All About April

Rebecca encouraged folks to use their Modern Quilt Guild membership benefits and check out the webinars, free patterns and other options.  She suggested checking out the write up on Quiltcon and the latest webinar on Perfection and Procrastination.

We're looking for a Project Manager for the Quiltcon 2017 Charity Challenge.  This year’s challenge requires participants to work collaboratively to create completed quilts using a predetermined color palette while crafting a design that plays with scale.  You can get more info here. Let one of the board members know if you're interested.  If the guild is going to participate, we must sign up by July 30. You'll have lots of support, but we need a leader/coordinator.

We may have a new meeting location lined up for June.  Our May meeting is at Leslie Jennison's house.  Information on the May Mercado will be on Facebook.  It is open to all members and our current sponsors.

Next retreat will be at Creations' Main House on Labor Day weekend.  You can add Monday if you want.

We're expecting Kim Kight, Cotton + Steel Fabric Designer, to present at the June meeting.  Sarah is trying to work out details for a potential June workshop with double gauze or lawn.  Watch Facebook for details.

Jen held a charity sew-in Friday after the meeting at Mesquite Bean from 10-closing.  Mesquite Bean is sponsoring the bags charity drive for Days for Girls. Checkout Facebook and the blog post for more info.  Everyone who donates a bag gets a chance at Succulence FQs donated by Mesquite Bean.

Bring your bags to the May Mercado; get a chance to win some fabric. 

Jen is still accepting NICU blankets for Threads of Love and will continue to accept bags for Days for Girls, but every 2 months she'll issue another challenge for a different charity.

Sarah J won the April BOM blocks, but she did stack the deck a bit, contributing >20 blocks. She got the Sew Inspired ruler to square them up the 30 blocks she won.. 

The next BOM is called A Quilters Table.  Watch Facebook for details.

Members talked about their inspiration for the President's Challenge.  There is so much diversity in our guild and so many different inspirations in the world.  An album cover, song, painting, person, animated character, book, daughter/artist, movie, and video game were all cited as inspirational items by members.  This challenge, due in August, is going to be something special.  Rebecca will be looking for updates at the June meeting.

Our presentation was on the principles of design by our own Suzy Armstrong. She gave us some theory, some rules, and a lot of examples, explaining how principles of design relate to principles of modern quilts.  It was a very interesting, enlightening, and educational presentation.

February is for Love

And if you missed the February meeting you missed a lot of love. 

Jen Eskridge, our VP for Charity and Outreach was handing out NICU kits to anyone who wanted to make one or two or ten.  She had quite a few.  The finished quilt is only 21" square and requires very little quilting and no batting if you use flannel.  Threads of Love provides these to preemies.  If you want to donate to this worthy cause, use your own stash, or ask Jen for a kit.  Jen has put on a 2-month challenge to see how many we can all get done.  And she has made it very easy for you. There will be a sew-in on Feb. 18 to finish up many of these Threads of Love NICU quilts.  Watch for the invite on Facebook.

She also had invited folks to bring in charity quilts in any stage of the process and others will work together to finish these for some other charities.  If you're decluttering, this is a good way to find a home for those unfinished projects.  There were a few on display at this meeting.  Guild members will do everything if you just want to donate fabric.  If all the top needs is quilting or binding and it's not something you'll ever finish yourself, you can let your fellow guild members finish for you. Decluttering netted our charity efforts some real beauties.

If you are willing to donate your skills, you'll be able to pick up tops that just need quilting, or maybe just binding.  If you have some UFOs you've given up on,  you can drop them off with Jen, and she'll be bringing these to meetings so folks can pick one up and finish it and donate it to a good cause.
 

If you missed the meeting you also missed all the loving humps and bumps folks contributed to the block of the month.  Jen Eskridge was the lucky winner and I'm sure she'll make something awesome -- maybe multiple awesomes.  And Loretta, our creative BOM committee chair, brought some suggestions of how to use the blocks.

