St. Savour's Church & Hall
12 Princess Street, Queenston, ON
Parking is available on the street
Cost for Entry: $5.00
St. Saviour – The Brock Memorial Church is proud to host "Queenston Quilts in Pews" featuring the quilted works of the Fabrigettes.
This event celebrates the artistry of local makers while raising vital funds to preserve our provincially designated heritage church.
Dedicated in 1879 to honour Major General Sir Isaac Brock, St. Saviour’s stands as a symbol of resilience, remembrance, and community spirit. The church is home to a striking collection of stained‑glass windows and sits on a serene landscape overlooking the Niagara River, offering a setting as inspiring as the artistry on display within.
Created in 2017 by six Niagara‑area quiltmakers known as the Fabrigettes, Highway of Tears is a powerful textile artwork inspired by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG). The group drew on the symbolism of the red dress and ribbon skirts to honour the lives of Indigenous women and girls lost to violence.
“The arrangement of the red shapes and changes in colour value and size create movement and perspective making a path for the eye to follow.”
The quilt received Second Place – Excellence in Modern Quilts at the 2018 Canadian Quilters’ Association National Juried Show in Vancouver, BC. Judges described it as “beautiful in its simplicity” and praised the background quilting for strengthening the message of the piece.
It later earned a Juror’s Choice Award at Fibre Content 2018, presented with the Art Gallery of Burlington, and subsequently toured seven Ontario museums between 2018 and 2020.
Today, Highway of Tears has a permanent home with the Native Women’s Association of Canada, where it continues to inspire reflection, learning, and reconciliation.
Quilters: Tara McInerney (Pelham), Lorna Costantini (St. Catharines), Debbie Eccles (Welland), Effie Faubert (St. Catharines), Dorothy Holdenmeyer (Beamsville), and Heather Salter (Thorold)
*Names in BOLD are the current members of the Fabrigettes.
"LIKE A GIRL" is a quilt that doesn’t whisper — it declares. Bursting with confidence, precision, and unapologetic energy, this award‑winning piece transforms a familiar phrase into a bold celebration of strength, identity, and womanhood. Every line, angle, and colour choice radiates intention, echoing the resilience and creativity of the women who shaped it.
This modern the quilt is celebrated for its uplifting message and its bold, impeccably crafted lettering. Designed and stitched by Lorna Costantini with the artistry of her six collaborators — including current Fabrigettes Stephanie Baisley, Dorothy Holdenmeyer, and Heather Slater,— the work stands as a testament to collective power and shared vision.
A standout at QuiltCon 2020, where it captured the Judges’ Choice Award, Like a Girl continues to inspire. It challenges stereotypes, reclaims language, and invites viewers to rethink what it means to “do anything like a girl.” In the quiet beauty of Queenston’s pews, this quilt doesn’t just hang — it will speak.
72” x 72” LIKE A GIRL By Lorna Costantini, St. Catharines, Ontario
Contributors: Stephanie Baisley, Jennifer Dyck, Effie Faubert, Dorothy Holdenmeyer, Heather Slater, Tara McInerney
“WOWZA” is a bold, energetic Improv‑style quilt created as a collaborative masterpiece by five current members of the Fabrigettes. Designed and composed together over 2024–2025, this vibrant work captures the spontaneity, trust, and creative chemistry that define the group.
This striking quilt will be one of the centrepiece displays at St. Saviour’s Queenston Quilts in Pews this October—an unforgettable burst of colour and imagination that truly earns its name: WOWZA.
Lorna Costantini is a modern quilter known for her signature Big Stitch Hand Quilting and her improvisational approach to design. She began quilting 13 years ago and draws inspiration from the Niagara Modern Quilt Guild, designer Carolyn Friedlander, and her close friends in the Fabrigettes.
A small‑business owner, Lorna designs and sells quilt patterns, teaches online, and presents trunk shows to quilt groups across Canada. Her work and writing have been featured in Canadian Quilter and Make Modern magazines. She is also a retired teacher, school board trustee, and realtor, and proudly served as Past President and founding member of the Niagara Modern Quilt Guild.
At the show, Lorna will be displaying Leftovers (2021), a 30" x 40" improv quilt created from gifted leftover blocks and finished with her signature hand‑stitched quilting. She will also have a selection of her quilt patterns available for purchase.
