January Meeting

Well, the ECMQG started 2012 off with a bang! First, with our very first sew day, and then with our first meeting of the year! It was our biggest turnout yet, with 11 people coming. We started taking dues at this meeting and 9 people became dues-paying members! I can't wait to see what the rest of the year will bring.

At our meeting, Kelly B. did a paper piecing demo. She used a block from The Quilter's Cache as her example. Quilter's Cache is a great resource full of free blocks available for download, and also a great paper piecing tutorial. I think the biggest lesson we all learned was that until you really get it, paper piecing can be confusing and difficult. So stick with it, have your seam ripper handy, and don't be scared to try!


Kelly mentioned that coming up this Tuesday, January 31, Fat Quarterly will be coming out with Issue 8 of their e-magazine, that will focus on paper piecing. This issue is sure to be very educational, and have plenty of well-written tutorials, so if paper piecing is something you're really interested in, consider purchasing that issue - or even a yearly subscription! You won't be disappointed!

She also talked about a series of block tutorials that Faith at Fresh Lemons Quilts is doing. It's called the Solstice Stars Series. Some of those will be incorporating paper piecing.

After the demo, we had Show and Tell, which is always fun. Here are some pictures from that...

Then it was time for door prizes! The very talented and very generous Laurie Wisbrun was kind enough to send some of her fabric to us to give away. Two lucky people won a fabric bundle of Laurie's latest (and by the way, organic) line for Robert Kaufman, Modern Whimsy, and two other lucky people won a fabric bundle of one of her other lines for Robert Kaufman, Pooches and Pickups. Here's a picture of the winners with their loot. Thanks, Laurie!

By the way, Laurie just announced on her blog that her newest fabric line, Jack and Jenny, is about to ship to stores in February. It's super cute - donkeys wearing rain boots in three colorways!

Now onto some bittersweet news...

We were so happy to have so many people come to this meeting. However, we were pretty tight in our space. So after the meeting, we made arrangements to start meeting at Lynn's Sewing Center. They were even able to accommodate our same meeting time, which is awesome! so the only thing that's changing is the location, which is just down the road from our other location. We're sad to leave Sheri and everyone at The Sewing Center Around the Block and we've enjoyed our time there, but we are excited that we're growing as a guild! Growing out of a meeting space is not a bad problem to have!

Our next sew is coming up Saturday, February 18 from 10-3 at Martelli's in Pensacola, and the next meeting is at Lynn's on Friday, February 24 starting at 10 am. Hope you can make it!