Category Archives: Supporters & Sponsors.
Businesses, organizations, and promoters of rural civic art. How to find dollars.
2nd Bothwell Scouts – “artistes”!
Mr. and Mrs. Wammes hosted the paint workshop for the 2nd Bothwell Boy Scouts to paint 5 blocks for the Longwoods Road Barn Quilt Trail. Good work!
Marion Johnson considering plot for a play about War of 1812
Exciting news. Marion Johnson, playwright, is enthused about writing a play about our War of 1812 history. Stay tuned. More information to come. We have interpreted our history through the barn quilts. She is going to interpret the social history of the War and bring it to the stage!
Meanwhile, her most recent work, Great Expectations is being mounted at the Wolf Performance Hall in London, February 2 – 10, 2012.
Great Expectations tells the story of young Pip who longs to be a gentleman, but is destined to become a blacksmith. Through his encounters with various wonderfully eccentric characters – including Magwich, the convict; Miss Havisham, an heiress who was jilted at the altar; Mr Jaggers, lawyer to the criminal classes; and many more – Pip does rise above his station, only to lose everything again.
Over 3,600 admired Netherlanders’ quilted masterpieces
By Gord Whitehead for the Strathroy Age Dispatch. Reprinted with permission.
Who were most impressed? The more than 3,600 visitors who descended on a tiny village ‘international’ destination for quilt viewing, the first-ever Dutch quilt creating delegation to Canada or the many hard working Ailsa Craig area volunteers who successfully sewed up their Quilts of the Netherlands show? Gotta
Raven Emslie, left, and Jeanne Hamers admire the beauty of ‘Holland’s Glorie’, one of 137 spectacular Quilts of the Netherlands on show last week in Ailsa Craig Recreation Centre. The quilt is the work of a woman named Ted Storm who was inspired by her grandmother’s gift of a Delftware plate. Ailsa Craig resident Emslie is a key member of the community group that organized and hosted the exhibits and Amsterdam area resident Hamers is president of the Dutch Quiltersgilde which made its first journey to Canada.
say all of them.
Targeted attendance of 3,000 for last week’s Monday through Saturday exhibition was surpassed by Friday afternoon and reached more than 3,600, co-organizer Raven Emslie reported at week’s end. “A woman came from B.C. specifically for this show.” Committee member Cathy Mitchell added, “They came from Washington State, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and all over Ontario.”
Jeanne Hamers, president of the Dutch Quiltersgilde, told Focus the 137 quilts her group brought to the show are “the cream of the crop” selected by the guild’s executive committee from thousands of prospects. Founded in 1983 and now with 14,000 members, Holland’s is the largest quilting guild in Europe, said Hamers who lives near Amsterdam. Twenty Quiltersgilde members made the journey to Ailsa Craig where they were billeted at the homes of area families.
“Everybody’s happy. We’ve had a wonderful time. The community has done its utmost to make us welcome,” the guild president said. An average 60 volunteers a day worked at the show, Emslie recalled. Hamers noted several of those volunteers are Dutch descendants and “it was very warming. A few even cried when they could speak Dutch again.” Of seven vendors of fabrics and other quilting supplies, two came from Holland and sold virtually every stitch of merchandise.
Petra Prins of Den Haan & Wagenmakers was so pleased she offered to return to sell at Ailsa Craig’s next international quilt festival already booked for May 1-5, 2012. “People like Dutch fabrics which are quite different from Canadian fabrics,” said Hamers. They are a type of cotton with reprinted patterns, old traditional costumes, mostly red, white and blue with a bit of purple. Prins featured original Dutch designs from the 17th and 18th centuries. Vendors also conducted workshops for visitors.
The quilters also found time to tour with visits to Stratford, Shakespeare and New Hamburg. “Canada is for us enormous,” enthused Hamers who recalled her guild’s only other ‘international’ exhibition was in neighbouring Belgium whose geographic expanse is equally as tiny as Holland’s. Emslie said community volunteers provided homemade food from the Ailsa Craig Recreation Centre’s kitchen during the week-long festival. “To be fiscally responsible we needed the (kitchen) profit to make it viable. It’s about building community.”
The festival wrapped up with a Saturday evening banquet at which Richard TerVrugt, Consul of the Netherlands in London (ON) made an entertaining speech. Lambton-Kent-Middlesex MPP Maria Van Bommel, North Middlesex Mayor Don Shipway and Ward Two (Ailsa Craig) Coun. Brian Ropp attended to deliver greetings and MP Bev Shipley voiced his government’s best wishes in a letter. The committee announced the quilts of Denmark will be featured in next May’s festival. In the words of member Cathy Mitchell, “We’re setting the standard this year. Hopefully we’ll reap the benefits next year.”
Ailsa Craig Quilt Festival 2010
When the local quilting shop closed and left town, Ailsa Craig was left with a gap. The successful quilt show
Jeanne Hamers-van der Werff, President of Quiltersgilde, does a jig with Gary Walker, organizer and host.
featuring quilts from abroad would also cease. Three years running, quilts from Russia, Kenya, and Ireland had been imported and festively displayed for all to enjoy.
A local committee formed and went to work. A connection with a Dutch quilting guild was made and during the week of May 23 – 28th, 137 Dutch quilts of varying shapes and sizes arrived for the fourth annual festival. The quilters also came.
On Sunday, residents saluted the Dutch visitors with over 100 quilts airing on porches and clotheslines throughout the village. Tables groaning with a pot luck buffet fed 125 people packed into Ye Olde Towne Hall. On Monday, the first day of the Festival, five hundred people visited the exhibition hung in the Ailsa Craig Recreation Centre. On Monday evening, a gala was held at the Recreation Centre with over 50 Festival Supporters in attendance. Read the rest of this entry