For Lorna, quilting is a joyful connection to friends—new and old. She treasures the intimacy of hand stitching, where fabric, memory, and conversation come together. Her favourite motto: “There are no quilt police. Mistakes are only yours to see.”
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Dorothy Holdenmeyer has been quilting for about 25 years, inspired by an exhibit in Kitchener that showcased quilting “from art to bed quilts,” an experience that opened her eyes to the possibilities of textured art. She gravitates toward Modern and Art quilts, especially pieces that carry a message.
Dorothy is known for incorporating script into her quilts—phrases, adages, quotes, and even full passages such as the introduction to A Tale of Two Cities. “The script adds another element to the quilt,” she notes. Her artistic influences include Jaquie Gering, Cindy Griselda, Irene Roderick, and Joe Cunningham.
Her work has been shown at Quilt Canada four times and in the Grand National three times as part of a group. At Queenston Quilts in Pews, Dorothy is exhibiting War and Remembrance (2014), a 64" x 72" improv and free‑motion quilt created to mark the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War. The quilt features unique fabric crosses, including subtle “phantom crosses” honouring soldiers whose bodies were never recovered.
For Dorothy, quilting is both expressive and restorative—“Quilting is my therapy.” She cherishes the friendships it brings and especially enjoys the planning and binding stages of the process.
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Heather Salter began quilting in 1992, when a hand‑appliqué Christmas wall‑hanging class in Etobicoke sparked a lifelong passion. From traditional hand‑pieced beginnings to discovering rotary cutting and reclaiming her mother’s old Kenmore sewing machine, quilting quickly became both creative expression and personal refuge. When her son was born in 1995, Heather joined the Sudbury and District Quilting and Stitchery Guild—her weekly night out and a vital source of community. After moving to Niagara in 2007, she continued her journey, later joining the Niagara Modern Quilt Guild in 2014 and, in 2026, the Lethbridge Modern Quilt Guild for its inspiring roster of modern quilting speakers and workshops. Today, the Fabrigettes provide the social connection and support that fuel her creative life.
Heather’s preferred styles—Improvisational Piecing and graphic design—reflect her love of colour, intuition, and play. Her motto, “Play don’t Plan,” guides her approach: choosing colours, building improvisational units, and exploring possibilities on the design wall. Design is her favourite part of the process, where instinct and experimentation take the lead.
A former lawyer, Heather finds that modern quilting allows her to balance her analytical nature with intuitive thinking and creative problem‑solving. Her artistic influences include the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson, whose stylized forms, abstraction, texture, and vivid colour palettes echo the qualities she strives for in her own work. She also draws inspiration from modern quilters such as Sherri Lynn Wood, Tara Faughnan, Carson Converse, Jenny Haynes, Heidi Parkes, and Irene Roderick.
Heather’s work has received recognition over the years, including a ribbon in Mixed Media at Quilts on the Rocks (1998), and several awards as part of the Fabrigettes, including a Second Place Modern category win at Quilt Canada and Judges Award at QuiltCon 2020.
Her featured quilt for this show is a maximalist improvisational wall hanging created from 35–40 curated fabrics selected during a 2023 QuiltCon class with Rossi Hutchinson. Though it may appear chaotic, the piece is grounded in intentional choices of colour, value, scale, and hue. Constructed through weekly prompts in a Shannon Fraser quilt‑along, the work floats on a field of negative space—a design decision that brings calm and cohesion to its vibrant complexity. Heather describes the quilt as unexpectedly soothing: despite its energy, “looking at this complex quilt actually restores my calm.”
Stephanie Baisley has been quilting for 12 years, drawn to the creative puzzle of designing each new piece. She especially loves the process of choosing colours—her favourite part of quilting—and often begins her work by exploring inspiring palettes that spark her imagination.
For Stephanie, quilting is an “addictive hobby,” a joyful blend of creativity, problem‑solving, and the satisfaction of bringing a new design to life. She is continually inspired by fabrics themselves and the endless possibilities they offer. Her work often features linen, a material she loves for the timeless yet modern feeling it brings to a finished quilt.
Stephanie’s quilts reflect her passion for design, her eye for colour, and her appreciation for materials that elevate both texture and style. She looks forward to sharing her work at Queenston Quilts in Pews and celebrating the artistry of quilting within this historic setting.
