June Meeting

We had some special treats at the June meeting. But first, here's some of the announcements for those who couldn't make it.

Thursday, June 11, a new Modern Quilt Guild webinar will be released: Quilt Show Judging and Jurying Panel.  You'll be able to get insider tips from quilt experts and former judges: Jacquie Gering, Shannon Page, Stevil Graves and Heather Grant.  They'll discuss jurying, shipping, photos, scoring, and the dos and don'ts of submitting your work.  You should have received an email with a link to register.  If you didn't, you might want to check out your membership.  You're missing out on all kinds of things if you haven't activated it yet.

You should have also received the announcement that the QUILTCON West (Feb 2016) Catalog is now available.  Early registration starts June 25 for members.  The Keynote Speaker will be Gwen Marston.

The International Quilt Festival will once again host a special exhibit of works from Modern Quilt Guild members to premiere at this year's show in Houston... and ALL worldwide MQG members are invited to participate! Members may submit up to two quilts for consideration. All quilts must be at least 36" on each side (no maximum width/height). And completed submissions with visuals must be received online by July 1, 2015.

The deadline for the Riley Blake Fabric Challenge is July 31.  Just post a picture on FB or Instagram and tag it with #mqgfabricchallenge and you can win.  You can also upload your pictures on the MQG site https://community.themodernquiltguild.com/groups/upload-photos-2015-riley-blake-fabric-challenge-here  There's also a video from the fabric designer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ4_YRXZIJo&feature=youtu.be

The Michael Miller Glitz Fabric Challenge is also available for participation. All fabric will be shipped by mid-July, and the deadline for entries is November 30, 2015. Your  quilt will be entered it into the Michael Miller Fabric Challenge category at QuiltCon West 2016. The top prize for this category is $1,000.  If you didn't get in on the free fabric you can still participate.

And don't forget our very own President's Challenge deadline is the September guild meeting.  That one if just for fun.

We had a reminder about our next meeting.   Different date AND different location from our normal guild meetings. The room seats 75 so you can bring friends to see the presentation by Victoria Findlay Wolfe, but guests will be charged $5.00.  Meeting will be on July 9 at 7 (6:30 sewcial time) at the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas, 111 Torcido Drive (near Broadway and Patterson behind Central Market).  Workshops are the following Friday and Saturday.  One slot is still left for Saturday's VFW workshop.  Let Leslie know if you're interested.

The next retreat was announced for August 28-30 at Kerrville's Main House, right next to Creations. This is a great way to get to know some of the other guild members a bit better and get some UFOs taken care of.  To reserve your slot, the deposit is $35 with the balance $165 due at the August meeting.

One of the special presentations from the meeting was from Eileen, Beekeeper for the Journey to Modern Art Quilting Bee.  She showed us some of what the group has been doing and invited everyone in the guild to join in.  Their next meetup will be June 13 at Kathy's house where they'll be working on Snazzy Self Portraits.  They are constantly challenging themselves to try something new, and if you'd like to try something new yourself, come join them.  Let Eileen know you're interested and she'll add you to their FB group so you can get information about all their meetups.  Check out the pics below. 

The Journey Bee members made this quilt to benefit blind children's programs.  This quilt will be part of the "blind" fundraising auction for the San Antonio Lighthouse for the Blind 5th Annual Art in Dark event held Thursday, June 18th from 6:30 -9:00 p.m. at The Do Seum, San Antonio's new children's museum.  Go here for more info.

 

 

A group of our members did a local Deep in the Heart of Texas Road Trip Quilt Along and those who finished brought in their quilts.  It was so fun, the group is considering another quilt along in the near future.  Sorry my pics didn't work out as expected, but here's some of the beauties. Some participants donated prizes that were drawn as each quarter was completed and prizes were also donated for those who finished.  Winners included Joy, Reagan, Debra, Edna, Allison, and Jessie (by random drawing).

Another thing you missed was the presentation of two baby quilts made for our members by our members. Both moms look pretty happy, see below.

 

 

We didn't have much participation in the last two Blocks of the Month. May's Scrappy Majesties didn't have any entries, so Susan took hers home. Kathy was the only one who brought in June blocks, so she took hers home. Sorry it happened fast, and I didn't grab pictures.  Below are the blocks for the July Block of the Month. Check on FB for instructions.  This one is a bit smaller so hopefully we'll have some more participants.

 

We talked about some other charity initiatives.  The board had added money to the budget to pay for shipping and help support the QuiltCon Charity Challenge.  A motion was made, seconded and members were in favor of using that money to support the Barnabas Connection, a non-profit organization that is providing support to the flood victims of our neighbors in Wimberley.  We'll use donated fabric to participate in the QuiltCon West Charity Challenge.  We'll get more info about that later.

 

Another charity effort was mentioned for those who want to help Texas flood victims through #floodtexaswithlove.  If you would like to make an improv quilt block for victims of the recent Texas floods, Sara Stetson from Austin is collecting these blocks. Deadline is June 30th and more details are here.

 

And one of the meeting favorites was the Sew-n-Tell.  Members were reminded that this was for modern quilts only (even though we all may love quilts of all genres).  It was also suggested if you want to show your non-Modern quilts off to your fellow members that you could bring them to the sewcial hour that precedes every meeting.  See below for this month's eye candy.

The program for the June Meeting was a Demo-Day.  I'll post more about that in a separate post.  Sorry if you had to miss this meeting.  Hope we see you in July.

SAMQG Spring Retreat

If you look up retreat in the dictionary there are a variety of definitions: 
    1) the act of withdrawing, as into safety or privacy; retirement; seclusion.
    2) a place of refuge, seclusion, or privacy;
    3) an asylum, as for the insane;
    4) a retirement or a period of retirement for religious exercises and meditation.

But to a quilter, a retreat is something a bit different and yet part of all of those things. We definitely do withdraw -- but not into safety, privacy, retirement or seclusion. We withdraw from our normal everyday life into a place where we have all we need to make our quilting dreams come true. We definitely go to a place of seclusion, but not a seclusion from everyone, just from non-quilters. Many would think it’s some kind of asylum and some would say we do go a bit crazy. We wake up very early in the morning, stay up very late at night and in between we sew, we build with blocks, we quilt (and we eat a little). To some of us quilting is almost like a religious exercise – creation. And I’m sure to many as we sit silently and imagine and dream and think of what we can make out of the beautiful fabric we’ve seen, it looks like meditation.

So a quilting retreat is everything in the dictionary and more. It’s a special time where it doesn’t matter what your age is, where you came from, where you’re going or what your style is. It doesn’t matter what kind of equipment you use, what kind of color palette you love, or what kind of design you’re dreaming of. It only matters that you are in a room with others who like you want to create something beautiful from fabric.

It’s so fun to watch things take shape and grow. But when you have 24 people all creating at the same time, it is difficult to capture it and still be able to do some sewing yourself. So below are some pics for you in various stages of completion. I hope you enjoy them and if you come to a guild meeting, I hope you see them completed and put to good use on a bed or a wall or somehow displayed for others to enjoy.

I'm gonna make a few apologies about these pictures. First, you won't see many people. When you're at retreat you really aren't looking your best and I am not a good photographer anyway, so rather than insult anyone with a bad photo, I only used pics with people when there was no other way to show their creation. Second, I am not adding the names of the creators of these masterpieces. Third, many of these quilts were more done when the retreat was over and I didn't get pictures of them in their latest form.