Bryce Forbes
To showcase their own personal work, the Cabin Country Quilt Guild will open their “Swing into Spring” display tonight starting at 6 p.m. at the Fort Frances Museum.
Running until May 26, more than 100 quilts will decorate the two floors—ranging from huge quilts to aprons and bags.
Opening night of the quilt show, the first at the museum since 2003, will feature a reception, with tea and dainties being served.
As part of the admission fee for the evening, there is a raffle for one of the quilts on display.
One of the quilts on display was put together by Janice Wright, who spent almost 200 hours hand-stitching it together.
But with new innovations in quilting, most of the ones created now are done by machine.
“A lot of people want a quilt that is done in day, but some of these [ones on displays] take months and years,” noted Gail Govier, president and three-year member of the Cabin Country Quilt Guild.
“You can make heirlooms,” said Wright. “Some quilts are made to be looked after and last for a long time.
“Other times, you make [them] to be used—like baby quilts—so that they can tolerate lots of washing.
“In the old days, people used anything to make a quilt and it was for warmth,” she added.
“Now we do some of it to hang on walls.”
A quilt completed by Govier that is on display for the show is an example of one to be hung on the wall.
With depictions of poppies to resemble Remembrance Day, the quilt will be donated to the Royal Canadian Legion in Emo.
The Cabin Country Quilt Guild is composed of about 40 district residents, ranging in age from their 20s to late-70s.
But Wright noted there is one 91-year-old women in Fort Frances who took up quilting in her 80s.
“We are not all little grey-haired women,” laughed Govier, an Emo resident who has been quilting since the 1970s.
“We may have dyed hair, but there are young people,” she stressed.
The group meets on the first Wednesday of every month at Zion Lutheran Church (1105 Scott St.)
“We have a little meeting, and a lot of the time people will bring in a new technique they have learned and teach it,” noted Wright, adding they always are looking for new members.
The members range from beginners all the way to advanced.
In addition to the Cabin Country Quilt Guilds, there also is another group, called “The Sew and Sew’s,” that meets here every week, although it is more as a social event than a teaching program.
There also are a pair of quilting clubs over in International Falls.
