For our April 2025 meeting, we invited members to share their Go-To quilts—the reliable and fun designs they return to time and again. The submissions highlighted the wide range of quilts that can be created using simple shapes like squares, rectangles, and half-square triangles! Have a look!
Click here for a PDF summary of the presentation. It has helpful links to get you started! For more information, you can also try a quick Google search of the quilt names. This PDF will always be available under the Resources tab on our website.
No doubt many of us have heard the expression “colour gets the credit but value does the work”. On Monday May 12, Carolina Oneto will talk about various aspects of colour, with a special focus on the concept of value and how it can be used to achieve movement and sequences within quilt designs.
Carolina’s presentation will provide us with a deeper understanding of how the power of colour value can elevate and transform our quilt designs by creating visual interest, striking contrast, and seamless fluidity . Join us via zoom May 12 @ 7pm Eastern time. Guests are welcome. Please see the guest section of our fees page.
If you attended any of our meetings this winter you’ll have heard of what we call, My Go-To Quilt. It’s a quilt our members have made — or want to make — more than once.
Some people never want to revisit a quilt while others are drawn to a design that they make multiple times. Maybe it’s a reliable pattern that can be whipped up when a last-minute gift is needed, or perhaps it’s a good stash or scrap buster.
Christa Watson’s Bling Quilt in two colourways. Photos used with permission. You can purchase the pattern from Christa’s online shop.
Every so often we love the look of a quilt so much that we want to try it in another colourway. Other times it’s just an easy pattern to sew when we need a breather from more difficult projects.
On Monday April 14, more than a dozen of our members will share the quilts that are worth going back to. We’ll learn what it is about the quilts that keeps bringing them back, and the names of the quilt patterns and designers. Not only will we get great insights into quilts that draw in the maker, these quilts are going to be achievable because they’re made by people “just like us”.
We didn’t want to spoil the secret of our members’ makes and instead are posting pictures of a quilt someone else revisits. Although she won’t be at our meeting, Christa Watson was kind enough to let us use photos of her Bling Quilt that sparkles in all its iterations. Is this her Go-To Quilt? We can’t say because we wouldn’t ask a parent who their favourite child is.
Join us via zoom April 14 @ 7pm Eastern time. Guests are welcome. Please see the guest section of our fees page. You might even want to join our guild for $20 for the last 3 meetings of the year!
Variations of Christa Watson’s Bling Quilt. Photos used with permission. You can purchase the pattern from Christa’s online shop.
There are several ways to personalise a quilt, whether it’s designing our own patterns, using our favourite colours, or incorporating our favour themes. Another way is sewing with fabric we’ve designed ourselves.
While fabric design might sound like the exclusive territory of graphic artists, it doesn’t have to be complicated. Did you know custom printed fabric is how our members created the faces of the women featured on the WWII quilt that currently hangs in the Waterford Heritage & Agricultural Museum?
Custom printed fabric can be used for family photos, custom quilt labels, or our own embroidery patterns when tracing the pattern over and over is just too tedious. Of course it doesn’t end there. Scroll to the bottom of this page to see an art quilt Norene designed.
On Monday March 10, Norene Skiles will teach us all about using Spoonflower.com to print our own fabric and quilt labels. She will share examples of some of the ways she has used Spoonflower, and give an overview of how to use the website. We will learn how to search for feature fabrics, upload our own work, and a simple way to make a repeating pattern fabric.
If you’re looking for inspiration, the two fabrics pictured above are among several Norene has on her own Spoonflower page.
Join us Monday March 10 @ 7pm Eastern time, via zoom. Guests are welcome. Please see the guest section of our fees page. You might even want to join our guild for $20 for the last 4 meetings of the year!
Improv Quilts. The thought of making one can be so alluring. No one sets the rules but you. There is flexibility in the size and colour of the fabric pieces, and running out of a fabric or two is simply a prompt to be imaginative and creative when taking the next steps. It’s artistic freedom.
Yet it’s for these very reasons that improv quilting can be terrifying. There’s no proven design or pattern to rely on, and some of us lack the confidence to make an unscripted quilt. (I mean, if we’re hesitant to cut into the “good” fabric for an established pattern, how can we risk it when we’re quilting by the seat of our pants?)
