Hopefully, this will give you all the information you need about our first Camp Trillium Retreat.

Friday, November 1 from 1pm until Sunday, November 3 at 3pm The best place to see photos of Camp Trillium is on our website, on our Camp Trillium Page! We have a number of lessons and activities planned, or you can sew all day and night! It is your retreat!

We will be sleeping in the cabins, 2-3 people per room with 3 rooms in each cabin. Lower bunks only! Full washroom facilities in each cabin. Fully heated! You need to bring your own bedding and towels.

The cost is $200 for all 3 days and 2 nights. If you wish a single room, it would be $230. For insurance purposes, every attendee must be a current guild member. Several of our members are bringing sisters or friends, and they will need to join the guild for the year. But then they can come to our meetings and workshops!

There is room for 50 quilters to have their own big table, with power coming from the ceiling. We have 35 registered now and we are hoping to have more of our members there. Because we have 30 campers, the required number for the camp rental, we can now open the registration to day campers. This is perfect for members who are busy on one of the camp days. And for members who are not able to sleep over! You can sign up for 1, 2 or all 3 days. $50 each day includes all the meals that day. Day campers can stay as late as they’d like at night. There will be a wine tasting and food pairing on Friday night, so drink responsibly if you are driving!

The Camp Registration Form was attached to the September newsletter. Please print it out, fill in your camping details and bring it to the September meeting. Along with the balance of the money you owe for the retreat. Most attendees have paid the $100 deposit. Don’t worry if you haven’t kept track, we have a master list!

All meals are home cooked and they can cater to most allergies and food sensitivities. Our tentative menu is:
Friday afternoon snack. Muffins
Friday dinner. Chicken Souvlaki with pitas, homemade tzatziki and Greek salad
Saturday breakfast. Scrambled eggs, bacon, toasted bagels with cream cheese and jam, fresh fruit, yogurt and cereal
Saturday lunch. 2 Soups, with Rainbow salad and assorted wraps
Saturday afternoon snack Muffins
Saturday dinner. Vegetable and meat lasagna with garlic rolls and Rainbow salad
Sunday breakfast. Scrambled eggs, bacon, toasted bagels with cream cheese and jam, fresh fruit, yogurt and cereal
Sunday lunch. Chilli and Cobb Salad with homemade corn muffins

Coffee and tea are always available and there is a frig where you can keep your special foods. Please, NO PEANUTS! Our only restriction. Responsible alcohol use permitted. And there is wifi throughout all the buildings!

There is lots of room at the camp and we can spread out in the various buildings and sitting rooms. We will have an area set up in the dining room with tables together so you can easily baste your quilts.

We are having Russell Carroll from Norwich set up on Saturday to do sewing machine maintenance and scissor sharpening. A sewing machine clean, oil, tension and timing check would be $125. Repairs available if needed. Scissor and pinking shears would be $8 each. I am planning on sewing on my smaller workshop machine and bringing my big machine in for cleaning. It will be one more thing to lug to camp, but it will save me having to take my machine somewhere, do without it for a week and go back for it! Perfect! We are taking appointments for this service.

The Retreat Program committee is Patti M, Donna P, Vicki M. Jill J, Terry A and Stephanie S. Contact them if you have any questions or suggestions.

We will kick off our new year with a visit from Eagle Wings Quilts. Check them out here. Canada’s premiere English Paper Piecing source. EPP! Not just calico Grandma’s Flower Garden!

