Quilt University – Free Sample Classes

Preparation for accessing Quilt University is here with us!  Sample online quilt classes are knocking at our doors at absolutely no cost! Use a password, given by the Dean at Quilt University, for a good preparation to access the University in the near future.  For sure this is a move that elevates a person to a higher level and the merits are unmatched!

Jua Kali, a Reflections Quilt by Dena Crain

While you are there, you may want to take a look at online classes that will soon be with us.  Reflections, one of Dena Crain’s most popular online quilt classes, is being offered at Quilt University, scheduled to run again on March 23, 2012.  Registrations opened on 18 February 2012.  Although the price for a four-lesson class is a little higher than a workshop in Kenya, you can print out all class lessons and keep them safe for the future.

February Guild Meeting

A lively and informative meeting was lead by Gill Rebelo, who announced that the Guild’s AGM will take place at the April meeting (Thursday 19th).  She reminded the membership of the need for volunteers for various roles on the Executive Council.

Raji Syan, our Librarian, advertised the book sale of the day and reminded us about the new arrangements for borrowing books – KSh 1,000 for the year, entitling the subscriber to take out two books per month.  Those who wish to borrow on an occasional basis will pay KSh 200 per book.

Kundan Pattni explained that members can pay their dues at The Woman Shop and displayed the new plastic membership cards with lanyards.  This may entitle members to a discount from certain fabric merchants.

Then Gretchen Sanders Mwaura showed some of the embellishments she is selling.  These delicately polished and dyed animal and other motifs are made from bone by an artisan in Kibera called Kennedy.  His wife has recently given birth to twin boys whom he has named Tony Blair and Bill Clinton!

Pauline Mang’ana talked about the upcoming KQG Quilt Exhibition at Village Market.  She reminded us to look for sponsors and voiced the need for more volunteers for the Exhibition Subcommittee.  The Subcommittee meets every Thursday.

Jasvinder Phull talked about the raffle quilts which she and a keen group of members are making to raise money during the exhibition for charities, the AMREF Obstetric Fistula program and The Dream Project Children’s Home.  She displayed a lovely top which is already finished.  More volunteers are needed to help to complete the other two during the afternoon session.  This is a valuable learning opportunity as well as a good cause.

Gill told us about the teaching spots she will be organising during the afternoons after the monthly meetings.  Today’s will be about hand-piecing.  Six ladies were eager to attend.  Gill went on to tell us about the Turkish quilter, Selma Kenter, who visited Kenya recently and brought catalogues of previous exhibitions held in Istanbul.  There was a call for previously shown Kenyan quilts to go on display in Istanbul in May.

Gretchen informed us about the International Quilt Festival of Ireland being organised by Jim West.  It sounds very interesting with lots of original types of exhibitions such as a 3-D quilted garden and loads of activities and displays such as traditional Irish handicrafts, dry stone walling, aran knitting and pub crawls!  The idea of the ‘100,000 welcomes’ quilt of green and white decorated hand print blocks was welcomed with much enthusiasm!  There should be quite a collection of ‘Karibu’ blocks from Kenya.

Gill went on to tell us about the teachers who will be giving classes over the next few months.  Sarah Brewin will be teaching her ‘Dancing Ladies’ quilt and Magie Relph has several possible classes lined up.

Show-and-tell was lots of fun.  There were some beautiful bags on display, produced in Rhonda Denney’s workshop last month.  Loise’s family were so impressed by her bag that she has had to make another four, one for each daughter!  She had the very original idea of buying suit pieces (for salwar kameez) from Eastleigh where they are very reasonably priced.  These printed pieces of fabric are especially designed to go together and made very attractive bags.

Jasvinder showed the bag she designed and made for carrying her equipment to workshops.  She will be teaching a two day course on this next month.  
Gill showed a very colourful carpenter’s wheel to inspire another monthly class in March.  Patty displayed her lovely landscape quilt, started in Rhonda’s class.  Induben showed her landscape quilt of Mount Kenya which included a small figure – her grandson – observing the grandeur!

After a break for refreshments, we had a really interesting and enlightening talk about fabrics from Gill Rebelo.  She demonstrated the burn test for determining whether a fabric is pure cotton or not and gave us lots of other information on fabric structure, design and choice for quilting.

