Workshop Opportunity in July 2020

Join Central Canada SAQA Member Mary Pal for a 4 day workshop this summer at the Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts in Victoria BC.

For registration details follow this link.

Ongoing and Upcoming!

July is perfect for picnics...and Terry Aske and Judy Villet have the perfect one for you if you're going to be out and about in the Lower Mainland of B.C. this week...an adventure Into the Heart of the Forest.  NOTE: this exhibit is now open and runs through July 24.

Going to the Stampede in Calgary?  You might stop by the Crowfoot Library  (8665 Nose Hill Drive N.W.) to see the Calgary SAQA POD's locally-produced exhibit, Road Trip.

If you missed this one when it showed at Fish Creek Library in April, do try to make it up to the Crowfoot venue.  It will be there through July 24.  From there it goes to the High River Library (909 - 1st Street S.W., High River, AB) from Aug. 2 - 31.

Fancy art on the hoof?  There's an Artwalk going on in Camrose, Alberta this summer which includes work by Mary Wilton, another one of our Alberta members.  From July 20 through September 6, you can see her work at the Jeanne & Peter Lougheed Performing Arts Centre, 4901 46 Avenue, Camrose, as part of that city's 21st Annual Artwalk, sponsored by the Camrose Art Society.

Through the Barn Door - Mary Wilton, 2015

Planning ahead for the fall... 

Calgary Area POD is hosting a workshop in High River.  Presented not long ago in B.C. by the Lower Mainland POD, here's an opportunity for members all over the Region -- but particularly east of the Rockies! -- to find the answer to that eternal question, "What Were the Judges Thinking?" 

The workshop is described as "Module 1 of the CQA quilt judge certification program" and is designed for anyone who is considering becoming a judge, scribe, juror or aide, or for those interested in organizing a judged show, or simply expanding their knowledge about judged competitions.

• Date: Saturday, September 10, 2016.
• Location: High River Library, 901 - 1st Street S.W., High River, AB.
• Time:  9 a.m. - 4 p.m.
• Cost: $50.00 per person, including kit fee.

Registration: the registration fee may be mailed, paid in person or by e-transfer.  Payment must be in full; it will be non-refundable unless the workshop is cancelled.  Registration is on a first-come, first-served basis -- and there is a class limit of 20. For a registration form, please contact Marie McEachern or Nan Williams.

The Doctor is IN

Dr. Sandra Sider, art critic, quilt artist, SAQA Past President and currently curator, Texas Quilt Museum, has asked us to share her latest offering: Creativity Workshop: Art Quilt Inspirations at the beautiful Stony Point Art-Space, Stony Point, New York, September 25 - 29, 2016.

The workshop was developed out of Sandra's critique workshops, written about in her Studio Quilt monograph series and illustrated in her new book, 1000 Quilt Inspirations.

The program will include exploring a variety of surface design/printing techniques, and one-on-one work with participants, evaluating their work and suggesting directions for developing each piece; thus, attendance will be capped at 12 attendees.

Quilters will need to bring materials with which to begin their pieces, plus sewing machine, supplies, tools and an iron.  All levels of quilters are welcome, but students must have a strong foundation in sewing and be knowledgeable about their particular sewing machines.

The Gilmor Sloane House - built 1856

Workshop Tuition: $500
Workshop Materials: $40
Accommodation: $450 - $775 (including all meals) - depending on type of lodging selected.

All amounts are in US funds.

In addition to the Art-Space, Stony Point offers scenic venues, peaceful gardens, a meditation space, labyrinth, working farm, library and gift shop.  Attending a workshop in this venue would make for a very special and creative holiday!

For more information and to register, follow this link to Stony Point HERE.

"Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor Heat Nor Gloom of Night..."*

*creed, US Postal Service

Shall keep determined artists from their workshop!

Shaganappi Community Hall -- without snow!

Eleven intrepid SAQA colleagues and friends drove carefully through heavy wet snow, by-passing fallen tree limbs, to attend our Calgary workshop with Susan Purney Mark on September 10th.  Another joined us later for the Parlour Meeting over lunch.

It was a time of learning, experimenting, and sharing amidst laughter and lively camaraderie inside the cozy log walls of the Shaganappi Community Hall in Southwest Calgary.

As the Co-Rep who initiated the event, I was blessed and thankful to have members Alison Cowitz, Marie McEachern and Helene Blanchet as my "feet on the ground" -- procuring the venue and helping with all the details of The Day -- including unexpected snow shovelling!

Susan led us in her "Colour It, Fuse It!" workshop...and the photos speak for themselves...

Susan PM introduces the workshop.

Starting to paint our fusible webs and inter-facings.
(L)-(R): Trudy, Diane, Marion Susan, Marie, Pat

Marion gets colourful with her fusibles,

Shalaya and Bush are focused!