Wall Hanging created by Heather Slater
Karen Jantz has been quilting for 11 years, beginning when “a friend brought me to a Creative Festival in Toronto… bought a sewing machine, starting small!” She works in a Modern and Contemporary style and loves the blend of creativity and purpose that quilting offers: “I love that I can be creative with fabric that also serves a function.”
Karen enjoys experimenting with new methods rather than claiming a single signature technique, often trying approaches “that have been tested by others.” She finds inspiration in the world around her, especially architecture.
While she lists no formal awards, Karen’s quilting practice is deeply community‑minded — she donates many of her quilts to charities and fundraisers. At the show, she will also have completed quilts, totes, and other handmade items available for purchase.
Her favourite motto is “Finished is better than Perfect.” Quilting is her creative outlet, a way to keep learning, and a source of travel adventures. Her favourite moment in the process is the “magic” that happens when a quilt top becomes a finished quilt as it rolls off her long‑arm machine.
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Sewing and quilting have been part of Theresa’s world since childhood. Her mother, a 4‑H leader, encouraged sewing, homemaking skills, and a willingness to learn—values that shaped Theresa’s lifelong love of textiles. With quilting woven into her family history through her grandmothers and the women of her church who quilted for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) missions, she grew up playing around quilt frames and absorbing the quiet artistry of community quilting.
Although quilting was always present, Theresa began quilting seriously in 2012 after a family trip to Pennsylvania. Inspired by the quilt and fabric shops she visited, she returned home and made a table runner—“and I haven’t looked back since.” That spark grew into a passion that blends tradition, creativity, and continuous learning.
Theresa enjoys both modern and traditional quilting, and has been a member of the Niagara Modern Quilt Guild for more than a decade. She loves handcrafts of all kinds—cross‑stitch, knitting, needlework—and brings that appreciation for detail into her quilting. Her favourite motto, the 4‑H teaching she grew up with, is “Learn to Do by Doing,” a perfect reflection of her hands‑on, curious approach.
Piecing is her favourite part of the process, especially foundation paper piecing, where precision and accuracy bring deep satisfaction. She is drawn to sampler quilts and projects that allow her to keep learning, experimenting, and challenging herself. Theresa also finds joy in creating quilts for family and friends and in donating quilts to the Mennonite Relief Sale in New Hamburg—knowing her work can bring comfort or support to others.
One of her quilts, Bloom Where You’re Planted, was purchased at the MCC Relief Sale and is now displayed at Lens Mill Store in St. Jacobs, a meaningful recognition of her work’s reach and impact.
At Queenston Quilts in Pews, Theresa is exhibiting Vintage Restyle, a vibrant sampler quilt created during a 12‑week summer program. Each block was designed by a different quilt designer, reinterpreting traditional blocks with a modern twist. The quilt incorporates foundation paper piecing, traditional piecing, and curved Drunkard’s Path blocks. Bright, cheerful, and full of colour, Vintage Restyle hangs in Theresa’s dining room during the summer months—bringing warmth and joy to the space.
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Sharlene has been quilting for more than 35 years, carrying forward a family legacy while forging her own creative path. Both of her grandmothers were accomplished quilters known for hand appliqué and embroidered quilt tops, but Sharlene discovered her passion elsewhere—teaching herself machine piecing with nothing more than determination and a book of 12" quilt blocks she found in her workplace staff room. That independent, adventurous spirit continues to shape her quilting today.
Sharlene loves to modernize traditional quilt blocks, reimagining them through unexpected colour combinations and fresh layouts. Her favourite part of the process is planning the colours and textures for a quilt top—an experience that often leads, quite happily, to buying new fabric. Her motto, “Sewing mends the soul,” reflects the comfort and joy she finds in the craft.
While she enjoys many techniques, Sharlene has a special appreciation for the crisp lines and precise points of paper piecing, even if she doesn’t use it often. For her, quilting is driven by the thrill of creation: the moment she steps back and thinks, “Wow, I made that.” Even when working from a pattern, she sees the pairing of fabric and design as her own artistic expression.
Her featured quilt for this show was made during the COVID years, using a fabric collection she already had on hand—“a good hint I had planned this one a few months prior,” she notes. The quilt reflects both resourcefulness and creativity during a time when fabric stores were closed but inspiration remained wide open.
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