Our next Block of the Month is a red bird on a yellow background.  It was adorable and you had two choices (with or without wing). Loretta will be posting both in multiple sizes on Facebook soon.

It's already posted on facebook, but in case you missed it, we have added a new page to our blog called resources.  It includes listings and links for our guild member businesses, links and addresses for local quilts shops and no-so-local quilt shops, and a long list of links to other Modern Quilt Guild websites. Show some love to our fellow guild members when you can, and don't forget to love local and not so local small quilting businesses too.  And if you need some inspiration or motivation.  Check out what other modern quilters are doing at their own guilds and see if you can't find something there to love.  Rebecca also asked if we could make a list of member blogs and list them on our blog.  If you'd like your blog listed on the guild blog so others can check in on what you're doing and show you some love, provide your blog URL to Cathy by email or FB messenger.

You also missed one of the things I love most about our guild, the announcement of our next Quilting Retreat at the Main House in Kerrville.  All the details are on Facebook.  If you didn't already reserve your slot, you can send a deposit to Sarah to hold a spot just for you.

Rebecca, our fearless president, announced two challenges.  For the first challenge, she provided everyone at the meeting a ribbon with the SAMQG logo and a pin to be used to make yourself a modern nametag.  We have quite a few new members and to help get to know each other, we are asking everyone to wear a name tag.  If you don't have a home made fabric name tag, there will be paper versions for you to wear, but we're hoping everyone takes the time to participate in this challenge and make themselves a new name tag even if they already have one or two or ten.
 

The challenge is to make any kind of modern design  name tag in any size you'd like, somehow incorporating the ribbon, and bring them to the March meeting. If you need a ribbon, contact Rebecca, she had plenty of extras. We'll show off our new nametag at the March meeting  and members will vote for their favorite tag in different categories.  Prizes will be awarded.  Don't we all love prizes?  And I know I love meeting new members. So a lot of love on this challenge.

The second challenge is her President's challenge for this year.  She admitted that being able to host this challenge is the main reason she wanted to be our leader.  She loves this challenge so much, she's already made her quilt for the challenge and had so much fun she's thinking about doing another.  The challenge is to create a quilt based on someone who inspires you (you can read this as someone or something you love).  An author, musician, poet, artist -- check out your favorite (aka most-loved), get inspired and make a quilt of any size, color or technique. You're sure to love it and we'll love seeing it.  In April you'll be asked to bring in your inspiration, whatever/whoever it is.  Then, at the July meeting, the finished challenge quilts will be revealed.  I'm sure we'll all love the eye candy that results.

Sew-n-Tell was great this month.  I loved it and I'll post that in a separate blog post.  And you'll be able to find some on facebook, some on Instagram, and others here on the blog. We'll continue to do that in the future.

In an effort to receive feedback from our members and not send out another survey, poster boards with questions were placed around the room for you to provide some input to the board on improvements or ideas you have about the guild, building community, education opportunities, and community service/charity.  If you're interested in providing your feedback, let one of the board members know and we'll provide you the questions too.

Our presentation, Technology's Role in the Quilting World, ended up being a round robin as there were some issues with the technology in the room.  Guild members shared loads of information and tips on using Instagram, Periscope, Blogs and other technology.  The provided a lot of reasons for quilters to love technology.  I'll add some of the tips I picked up to the Sew-n-Tell pics in another post.  I know some of our members have found so many ways to use technology to support their quilting but this opened my eyes to other things I could do myself.  Thanks to all the presenters.  I loved it (bet you saw that one coming).

Enjoy the month of Love.  Hope you get time to quilt. 

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.

President's Challenge 2014

This year our President, Allison, issued a "President's Challenge" for our guild.  The requirements were to use a Radiant Orchid colored polka dot to create something quilted, under 36" on each side.  That's it.  That was the whole requirement.  That is pretty wide open.  We also had 3 months to work on the project.


Wanna see what we made?  ...keep scrolling.... we made LOADS of minis ....