During lunch, we had our SAQA Parlour Meeting.  Many of the participants had never met before the workshop, and were eager to get together and meet again in similar or smaller group(s).  Not having a formal "chapter" system like some organizations needn't be an impediment to meeting -- and members don't need a Co-Rep to be present! :-)  Ideally, though, Co-Reps will be kept informed about groups that form and what they are up to, so they can share information with the Region at large and with new members looking for a way to connect locally.  (Refer to the "May I Have a Word? Vol. 1, No. 2" article about the formal "Pod" system established by Co-Reps in Florida around major population centres.)

One Calgary member has offered to be a point person for a group there, with meetings starting in the spring (like many, she's a snow-bird)...and I know there are "clusters" who meet in various locales in B.C.  Why wait till spring?  Another issue of the newsletter will be going out soon...If you are interested in being "point person" for a small group where you are, contact me and I will forward that information on to the Region in the newsletter -- OR contact your Co-Rep (me in AB, Katie Stein Sather in B.C. and Dawn Piasta in SK/MB) so one of us can link you with members closer to home.

We ended off the lunch meeting with show and tell:

Trudy shows and tells us about her beautiful piece.

Susan's piece, A Bridge Between Equals
will be shown at  Quilts=Art=Quilts,  Schweinfurth Museum,
New York, November 1, 2014 - January 4, 2015

In addition to "Show" there was a "Tell" -- two bits of news from member Diane Duncan:

• She has a piece included in the soon-to-be-released book, 1000 Quilt Inspirations! and
• She and other Calgary-area SAQA members have pieces in a current exhibit by the Quilted Mouse Guild at the Fish Creek Library, 11161 Bonaventure Drive S.E., Calgary -- open Mondays-Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. and Sundays, noon - 5 p.m.  The venue is light, bright and airy, which shows off the artwork beautifully.  This exhibit runs through September 27, so if you're in the area, do drop by!

After lunch -- fusing with foil!

Susan introduces the foiling technique

Trudy gets the pressure just right.

Examples of our foiling fun.

Foiling was followed by a session using stencils and thermo-fax screens -- each one of us got to select one of each to try and to take home for further experimentation.

Throughout the day we were invited to shop for more delights -- hand-dyed fabric and threads, more thermo-fax screens, stencils, etc. -- in Susan's Workshop Store.  We could also sign up to receive her newsletter, "Design Notes".

Susan's Workshop Store

All in all, the day sped by...so that we forgot that out on the back of the Community Hall property, it looked like this...

Limbs down over the sidewalk near the drive to the hall.

Again I am thankful to the members who helped this day to come to pass, to Susan Purney Mark for her light-hearted and skilled presentation, and to the enthusiasm of the members who want to carry the ball for future gatherings to share their art, and their knowledge, establishing connections and making friendships that continue to grow and establish the art quilting community.

The final word is from Diane, who sent me this photo of her finished piece from the workshop.  She wrote:

It is off to the retreat as part of our exchange!  My theme for the show and tell is 'exploring abstraction'!

Mis(sed) Communications

Sigh.  As Robbie Burns would say, "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men/Gang aft agley..."

Regional Reps and Co-Reps for SAQA have varying goals for their terms as your humble servants (grin). As some of you may remember, when I came on board as a Co-Rep for our Region in late October last year, I wrote a newsletter with the title, "May I Have a Word?"  Since then, I've put out 2 more volumes of MIHaW, and a few miscellaneous news mailings.   My goal is to improve the communications within the Western Canada Region.  Because our Region is so vast, this means using technology, for better or for worse!

Recently one of our members called to tell me the difficulties she was having receiving and/or reading the bulk e-mails I send out from time to time to update the Region on various events etc.  This service is provided to Regional Reps by SAQA, which updates and maintains the e-mail address records in the data base from its membership records.   This member is the only one from whom I've heard -- so far -- about the challenges of receiving the mass mailing.  (She has a MacBook Pro and iPhone. I have a PC with wireless internet service, and a land-line phone.)

Hoping to help her (and others out), I posted a query on the SAQA Reps' Yahoo group yesterday evening.  So far I've had little in the way of reply but one Rep did tell me that the person who called this to my attention is likely very definitely not the only one out there.  In her experience, there have been a variety of problems over the years, to the point where many Reps no longer use the SAQA mass e-mail service -- while others use it with impunity, and apparently no difficulties.