Twilight Quilters’ Guild Officers 2019-2020

President: Terry Anderson
Vice President: Jill Jackson
Past President: Diane Luke
Secretary: Jan Zehr/Deb Featherstone
Treasurer: Colleen Homme

Standing Committees
Program: Melanie Douglas (Chair), Vicki Harris, Karen Johnstone, Maggie McEntee
Librarian: Kathi Columbus
Hospitality: Heather Dew
Membership: Jan Grincevicius
Nominating: Terry Anderson, Jill Jackson, Janice Youngson
Audit: Colleen Simmons
FQ Draw: Pat Brown
50/50 Draw: Donna Prystie
I Hate Fundraising: Edith Innes

Other Guild-Organized Activities
Sunshine: Jill Jackson
Facebook Photos: Jan Grincevicius
Website/Social Media: Stephanie Sinden, Jill Jackson, Jan Zehr
Camp Trillium Retreat: Stephanie Sinden, Jill Jackson, Terry Anderson,
Vicki Harris, Patti Moore, Donna Prystie

A few members spent a lovely evening in Karen Johnstone’s lovely garden dyeing fabric using the leftover dyes from the Bethany Garner workshop. Willow wasn’t as impressed as everyone else!

Last September we had a one yard fabric exchange, using Kaffe Fassett fabrics. You can see a YouTube video of the Ripping and Passing exchange idea here. It was a fun activity although a bit chaotic! Many of our members bought their fabrics on our guild bus trip to Quilts at the Creek, at the Hyggeligt booth. And Chantal very generously donated 2 gift certificates for prizes.

After the exchange, members had at least 4 different fabrics, in decreasing lengths and were challenged to make something! No rules. Members who missed the exchange were challenged to make something with some Kaffe fabrics.

We had our show and tell at our June meeting and the projects were amazing. All so different, with many members challenging themselves with new techniques. Several members didn’t like their fabrics or their resulting projects, but others certainly did. A great success I think!

Should we do a challenge next year?

Our wrap up meeting of the year! We had a great night of shopping at our Destash sale, delicious strawberry shortcake and amazing and inspirational Show & Tell including projects from our Kaffe Fasset Rip and Pass challenge. Look below at the beautiful quilt that was gifted to Diane as a thanks for her leadership and fun presidency. The lovely quilt designed, pieced and quilted by Terry Anderson came together with blocks contributed by guild members and help from Nancy and Jill. Diane was pleased! Thanks Diane for a great presidency!

Join us on June 10 at Old Windham Church at 7pm for our Strawberry Social and Sale – members have tables where they’ll be selling what they’re not using – but you’re looking for! Fun and bargains! As always, you’ll see our fabulous members’ Show & Tell! Sound like fun? See you there!!

Our May speaker was Bethany Garner, an Art quilter and teacher from the Kingston area. And on the next 2 days, we had workshops with her at the Vittoria District Community Centre. What fun!

Bethany uses all hand dyed fabric in creations. Her colour sense is wonderful. And all the colours go together!

Here are a few of the quilts she showed.

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On Tuesday, our workshop was Flat Dyeing for Quilting and we learned Bethany’s technique for dyeing a stack of fabrics between layers of plastic. We poured on Procion MX dyes from jugs and squished colour around, experimenting as we went. Just look at that lineup of colour!

On Wednesday, we switched gears completely and used gelatin plates for printing on fabric or paper. The most well known brand of these plates are Gelli Plates. Here is a link to their video on printing on fabrics. We had 17 people in this workshop and we were able to provide a gelatin plate (8’x12″ or 9″x9″) and a brayer for everyone. We bought our gelatin powder at the Bulk Barn with a 50% discount coupon and the glycerin and alcohol in 1L bottles at the pharmacy and used a $1 foam painting roller with a covering of plumbing pipe so the kit cost us about $18 each!

Assembly line production of gelatin plates!

We used both paper and fabric for our printing. Bethany had lots of things to help with adding texture.

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Bethany was a great teacher and teaches many other workshops. Maybe she should come back……….

Did you enjoy our meeting with Bethany Garner? Wasn’t she an inspiration? You can read more about her on her blog and follow her on Facebook as Lise Garner. You can find out more about SAQA, the Studio Art Quilt Associates here. Were you inspired by the small art quilts Bethany brought? I heard a few people mention that they would be interested in a 12”x12” mini-quilt group. Who is interested? Please let your executive or program committee know if you are!

