Modern BOM Quilt for Charity

If you're a follower of either Sew, Mama, Sew or Alissa's blog, you're probably familiar with Alissa's Modern BOM that she did on SMS every month for a year.  The ECMQG wanted to use those beautiful, modern blocks to make a quilt that would be used to raise money for a local charity.

We decided on the charity, Children in Crisis, which is a local charity, based out of Fort Walton Beach.  They are a foster care facility for children from four counties here in Northwest Florida, and they strive to keep siblings together.  CIC's mission statement is:
“Providing Homes and Establishing Hope” for the abused, neglected and abandoned children of Northwest Florida. The Children’s Neighborhood provides an emergency shelter for young children, and the family foster homes help with the severe shortage of foster homes in our community. Together, we can make a difference in the life of a child.
CIC has a "Children's Neighborhood," which has an emergency shelter, foster homes, a playground, a recreation center, and administration center, and teen transitional housing.

Once we decided on which charity to raise money for, we just need to figure out what kind of quilt to make. Since we are a Modern quilt guild, we decided that Alissa's Modern BOMs would be a perfect way to reflect our aesthetic, and we took it a step further, and selected colors that represent the beautiful Emerald Coast of Northwest Florida.  We used some prints from Lizzy House, Michael Miller, and Valori Wells.  The solids are all Kona solids from a Poseidon FQ Bundle, along with Kona Bone for the background of each block.

The fabrics were cut and divided up into bundles, and at our June meeting, twelve of us signed up for a block to make.

All of the blocks were finished and returned by our August meeting, where we played around with the layout of the blocks.


Melanie, one of our members, volunteered to piece the top together, and we decided to put a sashing between the blocks, to make the quilt a little bit bigger.  She used Kona Putty for the sashing, which ended up being a nice subtle way to make the blocks stand out.


As far as the quilting goes, one of our members (Marcy) has a longarm.  We originally thought a fun way to quilt it would be for everyone who made a block to quilt their block on Marcy's longarm.  So we had our September meeting at Marcy's house, and when it came time to quilt it, we all decided that it would be best if just one person quilted it.  Most of us don't have longarm experience, so we were nervous about messing up!  Marcy was fine quilting it herself, and she does beautiful work, so we were confident in her abilities.

Kathleen, another one of our members, volunteered to put the binding on, which we were all grateful for!

So here's the finished product.  To say that Marcy did a good job on the quilting is an understatement!  It's hard to capture it in pictures, because each block is different, but you can really tell she had fun quilting this, and she really let the blocks speak to her.


Here's some more pictures of this beautiful quilt:









So this is where the fundraising part comes in.  Go to our First Giving page and make a donation.  This fundraiser will be open until the end of November, at that time, one person who made a donation will be selected to receive this quilt!  Our goal is $500, so help us get there!

ECMQG's One Year Anniversary!

The September meeting of the ECMQG was a pretty special one, because we celebrated our One Year Anniversary!  Back at our August meeting, we exchanged scraps with each other for our second Scrap Swap Challenge (you can see the post about the first one here).  So for this meeting, we all brought back what we had made with those scraps, to give to the original owner.  Once again, we had a great time "ooohing" and "aaahing" over what everyone made.











We also had some pretty awesome giveaways, but unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of people receiving their prizes.  We had a couple of Winterkist charm packs donated by the awesome Monica Solorio-Snow (aka The Happy Zombie), two books donated by C&T Publishing/Stash Books, a Quick Curve Ruler donated by Jenny Pedigo of Sew Kind of Wonderful, and a gift card to the Local Quilt Shop which usually hosts us, Lynn's Sewing Center in Fort Walton Beach.  Amazing, right?

Instead of doing any kind of presentation or demonstration, everyone was asked to bring their first quilting/sewing related item (if they still had it) and/or a tip to share with everyone.  It was fun getting to know everyone better via their sewing beginnings!










We held this meeting at a member's house (Marcy), with the intention of quilting our Modern BOM Charity Quilt on her longarm.  The idea was that everyone who made a block would quilt their own block on the longarm, but in the end, we decided that in order to keep the quilting cohesive, Marcy would just quilt the whole thing.  Here it is all set up and ready to quilt!


We talked about some changes that will be happening with the guild in the upcoming months - not to worry, though!  It's all good!  We're going to be getting a bit more organized, and probably start combining our meetings and sew days, to make it easier for more people to come.  More info on that as it progresses.

It's awesome to still see this guild going strong after a year!

Our next sew is coming up at the end of the week - Saturday, October 13 at First Baptist Church in Crestview from noon until 6.  Come!  Bring whatever you'd like to work on!  And bring a snack!

Our next meeting is Friday, October 26 at Lynn's Sewing Center beginning at 10 am.  This is going to be a bit different than usual, because it will primarily be a work day for us.  Some of us are participating in a local craft fair that's being held the next day, so we'll be tagging our stuff, and getting it ready to sell!  We'll still hold a time of Show and Tell, so please still come and hang out with us!

