For the past 9.5 months, I have been serving as president of the Orchard Valley Quilters Guild. Little did I know last September what the position entailed and what great joy it would bring me. 

I am humbled each and every week by the talent and generosity that all of you display. From incredible personal projects to the volume of donations, you are all incredible quilters and more importantly you all 'walk the talk' of giving back to the community both within the guild community and within the greater community that we live in. 

As of this date the OVQG has contributed a total of 545 donation items. These items include 424 quilts, 37 Christmas stockings, 62 placemats and table runners, and 22 pet beds. The recipients include the Central Okanagan Hospice Association, Baptist Housing, the Food Bank, Kids Count, Kelowna General Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and the SPCA.

I am also humbled by the worker bees in the guild who are integral to keeping us up and running! They include but are not limited to: 

• Bev who is up early and opens the door for us and works to keep the HANDfuls group interesting and entertaining.
• Marie A who has been the historian for 35 years. She takes pictures of Show and Tell each week and brings back the photos so that you all have a record of your accomplishments.
• Pat who has kept the money safe and sound -- and she sure was hopping at the Quilt Show!
• Marie W who makes sure we all have coffee and goodies each week.
• Mary who does the AMAZING job of creating and updating our website each and every week. Our website is a 'worldwide window' into our guild, attracts new members and keeps us all informed with current information. Mary also arranges incredible Professional Development workshops and co-leads our smARTies group.
• Brenda E who is the main driver behind our donations group and can take credit for keeping us producing and keeping us informed -- and she couldn't do it without her co-conspirators Barb and Dorothy and Joanne!
• Kathryn who has made this year exciting by putting together a very comprehensive program schedule with terrific tutorials and DEMO Days.
• Marg and Sue C who started off the year with an incredibly successful quilt show!
• Joanne G  who is an inspirational and creative Publicity Chair and can take a great deal of credit for helping with the the success of our quilt show.
• Marian who is my Yoda and a heck of a bookkeeper.
• Dianne who tried to retire but came back into the fold to lead us, along with Sharon, through the 'fog' to transition to the new Society Act
• Dorothy who is the energizer bunny, leading our Outreach team in the high schools, working with Brenda in donations and helping out in a myriad of other jobs.
• Sharon who is our vice-president and my rock! You rock! We are all looking forward to the 2019 Gathering of the Guilds Okanagan Valley.  Your leadership in this as well as the transition to the new Society's Act is appreciated
• Helen who is the extraordinary woman keeping our library organized, relevant and current as well as being a solid member of our directors group
• Sandy and Judy who have kept our membership rolls up to date. They greet us each week with a new and lovely greeting at the membership table, and their smiles and enthusiasm put a smile on our faces as we walk in the door.
• Laurie who leads our team for Show and Tell -- everybody's favourite activity of the week!
• Joanne T who has been quietly helping out in so many ways that it is difficult to tally it all: HANDfuls and the gift baskets and outreach and donations...
• Joan who has been helping the MODley crew discover and enjoy Modern Quilting.

All other guild members work hard by creating those hundreds of donation items, participating by sharing their skills and expertise in tutorials and demo days and jumping in where needed. This is what makes the OVQG work:  generosity of time, talent and work! 

This is what I have learned. ☺

Shirley Sellers, President
Orchard Valley Quilters Guild

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Quilts from Kelowna’s past and present representing many techniques and trends in quilting will be on display in a new show Needle and Thread: The Art of Quilting at the Okanagan Heritage Museum,   470 Queensway Avenue, from Monday, February 19 to Friday, May 25.  The museum is open Monday to Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Our members will be treated to a trip down memory lane seeing once again quilts created by present and former members for the Orchard Museum, for Kelowna’s Centennial in 2005 and our beautiful Sunsational Orchard Valley guild banner.  Our stunning new Canada 150 Quilt: Women Shaping Our Nation will also be on display as well as a selection of traditional, modern and art quilts loaned by current members and other local fabric artists. 

