Niagara modern quilt expo

May 2024 – this is the date of our Niagara Modern Quilt Expo celebrating Niagara Modern Quilt Guild’s 10th anniversary!

We look forward to welcoming you to Niagara and sharing for your pleasure the work of our many talented makers.The Niagara Modern Quilt Guild was founded in May 2014 with a small membership of fourteen quilters seeking a collective of like-minded makers who adopted a modern esthetic of quilt making and a friendly open community welcoming all. As a fledgling Guild it held a small exhibit at Quilt Canada 2014 held in Niagara to announce its arrival.

The first meeting of the new Guild was hosted at a quilt shop in Niagara-on-the Lake, Modern Bee (sadly since closed), and the inaugural President was Susan Bowslaugh who is an accomplished modern quilter. As the Guild grew in number the meetings moved to another local quilt shop, Stitch in Lincoln, also sadly now closed. The Guild continued to grow and eventually moved to a church in St. Catharines and now meets in the community of Pelham (Fonthill) at their new recreation facility.

Today the Guild has grown to nearly 70 members and is a regional community bringing in members from each of the twelve local municipalities of the Niagara Region. A few members travel from as far as Oakville and Burlington and several others participate in zoom activities from as far away as Pembroke, Elliot Lake and even Quebec. The Guild continues to attract new members from out of our local area who are interested in modern quilting by offering content through zoom.

As an affiliate member of the Modern Quilt Guild™ (MQG) the Niagara Modern Quilt Guild is one of over 90 member guilds world-wide along with individual members who participate in a thriving on-line community of modern quilters. You can learn more about MQG here: https://www.themodernquiltguild.com. As a member of MQG our Guild members have access to the extensive resources and content of this mothership. Niagara Modern Quilt Guild is also a proud member guild of the Canadian Quilters Association (CQA).

Quilts made by our members have been exhibited and won awards at QuiltCon, the prestigious juried modern quilt show hosted annually by MQG in the United States and at the Quilt Canada National Juried Show presented annually by CQA. Several members are quilt pattern designers selling their designs internationally and members both teach and present trunk shows of their work.

Charitable quilting is also an important part of our Guild program. Through our charitable giving program, “Quilting Kindness”, members make quilts for distribution to many local agencies that provide emergency shelter, transitional housing and other supports for women and families in crisis. Individually many of our members also support charitable quilting programs such as Quilts for Survivors, Quilts of Valour, Project Linus, Project Noah and Victoria’s Quilts or donate quilts for use in fundraising raffles or auctions in support of many local initiatives.