Enter Cindy Grisdela, an artist who creates dynamic contemporary compositions by cutting the fabric shapes freehand, without a pattern or template, and sewing them together with her sewing machine. Cindy will present her talk “Anatomy of an Improv Quilt” where she’ll share her tips and tricks for how to work without a pattern, where to start an improv quilt, how to know it’s finished, and everything in between. Join us via zoom on Monday February 10 @ 7pm EST.
Guests are welcome. Please see the guest section of our fees page. You might even want to join our guild for $20 for the last 5 meetings of the year!
Whether you’re a quilter who typically uses a custom fabric pull, or you already make “free” quilts from leftover bits and pieces, Terry Rowland of T Row Studios will get your creative juices flowing with her Scrap Attack presentation. Our January speaker will share more than 50(!) projects she’s made using scraps.
Of course, we can’t just throw scraps up onto the design wall, so Terry will also share her insights on where scraps come from and how to organize them so we can use them effectively.
Join us Monday January 13 @ 7pm Eastern via zoom and learn some wonderful ways to make something from nothing. Guests are welcome. Please see the guest section of our fees page. The zoom link will be sent to members and guests at least 48 hours before the meeting. You’ll find our complete program here.
You can find Terry on YouTube (Terry Rowland), Instagram (@trowstudios), and FaceBook (Terry Rowland- T Row Studios).
Unfinished projects. We all have them. They start off with so much promise, and then they languish. We might feel resigned to their existence and sometimes even feel guilty. Happily there’s a solution.
Emma Jane Powell will join us in December to share her fun, self-deprecating, and interactive lecture, giving us the push we need to bring our quilting and craft projects back to life. Join us for a deep dive into why these projects have been set aside, and take an honest approach to moving forward with quilts you may have lost your enthusiasm for or would love to finish up.
This presentation is perfect if your 2025 new year’s resolution will be that this is the year you will finally finish those projects that are piling up in a storage bin or the back of a closet.
Monday December 9 @ 7pm Eastern via zoom. Guests are welcome. Please see the guest section of our fees page. You can also check out our line up for the rest of the year.
The Chicks (formerly, The Dixie Chicks) recorded a song called Wide Open Spaces, where a girl “needs room to make her big mistakes”. Do quilts with a lot of negative space bring out your fear of making big mistakes? Jane Hauprich, our November speaker, will take our fears away and show us how to handle those wide open spaces.
Jane will take us through her process for navigating negative space and show us how how to make the negative work for us.
Monday November 11 @ 7pm Eastern via zoom. Guests are welcome. Please see the guest section of our fees page. The zoom link will be sent to members and guests at least 48 hours before the meeting. You’ll find our complete program here.
People have been finding ways to turn art into fashion for generations, and at our October meeting, Erin Grogan, a quilter who has been sewing garments since she was 13, will tell us about the evolution of wearable art. Her talk will have a strong focus on how society has recycled quilts for fashion through the decades, plus, Erin will explore different methods of applying our artistic style to our own wardrobes. To see more of Erin’s work, check out her website.
Due to the Thanksgiving holiday our October meeting will be the 3rd Monday of the month. Monday October 21 @ 7pm Eastern via zoom. Guests are welcome. Please see the guest section of our fees page. If you haven’t already, see what we have planned for the year. Who knows? You might decide to join!
You are probably familiar with the artistry of Michèle-Renée (M-R) Charbonneau, our first speaker of the year(!), even if you don’t know her by name. M-R has been exploring modern quilting since 2010 and has been a member of the BeeSewcial international improv bee since 2016. She’s been sharing her creativity on Instagram @quiltmatters and in a special exhibit at Houston Quilt Festival 2022, “The Quilts of Bee Sewcial”.
Even if M-R’s work is new to you, zoom in on September 9 when she will share her passion for the modern quilting style, what makes a quilt ‘modern’, how BeeSewcial works (and some of their creations), and how you can make your quilts more modern if you’d like to give this fun style a try.
Monday September 9 @ 7pm Eastern via zoom. Guests are welcome. Please see the guest section of our fees page. The zoom link will be sent to current members and guests at least 48 hours before the meeting. If you haven’t already, check out our program. Who knows? You might decide to join us for the year!
Twilight Quilters' Guild of Norfolk County 