WEYBURN – The Crocus Quilters Guild of Weyburn set up 223 exhibits around the Weyburn Exhibition Hall for their annual two-day quilt show, “Owl Be Quilting”, including a guest speaker by longtime member Charlene Wimmer.
The show had about 450 visitors come through to see the quilts, with a large crowd on hand Friday evening to hear Wimmer share about her love of quilting in a trunk show she put on.
Around 45 of the guild’s 60 members had quilts on display, with many extras put up around the rink. The raffled quilt, donated by Eileen Wright before she passed away, was won by Judy Hemphill.
Wimmer is busy as a member of three quilting guilds, at Torquay and Radville in addition to the Weyburn guild, and lives at Beaubier.
As a traveler, she noted she has visited many quilt shows, from Prince Edward Island to Brandon, Houston, Texas, Minot, N.D., Red Deer, Alta., as well as Regina, Moose Jaw, Vibank, Torquay, Radville and Weyburn.
She also loves shopping in quilt stores, and noted on one trip, she visited 60 quilt stores between Red Deer and Oregon.
Wimmer spent time at an international quilt show in Houston, noting she was helping in one booth when a Japanese class came by. They didn’t know any English and she didn’t know any Japanese, but they were able to understand what was happening at the booth.
She told a story where she was shopping while in Houston, and a fire alarm went off but she kept on shopping.
“That either means I’m a dedicated quilter or I’m an idiot. My son once read my speech out, and he said, ‘Idiot …’,” said Wimmer to laughter.
While talking with a group of other quilters in Houston, she asked what machines they liked using, with quilters from England, Australia and Texas, and they all used the Janome brand, as she does herself. As she noted, she has four of them, “and yes, I can only sew on one at a time.”
One of the quilts she showed was started in a class in Weyburn, and had three-quarters done when her basement got flooded in 2011.
Afterward, once she got her sewing room put back in order, she realized she had lost a fair amount of her white material, so she took it apart. During COVID, she put it back together again, and called it “Odd Man Out”, as she had left one square, “the way it was supposed to be.”
Noting that quilters never throw anything away, Wimmer noted there are three quilts she will never ever sell, one of them being her elephant quilt. She had made it along with friends of the Torquay guild, and thought it looked ordinary, so they dressed it up with pearls, including on one cloth on the elephant’s head.
“She is my favourite, and I can’t sell her – but if I keep quilting, I might have to,” she said to laughter.
She also noted she loves buttons, recalling one quilt was on display that had a number of buttons on it, and a viewer said, “Oh look at all the buttons – it must be Charlene’s quilt.”
For one of the quilts she displayed with several buttons on it, she noted her granddaughter helped her pick out a number of the buttons, so it was special to her.