Freebie magazine

The Fons and Porter Web site has a great e-book that you can download–for FREE!  Have a good look around the site; it’s full of great quilting ideas and tips, and download your copy of Block Busters e-book.   Perhaps you will even find more great free products while you’re there.

Rhonda Denney’s Workshops for KQG

Rhonda Denney first visited us last year when she came on tour of Kenya with Ricky Tims, Alex Anderson and  other American quilters. Their visit coincided with our monthly meeting in January 2011 and we entertained the group to a small exhibition of our African quilts. Some of our more astute members spotted Rhonda’s stylish quilted fabric bag, and were thrilled to hear that she had made it herself.  It was only a small step from that encounter to Rhonda’s return last month to teach us not only her famous Bow-Tuck bag but also two other original classes.

Rhonda was anxious to return to Nairobi; she had lived in Langata for three years as a child in the 1960s when her father was working here on a project studying wildlife migration.  His work led to altered boundaries for some of the National Parks  to accommodate animals’ migration patterns.

Rhonda started her visit by giving us a small slide show at our January meeting. She showed a picture of the family’s first Kenyan home in Langata and asked if anyone could help her identify its whereabouts.  Two of our senior members Jean Classen and Heather Campbell, both longtime Langata residents, were able to help her with its location although it was feared that it is likely to have been demolished by now.

Following her talk and a show-and-tell of some of her quilts, Rhonda gave a one and a half day class on her famous Bow Tuck Bags.  All the class participants took advantage of the attractive fabric kits which Rhonda had brought and had great fun mixing and matching the fabrics. We look forward to seeing a colourful selection of the finished bags at the February meeting.

The following week Rhonda gave a class on making a landscape quilt. Participants were asked to bring along a picture of their choice which they wanted to translate into fabric. Rhonda gave some useful tips on perspective and other factors to consider before the challenging task of choosing suitable fabrics began. Some members found this unexpectedly difficult and progress was slower than anticipated but we hope to see some finished landscape pictures at next week’s meeting.

The final class was on the topic of colouring and painting fabrics with a variety of media–regular coloured pencils, water colour pencils and pastels.  A solution prepared by soaking soya beans was used to stabilize the colourful finished designs. Participants at this class hope to get together in the near future to continue with their designs as so much time was spent on meticulous colouring that most people finished only three of the planned six designs.  We all found this class a very relaxed and therapeutic experience and can never remember attending such a quiet and peaceful class before.

More photos from Rhonda’s classes are in the gallery below:

Tucked Bag Workshop with Rhonda Denney–Lunch

Many thanks to Rhonda and we hope to see her back in Nairobi again next year.

 

Tucked Bag Workshop with Rhonda Denney--Lunch

Jim West in Kenya

Jim West, founder of Sew Many Places and Quiltposium Magazine, will arrive soon in Kenya to personally collect six round-robin quilts made by six of our members especially for the Patchwork Promises Exhibition, part of the International Quilt Festival of Ireland to be held in June of this year.  We cannot show you our quilts for the Exhibition, as all are under wraps until the Festival opens.

Will YOU be there?!

January 2012 Meeting Report

For our January monthly meeting, we met on the 19th at 10:00 a.m. at Shalom House off Ngong Road just past The Junction Shopping Centre. The meeting started  with our Chairman Neela Shah welcoming all members and visitors after the Christmas break.

A word of thanks was extended to Bibiana Pereira, one of our Guild members who  offered her wonderful home to members to celebrate 2012 Christmas lunch.

Neela made a few administrative announcements and recognized Mercy Mungai, one of the visitors who joined the Guild the same day.

Neela informed members that the Executive Council was working hard to get a good retreat place around Naivasha or Limuru.  Though Resurrection Garden in Karen, 20km from Nairobi, was floated as a good venue, it was felt that members should be in a more distant place, away from the hassles of the City.  Brackenhurst Conference Center had been earlier suggested as a possible place through the Kenya Quilt Guild Face book. The decision is still to be arrived at by the Executive Council.

It was good news to hear that Village Market has given  our members a discount on the rental fee for the exhibition and Neela requested members  to look for sponsors from various companies. The last day for submission of quilts for the Exhibition is 19 April 2012 and there will be a charge for late entries.

