tension-filled battles once and for all! Reconnect and grow to love your machine all over again.
Let’s get this relationship off on the right foot! To get the most out of this presentation, Bernie suggest that you set up near your machine.
This presentation is based on Bernie’s book You and Your Sewing Machine.
Twilight Quilters' Guild of Norfolk County 