Winterport quilters make their debut

The Winterport Clippers is a new kid on the quilting block in Area 6 of the Pine Tree Quilters Guild. It joins Bear Paws Quilters, Bangor; Clueless Quilters, Stetson; Hampden Highland Quilters, Hampden; Heart in Hand Quilters, Pittsfield-Hartland; Memory Makers Quilters, Dover-Foxcroft; Orono Quilters, Orono; Pieceful Patchers, St. Albans; School House Quilters, Lincoln; and Scrapbaggers, Troy, plus 60 more chapters statewide, in the 2,068-member sisterhood of the needle.

“It was easy,” said Winterport Clippers founder Khristine LaChance. She had participated in quilt groups in Hampden and Bucksport and “thought it would be nice to have a group in town.” She talked with friends who quilt to determine the level of interest. She set a meeting date and place, wrote letters to quilting friends and put up posters in public places in Winterport advertising formation of the group. A dozen women showed up for the first meeting in January 2006.

“Groups strengthen communities,” said LaChance, a retired teacher and school principal, who has been a quilter since 1985.

The Winterport Woman’s Club had recently renovated the Victoria Grant Center, and LaChance saw it as the ideal place for the fledgling group to meet. “Plenty of room and big tables,” she said.

Since its establishment, the Winterport Clippers has grown to 20 members, some who are experienced quilters and some who have never done any sewing at all.

Seventeen of those women turned out for the Jan. 8 meeting at which member and quilting teacher Nancy Ronco conducted a class on making a take-along, a quilter’s tool that is cutting mat, ironing surface and felt board all in one handy unit. That particular project required lots of fabric cutting and sticking down of double-sided tape, but no sewing and was, for the most part, completed in two hours.

“I adapted it from a pattern I used several years ago,” said Ronco, who runs a long-arm machine quilting business in Winterport and conducts private quilting classes. Ronco has been a member of the Winterport Clippers since its inception. She also is a member of the Hampden Highlands Quilters.

“It’s fun to share a hobby with others who like to do the same thing,” said member and art teacher Nancy Blatz of Monroe. “You get to see what people do, get good ideas from them.”

As a group, said member Kris Brown, the Winterport Clippers boasts many years of collective experience – 460 years of sewing, 262 years of quilting and 36 years of teaching.

The goal of Winterport Clippers, LaChance said, is to share quilting knowledge with other members, to conduct community projects and to learn new things. “There’s always a new way to do things in quilting,” she said. She envisions a yearlong “mentoring and monitoring” project in which group members focus on every aspect of quilting, such as color and design, selecting patterns, estimating yardage, the tools of the trade such as cutting implements, choosing fabric, piecing, hand and machine quilting, binding techniques, and labeling quilts after completion.

The Winterport Clippers meets at 7 p.m. the first and third Mondays of each month at the Victoria Grant Center in Winterport. Anyone from the area with an interest in quilting is welcome to join, LaChance said. Dues are $15 a year. The next meeting will be held Jan. 22. At that meeting Nancy Ronco will teach members how to make a portable scrap bag and pincushion.

The Winterport Clippers chose its name because of its historical allusion to the ships that once sailed the Penobscot, and in honor of local school sports teams.

To obtain information about the Winterport Clippers, call Khris LaChance at 223-5424, or Sandy Lee Horn at 525-4433.

Snippets

. A reader e-mailed that she just finished reading “Knitting,” a novel by Anne Bartlett, which she borrowed from Bangor Public Library. “It is a novel about two widows. I think anyone who knits would enjoy it,” she wrote. Another book knitters might enjoy is the novel “The Knitting Circle” by Ann Hood.

. Aspire Media’s Interweave Press announced that it has acquired the PBS program “Needle Arts Studio.” The program, according to a press release from Interweave Press, “is the only needle arts program on public television.” Needleworkers interested in having “Needle Arts Studio” added to the public television programming schedule in Maine should call or write the program director at Maine Public Broadcasting Corp., 941-1010.

Interweave Press also acquired ownership of Quilting Arts and Cloth Paper Scissors magazines.

Call Ardeana Hamlin at 990-8153, or e-mail ahamlin@bangordailynews.net.