Award-winning quilter’s exhibit raises funds to tackle global hunger

Renske Helmuth is matter-of-fact and somewhat dismissive about her quilting legacy and contribution to the Canadian quilting scene.

“I don’t consider myself an artist. An artist is somebody who breathes their art, lives their art,” said the Moorefield resident. “I don’t. Quilting is just something I do. It’s not (my) only passion.” 

Helmuth has ridden horses, milked cows, fed chickens and tended gardens, and if quilting were her only outlet, she said she’d likely not enjoy it as much. 

“I like the challenge. For me, the road to doing it is it,” Helmuth said. “After it’s done? It’s done.” 

After announcing her retirement from the New Hamburg Mennonite Relief quilt sale, Helmuth felt it was a good time to showcase her collection of more than 100 quilts. 

An acclaimed quilter, she has had nine feature quilts in the annual New Hamburg Mennonite Relief sale that have cumulatively raised $130,000 since 2000 for the Mennonite Central Committee Canada (MCC), a Christian relief, development and ministry organization.

Her exhibit, which held tours Sept. 9 and 10, had free admission but visitors were asked to make a $20 donation to Canada Foodgrains Bank. Visitors could also bid on five of Helmuth’s quilts, with the highest bidder receiving an original quilt. 

Tour slots for the exhibit and fundraiser filled quickly, providing a steady stream of quilt enthusiasts eager to view the work of a master quilter. 

“Renske’s work is amazing and so varied. Her very first quilt is here, this baby quilt. It’s been well used,” said Kathy Bissett, a long-time friend and fellow Waterloo County Quilters’ Guild member. 

Bissett said Helmuth is not only an award-winning quilter but also an excellent and sought-after teacher. 

“She’s curious. When she learns of a different technique or is drawn to a certain style or ethnicity, she has to learn about it,” said Bissett. “And then she has to share. She can’t help it.”

Bissett said attendees could bid on five Helmuth original quilts of varying sizes, all of which had reasonable opening bids.

“Look at the quilts that she’s had in the (New Hamburg) sale and what the value was,” she said. “These are Renske Helmuth designs.”

Kaleidoscope of Nations, Helmuth’s 2003 feature quilt at New Hamburg, featured a dove surrounded by a swirling mosaic of colour edged with “dolls” of the world quilted by members of the Waterloo County Quilters Guild and Listowel Mennonite Church. 

“With the doll quilt, the whole is more than the parts,” Helmuth said, adding contributors ranged from beginners to experts and used material donated from the 40 countries where MCC and Canada Foodgrains Bank programs are in effect.

It sold for $44,000.

“(The woman who purchased it) came to the relief sale to buy a strawberry pie, and then she saw it and said, ‘I want it’,” said Helmuth. “Then Len’s Mill’s Bruce Menary bid her up. That’s the only one he didn’t get.”

Helmuth never thought she’d see such a high bid again, but Menary bought her ‘Threads of Africa’ quilt for $42,000 at the auction in 2015.

Helmuth’s learning tours to Nepal, Kenya and Tanzania to experience firsthand the work of the Canada Foodgrains Bank and MCC, are reflected in Threads of Africa and her final quilt for the New Hamburg sale, Glimpses of Nepal.

“She goes and creates quilts that are born of what she has seen,” said Christina Philips, communications manager for Canada Foodgrain Bank. “She also uses that as inspiration, both in what she can contribute to, but then what she has seen happen over there. It’s a nice circle.”

The showcase raised $11,386 in donations, and Philips expects several thousand more once the quilt bids are finalized and processed.

Helmuth said in Holland, they teach school-aged children to sew, knit and crochet, but her children’s interest – however fleeting – was through osmosis. They saw her quilting, and when they showed an interest, she helped them. Her daughter-in-law Emily and her sisters have also learned to quilt. 

When Helmuth’s granddaughter Evelyn was three, they made a simple quilt to mark the 2016 International Plowing Match at Emily’s family farm in Wellington County. 

“That was the start,” said Helmuth. “She’s very creative.”

Evelyn, now nine, recently entered a national show with her first solo design and quilting attempt. 

That small quilt is the latest one added to a six-generation collection of family quilts, said Helmuth. The oldest quilt dates from Renske’s husband Laurence’s great-grandmother’s 1860 quilt and follows that maternal line until it reaches his mother and Helmuth. There is also a quilt from Helmuth’s daughter Jeanette from 1989, completed when she was 11.

“They will never hang again, not like this,” said Helmuth. “On Sunday, my daughter and daughter-in-law will go through it and decide what they want and if they want to keep in for the kids or whatever. Then the rest, we’ll decide from then on.”