York Heritage Quilters Guild Meeting - Hilary Rice

Last night at our guild meeting the guest speaker was Hilary Rice from Nova Scotia:  http://www.mestudios.ca/  As her web site claims she really is more a textile and mixed media artist than a quilter. As a child she loved both music and art but in high school had to make a choice and went into music. She married had a family, then her husband decided to change careers, and went from the corporate world and became an Anglican minister.

Being a minister, you and your family end up travelling a lot across the country to different postings. Hillary transitioned out of music and into art and took up weaving and spinning. In BC she was involved in various weavers and spinners guilds, but then her husband got posted to a town where there wasn't a weavers and spinners guild. One of the ladies from that church invited her to their quilt guild and she got introduced to quilting. That was in 2000. So she hasn't been doing it long. Also she really didn't start out in the traditional piecing type quilting, she did more landscape and art quilts almost from the beginning. She quickly experimented with embellishments, different fabrics and techniques. She then moved into using metal, glass, wood, etc, and burning things, melting things, etc. So it really evolved beyond quilting. I got some pictures of her work that she brought which is the art and landscape quilts that she has done. On her web site you can see more of her more current abstract work.