The issues have been raised with the tech people behind the scenes, she reported, but she has no idea if any have been resolved.  Typically, the issue isn't a simple one; these problems have a variety and combination of sources, such as:

• The e-mail server being used by the member(s) doesn't communicate well with the server used by SAQA for this data base program. (@yahoo, @gmail and @hotmail -- all free e-mail servers -- tend to have particular problems; 'DOTedu' -- from educational institutions -- also sometimes has problems.)
• The member may have significant security and firewall protection on his/her computer.
• The Mac and the iPhone and/or Smart Phone may have problems unique to their technology.  The second Rep who responded to my query suggested that Apple users might visit their local "genius bar" for advice (found in Apple Stores).

You might be wondering, "Why don't I create an e-mail list and send out messages from my personal e-mail server?"  Well...I could do this -- but that means I have to make sure that every time I get a membership list update from SAQA, I go in and update the list.  Right now, the data base is maintained for Reps by SAQA and it's a piece of cake to use to send e-mail.

Keeping up a list on my own computer would not be an onerous task -- just time-consuming...but I'm prepared to do that if I hear from enough of you that it's what's needed to solve this problem and improve communications.

So here's the deal: if you are having trouble receiving and/or reading the mass e-mails I send out from the SAQA-provided data base, send me an e-mail directly, describing your problem.  I will pass the problems on to SAQA tech support and meanwhile, if there are more than 3 of you with ongoing problems, I will construct a regional e-mail list and communicate that way.

If you didn't get the information in the mass mailing I sent out recently, here's a summary of the information:

September 10 Workshop: Registration Deadline Extended!

Summer is a busy time, so if you haven't managed to get your registration form and cheque in the mail for "Colour It, Fuse It!", the workshop/Parlour Meeting on September 10 in Calgary featuring B.C. member, artist, author and teacher, Susan Purney Mark, you now have four (4) more weeks for it to reach me (Margaret) -- through Friday, August 29.  That's the start of the Labour Day weekend, and the workshop is just 10 days later, so to be courteous and considerate of Susan's time to assemble the number of kits needed, please make sure meet this next deadline.  The fee is $45.00 for members; $50.00 for non-members.  This includes the workshop kit (a $20 value).  (As of today -- August 6 -- 8 spots remain. We can take a waiting list.)  Contact me (margblank@xplornet.ca) for a registration form if you don't have one.

SAQA Trunk Show F is Available for Sharing!

Our Co-Rep Katie Stein Sather of B.C. has acquired the 25th Anniversary Trunk Show -- Section F -- for use in Canada till at least April, 2015.  Ideally this 51-piece show (each is 7" x 9" in size, mounted on black mat board and encased in a clear wrapper) will make its way east across Canada. 

Katie has advised that the following dates for the Trunk Show F have already been booked:

• Sept. 17, 2014: FAN (Fibre Arts Network) Retreat;
• Sept. 24, 2014: Langley Quilt Guild meeting;
• Oct. 1, 2014: SAQA BC meeting;
• Oct. 25-26, 2014: (to be confirmed) Blue Mountain Quilt Guild Show.

It is hoped the trunk show will be available for Alberta in November/December, and move to Saskatchewan and Manitoba for January and February.  There is a pending request for it to return to B.C. (Vancouver Island) in March.  It will also be offered to Central Canada and Atlantic Canada, so if anyone else in the Western Canada Region would like it sooner rather than later, please contact your Co-Rep -- Katie in B.C., Dawn in SK/Manitoba, or me (Margaret) in Alberta.

(Please note that the SAQA Trunk Show Calendar has this show --Trunk Show F -- scheduled for Canada only through April 2015.  Arrangements can be made to with SAQA to extend this tour if there is enough interest in it across the country.)*

*One member has since suggested I contact the CQA re: Quilt Canada's show in Lethbridge in June 2015; if anyone can advise me who the contact person would be, I would be delighted to do so.

And thank you for your support!

April Workshop in Duncan, B.C.

"Landscapes: Digital and Stitched" is the name of a five-day workshop being held from Tuesday, April 8 through Saturday, April 12, 2014, at Studio G Art in Duncan, B.C.  Here are the details:

INSTRUCTOR: Martha Cole,  www.marthacole.ca

DATES: Tuesday, April 8 – Saturday, April 12, 2014 (5 days)

LOCATION:  Studio G Art, Duncan, BC

DESCRIPTION

In any landscape there is always a sense of great distance and wide space combined with really incredible amounts of details. How do you chose what to keep and what to minimize, particularly in a digital image that give you everything!  In this workshop we will explore a variety of techniques that will help you pick and choose what will best enhance the essence of the image using a number of aerial perspective techniques in combination with transparent fabric paints, colored pencils, free-motion stitching and quilting.

CONTACT:  Gloria Daly, www.studiogart.com

Martha is a fibre artist from Saskatchewan; she and her host for the workshop, Gloria Daly, are both SAQA members.