Neela announced the coming Annual General Meeting to take place on 15 March 2012 and new Executive Council members are invited to come on board. This happens every two years according to our Constitution.

Dena Crain gave a practical presentation on how to access the KQG blog. Dena expressed her concern that every member should interact with the blog regularly. The practical presentation was done with a lot of clarity and professionalism that left members wiser than when they came in.  Dena highlighted that sending information to be included in the blog is a form of advertising and every member was free to do so.  She added that linking with other  internationals expands our networks through hyperlinks and blogging.  More link-up was important with those quilting groups who are like minded.

We had a wonderful show-and-tell session and members rushed to the front to exhibit their work. All in attendance enjoyed seeing and learning a few techniques from the different finished pieces.

Rhonda Denney, quilt teacher from the USA

Our Guest speaker for the January meeting was Rhonda Denney, a visiting American quilt teacher. Rhonda is an award-winning art quilt artist who has been quilting for the last four years.  She owns a Quilt Gallery where some of her art quilts are available for sale.

Rhonda Denney, quilt teacher from the USA

Rhonda spoke passionately about her life through presentation of  several of her photo slides.  She was grateful to be in Kenya again, where she has been several times before. On a light touch she reckoned she would always look for an excuse to be in Kenya. Her gorgeous sample quilts hung on the wall including Bow Tuck bags she had made. Rhoda was to carry out workshops in the afternoon and carried 14 kits for the first members taking her classes.

After the meeting, an afternoon Workshop was held and several members stayed on to put their hands to work.

The next monthly meeting will be held on 16 February 2012, same time, same place.

Your Chance to Shine

 

Below is a copy of an open letter to the Kenya Quilt Guild from Caitlin Hacker of the International Quilt Festival of Ireland.

Are you going?

Why not enter one or more of the amazing exhibitions that are lining up fast?  ANYONE is permitted to enter!

Dear Kenya Quilters,

My name is Caitlin Hacker and I am emailing on behalf of the International Quilt Festival of Ireland.  I am contacting you because we thought it would be a grand idea to invite members of your quilt guild to show quilts at our festival, and represent your entire guild with a quilt for one or two of our exhibits. I wanted to share with you two unique exhibits that we feel are going to gather a lot of attention at the festival. The first is called, “My Quilted Garden” and the second is “Yin & Yang.”

“My Quilted Garden” will transform a large room in one of NUIG’s (the university campus we have turned into a Quilter’s Village) oldest building into what we envision will be an extraordinary walk-in garden, with beautifully colored 3-D flowers, plants, shrubs, trees, grass, and even a stream, while birds are chirpping, bees are buzzing and incredibly colorful flower and garden quilts line the walls to enclose the garden setting. It is going to be lovely. We are offering a $1000 (approx. 750 EURO) cash prize to the best entry in the exhibit, whether it be flowers or a quilt that hangs on the wall.

“Yin & Yang,” however, is something on the opposite side of the spectrum that is more challenging, but equally as fun. Each quilters who participates will have to create two quilts, one that represents their artistic side as an art quilter and one that allows them to create something traditional. it is the same theme for both quilts, one made using more of a right brain application and the other using the left brain.  The winner of this exhibit entry will receive a cash prize of $2,500 (approx. 1,750 EURO). Having one quilter from your guild to represent the entire guild would be truly exciting.

The deadline to complete these entries is April 1st, which would mean the creativity and quilting would need to start soon. The sizes are not very large, so we feel it is very do-able within the timeframe, especially making the 3-D flowers and plants for My Quilted Garden.

Just to let you know, we have all of this information available on our festival website, http://www.IQFOI.com and if nothing else, the Cead Mile Failte quilt block entry could also be a nice contribution to the exhibits, as quilters around the world trace their hand and make a quilt block they applique and design that will be sewn with other blocks as the official “welcome exhibit” at the festival each year it is presented.

Thanks for considering all of this, and I do hope members of your guild would like to participate. To be honest, I think it could be really fun for members of your guild to sit around one afternoon or evening and make fabric flowers and represent your guild with a nice little bundle or patch in the garden. That sounds like a lot of fun to me!

Have a wonderful day, and thanks again for your kind support!

Cheers,

Caitlin