Quilts from the museum’s collection — crazy quilts, tobacco silks, red work, log cabins and even a hexagon quilt with the newspaper templates still inside — offer a historical perspective and will interest quilters and non-quilters alike.  Explanatory materials and interactive displays are certain to deepen the public’s appreciation of the art of quilting.

I have had great fun working on behalf of the guild to provide background information and helping to identify quilts for inclusion in this beautiful show. Thanks so much to our members for supporting this effort and for your generosity in providing your quilts for display.  Thank you also to the museum staff for including us in your plans and so quickly getting a grasp of the Art of Quilting past and present.

I hope all of our members will come out to see the display, and to support the Quilters in Action presentations scheduled during the exhibit.

Mary Fabris
OVQG Website and Professional Development

Our 2017 quilt show, Binding Canada Together: One Quilt at a Time, is only two short months away -- Friday and Saturday, September 23 and 24 -- and after many months of hard work, everything is falling into place.  As chair for the Orchard Valley Quilters Guild’s biennial quilt show, I will give you a behind the scenes rundown of all the work that goes into staging our show.

Event planning starts at least a year ahead with setting a date and then booking a venue. Next we booked Show Time, a company who sets up pipes and curtains to hang the quilts. Three of the guild members met with the Regional Manager of Show Time at the hall to plan the layout, the number of curtains required, and to determine the cost.

A committee team was set up of co-chair, publicity, acquisitions, boutique, raffle, and volunteer coordinators.  Discussions took place on what patterns and fabric would be used for a raffle quilt. Then a few gals sewed that up.  Photos of the 3 raffle prizes were submitted to Gail Lewis (Raffle Coordinator) who then ordered the ticket booklets. Joanne Gaudet, Publicity Chair, secured funding of a city grant. Joanne has been printing posters, handouts, inquiring about ads, and posting the show on social media.

About a month prior to the show, four of us do a layout where we create an accurate floor plan for a reference used when the quilts are hung.  Vendors were invited and their payment secured.  Security is booked 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., and I fill in the gaps between closing time and when security arrives.

The guild sells pins as a fundraiser. The design and colour for 100 pins was established through collaboration with Mr. Pin Man, an Edmonton company. In August and September there will be a blitz on putting up posters and advertising the dates on social media. 

In order to raise awareness of our event, I arranged to have the raffle quilt hung at Linda’s Quilt Shoppe with tickets available. It will then be moved to Cottage Quilting the following month. On July 1 the Canada 150 quilt was hung downtown, and will be hung again July 27 at Arts on the Avenue, all in hopes of increasing interest for the quilt show.

The day before the show, Show Time starts setting up at 8 a.m. The acquisition team receives quilts until 1 p.m. and then the hanging team starts set up, which usually takes at least 4 hours. Susan Campbell, Sue Greenwell and I troubleshoot, and address any problems during the two-day show. 

After the show, a volunteer team takes the quilts down and the acquisition team ensures the safe pick up by the rightful owners. Show Time returns to pick up their equipment, then a bit of tidying up, a sweep and it’s over until the next show.

Marg Frisque
Orchard Valley Quilters Guild Show Chair

The idea for a Canada 150 project came about in October of 2016 when the OVQG decided it wanted to create a unique quilt to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday.  Joanne Gaudet, Publicity Chair, secured funding for the project through the City of Kelowna. Over the next few months Sharon Planche-Williams, with input from other guild members, created a unique design, and the decision to commemorate Canadian women was made. 

Sharon, along with guild member Shirley Sellers, researched women making significant contributions to Canadian history.  After locating approximately 65 deserving women, they narrowed it down to 30.  They secured copyright permissions from sources and ensured that photo credits were respected. The most difficult tasks were to create a one-sentence description of each woman’s incredible contribution to Canada and then create a commemorative block for each of the selected women. Special shout out to Helen Strong for her excellent editing skills and effort!

Fabric was purchased and the piecing fun with Sharon, Shirley and Marian Grimwood began. Next up: Sharon will piece together the backing, Cindy Schellenberg will perform custom quilting, Shirley will create the label and Dianne Kapty will attach the binding.

