Ottawa Modern Quilt Guild: Ottawa Charity Quilt Recap

Friday, 16 January 2015

Ottawa Charity Quilt Recap

** This bog post was submitted to QuiltCon as a summary of the Ottawa Modern Quilt Guilds Charity Quilt Submission***

Ottawa is a large Canadian city, but most importantly the nation’s capital. Being such a government town in turn means that many move to Ottawa because of government jobs, and carry with them strong ties to areas across our large country. We have guild members from Newfoundland, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver, etc., so as a guild we don’t feel that we are representative of just one geographical region, but as a nation as a whole. So when initial ideas were discussed via e-mail, various aspects that represented Canada such as ice, buildings, water, boats, etc. were at the forefront. We really wanted our quilt to represent ourselves and our country at QuiltCon and also connect personally to the recipient when it comes home.

At our October meeting, our group (Laura Piggott, Joelyn Gregory, Kirstin Fearon, April Waddell, Janet Ferguson, and Julie Johnston) met and looked at a couple of sketches our president Laura drew up that incorporated some of the main themes mentioned. We divided up the sections and elements among ourselves (flying geese, maple leaf, city scape, sailboats, fireworks/sun/stars, the word “Canada itself) and put our own individual, fantastic spin on them.

We chose to use the light blue as our main background colour to help create cohesiveness. All sections were sent back to Kirstin for piecing and quilting. Jan Kittle, OMQG member and quilt-shop owner, donated time on her long arm at The Pickle Dish for Kirstin to use. Kirstin quilted much of the main element details with free-motion quilting on the long arm and Jan offered to finish off the background elements in the shop.

Everyone worked extremely well as a team. Fat eighth Kona bundles were donated to each team member by OMQG Pam from Mad About Patchwork. Once the quilt was all finished, Alison Harle (our guild Photog) brought our quilt baby to Parliament (we are in the nation's capital, after all) and took some amazing photos. The quilt went on the last leg of its journey thanks to Julie, who managed to get out during the last-minute Christmas shipping crunch and send it on its way. We're very excited to see this quilt at QuiltCon and are so happy we participated in this challenge. We have five guild members attending QuiltCon and we can’t wait to see it there! Thanks to the MQG for the opportunity!