Emerald Coast Modern Quilt Guild: May, June and July Update

May, June and July Minutes Update

Well, summer has been extra busy for me, as I'm sure it has been for you guys. I apologize for getting so far behind and am posting a three month catch up on our meetings. I've had two eye surgeries, as well as travel, company, and the usual summer goings on. It certainly isn't because our ECMQG hasn't been busy these last three months! We have. Here are just a few of the many activities.

May:

In May, Our Grunge Swap took place.

Our Riley Blake Challenge. Wendi, Roxie, Cindy, and Natalie participated. Natalie was a finalist in the Riley Blake Challenge!!

Our Fisher House Charity Quilt Everything Coming Up Roses was explained as a strip pieced improv rose block. The Rose blocks are due by July.

Wendi reminded us to save our selvages for the October block which will be presented in September.

Natalie discussed our Block Lottery block for June, Fractured Curves. She explained how they will be made and that the blog will have directions, too.

Natalie continued her Color Theory lessons by explaining Analogous Colors. They are colors next to each other on the color wheel. Springleaf studios.com is a good source.

We were reminded of our October Auction and the need to make items for our Christmas gift auction to raise money.

June:

First, Natalie did a thorough review of our Color Theory lessons. Our main objective is to apply our Color Theory to our quilt making.

Our One Hour basket swap was a huge success! We had more participation in this swap than any swap for a while. We had a nice discussion of how the baskets were made and what interfacings we used.

Beautiful One Hour Baskets! We all enjoyed this swap!

One last look at all the baskets! Lovely!

Wendi explained and demonstrated our Everything Coming Up Roses blocks for The Fisher House Charity Quilt. Some green spatters of leaves around the roses would be good, with low volume prints to square up the blocks.

Our swap for July will be up to three modern Christmas fabrics, half a yard each, wrapped in Christmas paper.

Several participated in the Fractured Curve block lottery this month. Natalie won the blocks and was kind enough to split the blocks with Jill, who had also entered a lot of blocks!

Faye did a super job explaining our next block lottery for July. It is called Summer Spinout block. Directions will be posted on the blog. She also provided many examples for us to look at. It uses Flamingo Pink, the Pantone color of the year and a lighter or darker value of grey than the Flamingo Pink. Use your phone to make sure the value is contrasting with the Flamingo Pink.

July:

For our August swap, please bring a quart size bag of scraps you like to trade with a partner. You may make some suggestions to your partner, as to what you may like made. Your partner will return a completed item to you using your scraps in September. This is our annual Anniversary swap. We will be 7 years old this September!

We had a wonderful participation in our July Summer Spinout block lottery. A total of 39 blocks were donated to the lottery. Bailey was the winner of the blocks (or her mother, who gave them to her). We will be using Flamingo Pink in a swap for October, which Cindy will introduce at the August meeting. It will be a mini quilt swap.

Sheri introduced a paper pieced block for our August block lottery. Please see the blog for pictures and instructions. It also uses Flamingo Pink and grey.

Our modern Christmas fabric swap was a hit, with many bringing wrapped fabric to trade.

Loree and Cindy did a super job getting us started on early Christmas gift making, by presenting our Christmas in July program. Loree discussed many utilitarian objects for gifts, such as: bags, gift card wallets, zipper bags, pin cushions, hand warmers, dumpling bags, triangular bags, open wide bags, slippers, clear bags, tissue holders, pillow cases, folded star ornaments, quillows, etc. Cindy discussed the use of Jeni Baker's Lined Drawstring Pattern to "wrap" Christmas gifts and then reuse year after year. Information on Christmas gift projects will be posted on the ECMQG blog.

Reminder: Continue to save your selvages for a block coming up soon.

More of the beautiful Christmas projects Loree and Cindy presented. There are also good sources of zippers and patterns that they will share on the blog.

Door prizes were lots of fun this month. We selected saturated colors like in a sunset and including a piece for the "green flash" seen just for a second at sunrise.

Cindy presented our next charity quilt block. The project is a quilt for Arc Gateway. It will be a Christmas quilt made from the Stack, Slice, and Swap method. Cindy demonstrated the technique and showed us several samples of blocks. The idea is from Patchwork Forest from Diary of a Quilter. You can see it on Instagram under #patchworkforest. Leah Day also has a You Tube tutorial on it. We will work on the blocks for the charity quilt for Arc Gateway at our August meeting. The quild has purchased fabric for us to use.