Shirley Sellers
​OVQG Vice-President

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Quilting ideas can come anytime -- yes, even on a golf course.  Between shots, Rock on Canada came to mind.   Rock on Canada is the theme for one of two smARTies projects to be displayed at our September 2017 quilt show.  

I was anxious to get started on my piece by rusting fabric. First I collected rusty nuts, nails, bolts and pieces from the old railway line including a couple of nicely rusted spikes. After reading an article in American Quilter magazine, I was ready. Using white cotton fabric and equal parts water to vinegar, I made sure the fabric was well saturated, then squeezed the excess liquid out so the fabric was wet but not dripping. Then I smoothed the fabric out onto a plastic garbage bag, sprinkled it with ¼ cup salt, shredded steel wool, and my rusty items.  The next step was to roll up the fabric encasing everything.  I
then placed my fabric roll in a plastic bag for 24 hours.

I was really pleased with the rusty results.  After a good hose rinse outside, to remove the steel wool bits, then more washing in the sink with soap, the fabric was left to dry.  I cut up my newly rust coloured fabric in varied sized rectangles then sewed the pieces in a random order.  Not wanting to take away from the simplicity of the rectangles, I kept my free motion to straight lines using a walking foot.

The 9 individual projects for Rock on Canada depicting minerals mined in Canada will be pinned to a large black screen with a fabric tube stitched under and over the spaced out pieces to give a unified effect.  Another 9 guild members are working individually doing a similar project with the theme of Nature Coast to Coast.  Both projects will be on display at our quilt show as one part of our guild’s celebration of Canada 150.

Marg Frisque
Quilt Show Chair

Visit our Quilt Show page to learn more about our upcoming quilt show -- and visit our quilt show in September 2017 to see these beautiful theme pieces created by our smARTies Art Quilting Group.  And watch our blog for more information about this exciting show.

Since becoming Donations Coordinator, I have been stunned by the generosity and dedication of the guild members making so many gorgeous quilts for donation.  This past Thursday, Barb Segal and I delivered 71 quilts to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and 17 quilts to Tiny Bundles at the Food Bank. 
The staff who received the quilts were SO enthusiastic at the beauty and the sentiment! 

I currently have half a dozen quilts destined for RCMP cars.  And not to forget Joanne Tjaden who has donated 101 toques which I will take to the Food Bank.  All of us contribute what we can, but some members give so generously, that I am stunned.  Thank you all.

Lately, we have been having little “strip parties” where members cut donated fabric that is not currently in fashion into 2 1/2” strips and we will get them sewn into "1600" quilts.

Coming up March 31, we will have our second sewing bee.  This one will take place at Linda’s Quilt Shoppe where Jim has graciously offered us the classroom to make donation quilts.  Our first quilt bee held in the Mission Hall was a fabulous success!  We all had fun.  It was wonderful to watch the sharing of ideas and stories which contributes to a stronger guild through developing friendships.

Brenda Elmore
Donations Coordinator

Here we are delivering a strollerful of quilts to the NICU...

My term as President started in mid-September, I blinked and now it is mid-November.  This week I spent Monday organizing changes to our signing authority at the bank.  Tuesday was day group – the smARTies met to reveal their purple challenge, a couple of sewers were busy making donation Christmas stockings at their machines, and many of the HANDfuls were working on their embroidery. I made some progress on my Italian knotted border stitch, although guild business kept interfering – how many new books should we buy, someone not receiving the email updates, and etc.  Wednesday was evening group.  I did not know that the ball on a seam ripper, when placed below the seam line, would protect the fabric and allow the seam ripper to move quickly and easily through the problem seam.  After the demos and the Show and Share, the elves settled at their machines to work on Christmas stockings.  Today (Thursday) I am writing communications for the blog and newsletter, and this afternoon will collect the final signatures for the bank.  My thanks to all the guild members for their enthusiasm, support, and critical thinking as we pursue our passion for fabric.

Dianne Kapty
​OVQG President