Quilty-Canadian adventure

When I was in Canada a couple of weeks ago, I was lucky to be able to attend a meeting of the Ottawa Modern Quilt Guild.  When I found out when and where it was I emailed to ask if I could go and they said yes!  Because of this amazing on-line quilty-community, I already 'knew' a few of the members [Pam of Mad About Patchwork, Katy of Lethargic Lass, M-R of Quilt Matters] so when Katy and I were IG'ing one night, she suggested we do a side swap and exchange when we meet in Ottawa.  So that's what we did!

We only shared our favourite colour(s) with each other and decided that the mini should be between 12-20 inches.  The rest was up to each of us to decide on.  Pretty open parameters, wouldn't you say?   Katy got me spot on - green, aqua, grey and linen = yum!

Katy EPP'd some stretched/elongated hexies, called coffins apparently, and off set them in some delicious Essex dyed linen.  You can't see it in the photo but Katy did some perfect free motion quilting in the linen.  Katy even made me a sausage/wiener dog mini-mini using applique!    

For the backs, we both used the Ikea Nummers!  Great minds think alike!!  You can see my hand stitching a bit better here on the backing.

For Katy's mini quilt, all I knew was that her favourite colours were brown and yellow.  I decided to make her a Maple Leaf mini because I have always loved the quilts I have seen with the maple leaf block so this was my chance to make something with that shape.  I even did some hand stitching!   The middle square is a hand stitched maple leaf in white.  And look - I added a sausage/wiener dog too!!

As you can see from the photo at the very top, we exchanged our mini quilt creations in front of the entire guild.  I loved the meeting - full of energy and laughter and even some fnar fnar moments.  This was their last meeting until September and happened to be the AGM so I got to see how another guild ran the business side of things. Very professional.  Laura, the President, is a wonderful leader and I wish her a fantastic second year.  Who knows, maybe one day I will live back in the Ottawa valley and be a member!!??  Thank you Katy for my wonderful mini and mini-mini 'Jax' and I hope we can meet again soon and eat cake (again).