Our May 8 meeting will be an explosion of colour! Linda and Carl Sullivan will take you on their colourful, crazy quilty journey that started some 22 years ago with the very first Linderella quilt designs to their current obsession for pure colour.
Always searching for a twist on traditional quiltmaking, Linda’s designs are well known for their contemporary, whimsical look, adventurous appliqué and fearless use of colour. Find out more on the Colourwerx website.
On April 10, two accomplished stitchers will share their journey “Beyond Quilting”. Members Jan Grincevicius and Melanie Douglas will show examples of where their sewing has taken them.
Melanie began making bags about 7 years ago after seeing a beautiful cork bag Sarah Yetman had made. A Necessary Clutch Wallet class at Heirloom Treasures in St. George started her on this path. This wallet was way above her skill level at the time and she couldn’t see continuing. However, with excellent guidance and resolve, she has become a bag maker, feeling confident in tackling most patterns. Melanie will show you her successes and an abject failure! Many members learned to make the Emmaline Retreat Bag with Melanie, at a virtual retreat. Melanie has found that the quilting skills of piecing and following directions mean that most quilters can also make bags.
Jan Grincevicius has been drawn to quilt and fibre art because of the tactile nature of cloth, its texture and colour. Working with fibre, whether it be cotton, silk, wool or manmade, has always been a part of her life. She enjoys using many different fibres, including cotton, silk, velvet, wool, organza, netting, polyester, paper, yarn, embroidery thread, paint, dye, and other mixed media.
Jan often embellishes pieces with embroidery floss, beads, buttons, and wool yarns; and creates collages using fabric, paper and paint. While her work has mostly been two-dimensional, she has ventured into some three-dimensional pieces, such as vessels. Jan’s presentation will include four projects, all of which use fabric and collage techniques. Using photographs, Jan will demonstrate how each piece was made.
Do you have any Beyond Quilting photos for Show and Tell? Please send them by Sunday, 6 pm to TwilightSimcoe@gmail.com!
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.
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 closed.
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.
Twilight Quilters' Guild of Norfolk County 