We had 2 days of workshops with Bethany. If you check the TQG Facebook page you can see some photos. Workshop attendees, please bring a couple of your favourite pieces to our June meeting to show and tell. Will anyone have a finished project? While we can’t duplicate Bethany’s workshops and her great instruction, we can set up a dyeing and/or a gelatin plate printing session if more people are interested. I am attaching the handout where you will find basic instructions for using Procion MX dyes.

Special thanks go again to Terry Anderson for having Bethany stay at her house. If we had not had a volunteer for billeting Bethany, our workshops would have lost money. Or we would not have been able to supply the gelatin plates for such a low cost. Thanks to Nancy for her plastic sheets for the tables. I plan to use mine again. And thanks to Jill for making the gelatin plates and for proofreading everything that goes out to you!

The next Joy of Stitching is Monday, June 3 at Joy’s Bakery in Simcoe. For those who have never come before, it is a get-together to do some hand stitching (fabric or yarn) for a couple hours, with coffee or tea and some treats, for $5. Starts at 6:30. It is a great way to get to know other members. More and more attendees are working on English Paper Piecing!

Our June 10th meeting is our Strawberry Social and Yard Sale. For $5 you can have your own 1/2 table. 7 tables are spoken for and if you are interested please let us know before the meeting so we can set up a table for you. If you don’t want your own table, how about doing some housecleaning in your sewing area and donating items you don’t love anymore to the guild table. Cheryl Arkison has a blog post on Marie Kondo-ing your sewing room here. If you have firm thoughts on what price your items need to fetch, please price them.

Do you have a Kaffe Fasset project to show at our June meeting? I am hoping to get my quilt sandwich made this weekend. There will be at least one prize!

The library has bought new AccuQuilt Dies for the MakerSpace in Simcoe. They include: Equilateral Triangle 4.5”, Strip Cutter – Can cut 1 each of 1’, 1.5” and 2”  (Great for scraps!), Apple Core 6.25”, Clamshell 8”, Square Multi 4.5” – Cuts 4 4.5” squares with no waste

Bev also bought new mats. If you are cutting and find threads that don’t cut, or the mat looks really beat up and you are not getting perfect cuts, you should look for a new mat. If you don’t see one, please ask the library staff for one.

The new AccuQuilt die that cuts 1 each of 1’. 1.5” and 2” unfinished strips would be very useful for making quilts like Bethany’s.

 

Here are some links from our meeting on Monday.

Our speaker next meeting is Bethany Garner from Kingston. Come and see some art quilts and learn about dyeing your own fabric.
The next Joy of Stitching is Monday, May 6 at Joy’s Bakery in Simcoe. For those who have never come before, it is a get-together to do some hand stitching (fabric or yarn) for a couple hours ,with coffee or tea and some treats, for $5. Starts at 6:30. It is a great way to get to know other members.

Inspired by Julie Bosgoed’s and Terry Anderson’s Anthologie Quilts, a modern/traditional sampler quilt full of patchwork and piecing techniques with a little boho flair, go to the Anthology quilt-along for the free pattern.

Jill sent the page/pattern that she and Julie and Karen used to make their Foundation Paper Pieced house blocks. It is attached as a PDF. Be sure to print it at 100% and check the measurements because they learned that even when printed at full size, different printers can give different results.

How to sew Drunkard’s Path blocks without pins! Ebony sews with the “L” on the bottom. Watch here

I have attached the listing of all the AccuQuilt Dies at the Norfolk County Public Library and the cutting guide for them.. And the “Simple HST Quilt Tutorial” that will walk you through everything you need to know to use the Go Big Electric cutter in the MakerSpace. If you are interested in making a quilt for Marguerite to take to Mexico next winter, why not try it. You can use any fabrics you have on hand. Civil War fabrics will make a serviceable quilt. It doesn’t have to be baby material.

See you in May! Have fun quilting!

Stephanie