A Plaid Quilt

Quilters are known for their generosity and the guilds that I have been a part of have made quilts for a variety of causes: premature babies, abused women, homeless people, victims of natural disasters and kids of all kinds to name a few. For me, it's a chance to let total strangers know that they have value as a person and the best way I know to show love is to make a quilt.
This quilt was sent to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Canada. Take a minute to look it up on your map. Look up, way up and you can find it on Victoria Island. Wikipedia says: "Cambridge Bay is a hamlet located on Victoria Island in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, Canada. It is named for Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, while the traditional Inuinnaqtun name for the area is Ikaluktuutiak or Iqaluktuttiaq meaning "good fishing place"
The Canadian north has many communities that have vast challenges with a number of issues: lingering issues from the residential school systems, food insecurity, substance abuse and overcrowded housing. With that is an almost invisible group of homeless people.
Homelessness in the far north looks a lot different than it does in any city in the south. Lack of resources and overcrowded housing conditions mean that available housing goes to family units and elderly. Single adults generally live with family members with housing and when those relationships run into difficulty, these people end up couch surfing without a place of their own. 
Omingmak Centre in Cambridge Bay was opened in 2017 to house some of these people to give them a place of their own. I love that it's a community centred organization and that it's not someone coming in from somewhere else and imposing a solution that may not work for their community. 

These are the two quilts I have sent there in the past year and I hope to send at least 2 more in the coming months. And if you want to help me support this small shelter in the middle of the Canadian north, message me at magpiequilts(at)gmail(dot)com.

Thanks!
--Ann

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pink Chevron Quilt Tutorial

Image
This is a little quilt I made for my newest grandbaby and I promised a tutorial for all of you. Materials required: 50 pink charm squares (5") 50 white or cream charm squares (5") Batting Backing Binding - approximately 170" length (Here's a great place to get your charms - SewFunQuilts on Etsy - $6.85 US for a pack of 30 squares) I used a fat eighth pack of 12 different pink fabrics and a piece of pink from my stash. It was enough for the 50 charm squares and the binding. A fat eighth is 9"x22" and you can get four 5" squares and one 2.25" binding strip from each with a 2" - 2.25" strip left over. Match each pink charm square with a white charm square. Draw a diagonal line through the center and sew a quarter inch seam on either side of your drawn line. Cut apart on your drawn line and press towards the pink fabric. Take all your pink/white squares and lay them out in a chevron pattern. There will be no need to trim to si
Read more

Blue Jean Quilt

Image
Pinterest is a great place for inspiration and I saw this quilt and quickly pinned it, knowing I would be back to make it. The pattern is found in Fons and Porter's Easy Quilts, Spring 2014 edition. Last week, I checked the magazines when I bought my groceries and bought the magazine. I think I could have figured it out on my own, but it's always nice to have a new magazine or two to browse through! I traced the circle template onto some template plastic that I've had for a very long time and dug my stack of old jeans out of the back of the closet. I found a video to play in the background while I traced and cut and in a few hours, I had 168 circles cut from my stack of blue jeans.  The thing that caught my eye about this particular jean quilt was the bright colored fabrics that were peeking out from between the blue jean circles. I have a lot of fat quarters and fabric scraps, but I also had 4 packs of charm squares from Moda's Basic Grey collectio
Read more

Fruit Pie Potholders or Hotpads Tutorial

Image
Last fall my mom was making a few of these for her local quilt show and sale. I thought they were pretty cool and have been keeping my eyes open for fruit themed fabric just in case I wanted to make a few. Pear Pie Hot Pad or Pot Holder At the end of May at Calgary's Heritage Park's Gathering of the Guilds quilt show, I found some great fruit fat quarters and they followed me home! I already had a tan colored fabric that could be used for the lattice pie crust, some insulbrite and cotton batting and a quick trip into Fabricland netted the shining heat resistant fabric (normally seen on ironing board covers) that would be the pie pan backing. Cutting Directions: I'm not much for finding a pattern for something that I can figure out, so I made a circle template from a piece of cardboard that was about 9" in diameter. For each pie, I cut 1 fruit fabric, 1 insulbrite batting, 1 cotton batting and 1 shiny fabric from the circle pattern. Pieces cut for pie pot hol
Read more