Feature Friday: Ginette Vallieres / The Quilting Princess

Hi.  My name is Ginette Vallieres. I am a stay-at-home mom/ part-time Educational Assistant with two beautiful little girls and a wonderful husband, who lives in Orleans Ontario, a suburb of our nation's capital, Ottawa.  My blog is called The Quilting Princess.  quiltyascharged-ginette.blogspot.ca

I have been quilting for almost 19 years now, I was 18 when I started.  I am a fourth generation quilter.  I grew up watching my mother and grandmother sew, knit, crochet, do needlwork and quilt.  I did a lot of cross-stitch in high school, while my mom was teaching quilting classes and joined a quilting guild.  I watched her quilt for a while and finally decided I wanted to give it a try.  I asked her to find me an easy pattern and some fabric.  She let me borrow all of her tools and taught me the proper way to use them.  I made a scrappy crib sized quilt.  I am not sure what the pattern was called, it was a mystery quilt from her guild.  My mom and grandmother hand quilted my quilt for me using a margarine container lid as a stencil.  They weren't even done quilting that quilt, that I was making my second quilt, a log cabin wallhanging using 1 1/2" strips, that I machine quilted myself.  I have been quilting ever since.

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I have grown quite a bit since then, sharing my passion with my mom and other quilting friends. I started my blog in September 2011.  I needed a place to share my passion with others who love fabric and thread as much as I do.  I have had lots of fun meeting other quilters.  What a wonderful on-line quilting community we have!  Although I do love seeing all of the new and modern quilting techniques, patterns and fabrics, I do consider myself a more traditional quilter.  My favorite patterns are the Log Cabin and Dresden Plates.  I do like playing with some of the more modern fabrics but my all-time favorite quilts are always scrappy!

My mother has had a Gammill long-arm quilting machine for 13 years now and, a year ago, I finally decided it was time to try.  I have quilted three of my own quilts on the long-arm this past year and they turned out pretty good.  I am looking forward to doing more!  My mom and I also finished our first collaborative quilt back in March!  We call it "Mother Daughter Baskets".  This quilt was started back in 1998!  Over the years the original plan for the quilt changed quite a bit but we are thrilled with the final product.  I machine pieced and hand appliqued the blocks while my mom machine pieced the border and the quilt top.  She also quilted it on her long-arm. You can read more about it here: http://quiltyascharged-ginette.blogspot.ca/2012/03/mother-daughter-baskets.html

This year I am the challenge coordinator at The Common Thread Quilt Guild.  http://www.commonthread.on.ca/  I had a blast in September and October convincing members to sign up for a box top challenge.  I can't wait to see what they come up with!  I love sharing my enthusiasm with others.  I also have a Designer I embroidery machine and love making custom labels for quilts.

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I was asked to share with you my biggest dream.  My biggest dream has always been to be a great mom and homemaker, to have healthy, thriving children who will succeed in whatever they choose to do.  So far, so good!  I must say that aside from that, I would love to start teaching quilting classes in the next year or two, and eventually would like to teach children too.  Both my girls are already sewing and playing with fabric.

I love all aspects of making a quilt, from picking the fabric, to machine piecing, machine or hand applique, machine quilting and binding.  I have recently been bitten with the EPP bug too!  If you follow my blog, you will see however that I have a LOT of UFOs and my favorite part of quilting is starting a new project!  I hope you will join me and stop by my blog to see what project I am working on next!

Thank you Monika and Rita for letting me share my quilting story.

WIP Wednesday #67 @ TN&TN

WIP Wednesday #66 @ TN&TN

WIP Wednesday #65 @ TN&TN

WIP Wedndesday #64 @ TN&TN

All Candian Blog Hop

Mark your calenders!  There's an all Canadian blog hop coming up.  Check it out...

Thanks to the folks at Sew Sisters for organizing this and letting us know!  

You can read more about it HERE.

 

Feature Friday - Ariane Kring of Ariane Quilts

Hi! My name is Ariane Kring. I am 35 years old and a quilt blogger from Kingston, Ontario. My blog is called Ariane Quilts.

I've been blogging since December 2008 and quilting since August 2008. I've always been a crafter. When I was a young girl I always asked for craft kits and supplies for Christmas or my birthday. I tried many crafts, mostly paper crafts and painting. After I had my three kids, I did a lot of cross-stitching. The only sewing I really did was hemming pants which I was not very good at. The summer of 2008, I became really stressed out. Between work, kids and the normal life duties of a mother, I felt like I needed something: something for myself, and something to concentrate on so that I wouldn't stress so much. I took a holiday back home to Northern Ontario. My mother was going through some old quilts. These were all utility quilts that she had sewn for us kids. I remembered the warmth and comfort those quilts brought.
When I came back to Kingston, I decided to make a little baby quilt. I loved choosing the fabric and coming up with a pattern. I found it so exciting and inspiring. I had no idea what I was doing. I went online and discovered the blogging community. The tutorials helped me learn how to quilt. I was hooked. I just had to make more quilts. I became very inspired by scrappy quilts. I made three scrappy twin size quilts in my first six months of quilting. One of those was a hand pieced and hand quilted tumbling block quilt. The first year and a half I made mostly traditional scrappy quilts.

 

 
As I discovered more online, I started adding a bit more of a modern twist to my quilts. I loved the modern fabrics, but also loved traditional patterns. I love the mix of modern traditional quilts. I started designing my own quilt patterns. Putting my own twist on these modern traditional quilts. With inspiration from the online quilting community, I made a queen size carpenter star quilt for my youngest brother's wedding. I made a scrappy jumbo carpenter star block surrounded by a border that I designed with hst's. I quilted it myself on my 30 year old Kenmore sewing machine. That was a challenge.

   

I still have never taken a class. I've learned through trial and error. I've also been encouraged by the online quilters and the local quilters in the quilt shops and my quilt guild. I have become an executive member of my Local Quilt Guild. I have found this group to be so inspiring and encouraging.  This year I've made many smaller quilts. My favorite is the quilt I made for my daughter's grade 7 teacher. I used a very simple pattern found online on the Film in the Fridge blog called rectangle squared. I adjusted the measurements to make the blocks larger and sashing thinner. I love the modern fabrics in this quilt and the simplicity of the pattern. It was fast to make and fit into my busy schedule.

 
 
I do inspire to do more with quilting, like teaching classes and publishing patterns. I love to encourage other quilters, and do my best to inspire them through my blog. I do plan to make quilting a huge part of my life as I get older. It's one of those crafts that can be shared and bring a lot of comfort to others. I think that's why I love it so much!! I do hope you join me sometime on my blog, and share my journey as I grow and become a better more creative quilter. 

Here's the link to my blog: Ariane Quilts

Thanks so much to The Needle & Thread Network blog team for having me here. I'm honored!!