August Sew Day Recap and Meeting Reminder

A couple of weeks ago, we had our August Sew Day.  It was one of our best turnouts!  And let me tell you, we went to work!  I couldn't believe how quiet it was at certain points (that's so unlike us!), but that just meant we were all being very diligent in trying to make progress on our projects.  Don't get me wrong, there was plenty of talking going on, including each of us chiming in on everyone's work, but we all got lots of work done.  Here are some pictures from that day...
















If you haven't made it to one of our sews yet, you really are missing out!  The one thing I keep hearing is how great it is to have space to lay everything out.  That's something that a lot of us don't have at home.  We won't be having a Sew Day in September, so our next one is Saturday, October 13 at First Baptist in Crestview from 12-6.  Put it on your calendar, and plan to be there!

Our next meeting is coming up in just a few days.  I wasn't sure about how it would be, with the aftermath of Isaac and all, but it looks like the worst of the storm is going to miss us (thankfully) meaning there shouldn't be any long-term power outages.  So, unless something changes, we're still on!

Just a few reminders about the meeting:

*The meeting is scheduled for 10 am on Friday, August 31 at Lynn's Sewing Center in FWB.

*If you still have a block for our Charity Quilt, this meeting is the deadline for those!  Please bring those to the meeting, or email me to make arrangements if you'll be missing the meeting.  The ones I've gotten back are beautiful, and I can't wait to see this quilt finished!

*If you want to participate in a scrap swap, please bring a sandwich bag size ziploc bag filled with scraps.  We'll exchange those scraps, and the finished items will be due at our September meeting.  Again, if you can't make it to this meeting, but want to participate, email me to make arrangements!  If you are participating, be thinking of what kind of item you'd like your partner to make out of your scraps.  It can be anything!  After we swap the scraps, you'll talk to whoever got your scraps to let them know your likes and dislikes, as well as any ideas for what you'd like to receive.

*Make sure to bring sewing related things to Show and Tell!  We love to see what everyone's working on!

*If you want to bring a snack to share, we won't complain!

Hope to see you there.

July Meeting/Sew

At our July meeting, Melanie talked about participating in craft fairs, since the Niceville UMC World Bazaar and Benefit is coming up in October, and some of us will be participating in that.  Melanie participated in the bazaar last year and learned a lot of great things that she passed onto us.

For instance:

*Smaller items (like bags, key fobs, burp cloths, etc.) sell better than bigger items (like quilts)
*Since this bazaar is in October, a lot of patrons will be looking for seasonal items (tree skirts, seasonal pillow cases, etc.)
*If you sign up for a SquareUp account, they will send you a device that you can attach to your phone to accept credit cards (with a fee)
*If you don't want to sign up for a SquareUp account, you can get paid through PayPal on your smartphone, but only if your customer has a PayPal account

Melanie has reserved two booths - one is primarily for her items, and the other booth is for those of us who don't think we can fill an entire booth, but still want to sell things.

I know a lot of us are looking forward to participating in this event!

The blocks for our charity quilt are starting to come in.  So far, we have 5 out of 12 blocks completed and turned in.  It's looking great!



We're looking to complete this quilt sometime in October.  Once it's complete, we'll be setting up a page on FirstGiving to raise money for our charity, Children in Crisis.

Here's some pictures of our Show and Tell...

Marcy's "Swoon" quilt.  She didn't use a pattern for the blocks - she figured it out on her own!



Marcy's iPad covers - again, her own pattern.



Another quilt by Marcy



Mary's quilt

Kelly's lined drawstring bags, using Jeni B.'s pattern




Kelly's quilt top, using a pattern in Modern Minimal by Alissa Haight Carlton


Kelly's block for the QuiltCon Block Challenge



Another WiP of Kelly's



Leslie's not-quite-finished block for the QuiltCon Block Challenge.  It's going to be amazing when it's done!



Some things to keep in mind for August:

*Our Sew Day is on Saturday, August 18 at First Baptist Church in Crestview from noon to 6 pm

*Our meeting i at 10 am on Friday, August 31 at Lynn's Sewing Center in FWB), we'll be doing another scrap swap, like we did back in December.  At our August meeting, bring in a sandwich size ziploc bag, filled with scraps.  We'll swap those scraps, then make something out of them, bringing back the finished item to the September meeting (which is our one year anniversary!), and giving the item to the original owner of the scraps.  Basically, we're making something for someone with their own scraps.  What could be better?  Also, if you have a block for the charity quilt, they are due at our August meeting, so don't forget to bring those in.

The End of an Era

 Hello Modern Quilters! Thank you for visiting our blog. Sadly, ECMQG is no longer meeting on a regular basis. Feel free to browse the blog,...