Playing Catch Up - April Meeting

Things have been crazy around here lately, so I've kinda neglected the blog.  But I'm back!  So, here's the recap of our April Meeting.

We talked about our charity quilt, and decided to go with the Sew, Mama, Sew Modern BOM.  As far as colors go, we'll be doing the blocks in colors representing not only our guild name, but where we live - the beautiful Emerald Coast! 

We haven't decided on a charity yet, or a method (raffle, online auction, donating the quilt itself, etc.), but we have time to figure all that out.  We're shooting to have this done by the end of October. 

Everyone who wants to participate in assembling the blocks will be designated a block and get a bundle of fabric at our June meeting.  We'll need people to not only assemble blocks, but to piece the quilt top, baste the quilt, do the quilting, and bind it.  It's definitely going to be a team effort!  It's sure to be beautiful when it's finished.

After talking for a while about the charity quilt, we had a time of Show and Tell.

Melissa showed us a beautiful WiP

And an almost-finished quilt

And progress she's made on a quilt using Jenny Pedigo's Quick Curve Ruler - can't wait to see this one when it's all finished!

Melanie brought in her beautiful Swoon quilt, done in Tula Pink's Prince Charming line

And her Stargazer quilt

Leslie showed us this quilt she made for her new nephew

And a cute little WiP

Cindy showed us her "Year of the Dragon" WiP

And this colorful quilt she's making for a school auction

It's always so much fun to see what everyone makes!

April Sew, Pinterest, and the Next Meeting

This past Saturday, the ECMQG met up in Pensacola for not only a sewing day, but also a shopping trip!  We met at A & E Pharmacy first thing in the morning, to do some serious shopping at a group discount!  A & E has such a great selection of fabrics - I think everyone found what they needed, and then some. 

After shopping, we headed over to Martelli's for the sewing part of our day.  If you're not familiar with Martelli's, they have so many great and innovative quilting products, and they're located right in Pensacola!  As usual, it was a great time sewing together as a group - we sewed, talked, ate, helped each other with basting quilts, and gave each other input on projects.

Our next meeting is coming up on Friday, April 27 at 10 am at Lynn's Sewing Center in Fort Walton Beach.  At the meeting, we'll be starting a discussion on making a charity quilt.  We'll be discussing everything from possible charities, color schemes, quilt patterns, and time frames. 

To help get the discussion started, the ECMQG now has a Pinterest account, with a board dedicated to this future charity quilt.  Looking forward to getting this started!

March Meeting

It was another great meeting of the ECMQG!  We had 15 people and 3 new members, bringing our total members to 19.  Amazing!

The Kona Solids Challenge reveal happened during this meeting, but that's blogged about in a separate post, found here.

We discussed our next sew on Saturday, April 14 at Martelli's in Pensacola from 10-3. However, at 9 am we'll be meeting at A&E in Pensacola to do some fabric shopping!  If you've never been to A&E before, now's the time. 

Kelly S. talked about spray basting.  Spray basting is a quick, easy, and effective way to baste your quilts without using pins.  It seems like everyone who spray bastes has their own special way of doing it.  Kelly discussed three different methods.

The first was Ashley's, from Film In the Fridge, who spray bastes on a floor.  She writes about her method here.

Second was Patsy Thompson's method.  She chooses to baste on a wall.  You can see her method towards the end of this video.

And then there was Cindy Bettinger's unique method of using a table and a metal rod to roll out the quilt top and back.  She writes about that here.

Not everyone in our guild chooses to spray baste, but even those of us who primarily do walked away with some new ideas and techniques to try out.

We also talked about the QuiltCon Block Challenge.  It's a fun way to get involved with QuiltCon from the comfort of your own home!  Basically, the challenge is to create a block reflecting what modern quilting means to you, using the colors of the QuiltCon logo.  Blocks can be submitted up until August 15.  Elizabeth Hartman of Oh, Fransson, will choose 20 or more of her favorite blocks to be made into a quilt that will be raffled off at QuiltCon.  The other blocks will also be made into quilts that will be donated to the Austin Children's Shelter.  It's a very cool challenge, and as a guild we'll submit our blocks together, the deadline being our July meeting.

Thankfully, the store we have our meetings at agreed to have FQ bundles made up in the colors of the QuiltCon logo.  Kelly S. chose the fabrics, and the wonderful staff at Lynn's cut the bundles for us during our meeting!  To find out more about the color inspiration for this fabric bundle, you can read Elizabeth's post here.

As usual, we had a Show and Tell at the end of our meeting.  Here's just a few pictures from that...

Great meeting.  Lots of talent was showcased.  Looking forward to what's to come. 

Kona Solids Challenge Reveal!

The ECMQG finally had the much-anticipated reveal of our Kona Solids Challenge quilts at our March meeting. Out of the 14 people that took on the challenge, we had 9 finished quilts. Two people brought in their WiPs, and we had a couple people who couldn't make it to the meeting.  Back in December, we received the Brights Charm Pack.  During the reveal, a few people questioned whether or not we all had the same colors in our charm packs.  Of course, we did, but it's amazing how different everyone's quilts turned out, despite starting from the same place!

Here's Melanie's star using lots of half square triangles

And Daryl's WiP

Cindy's cute fishy WiP, inspired by a quilt that was made by a friend for one of her kids

 Another great HST quilt brought to us by Marcy

Gina's "Dashing" quilt

Kira's amazing swirling hexagons

Betty's Tetris-y quilt

This is the beautiful quilt that Kathleen made

Kassie's heart quilt, made in honor of her and her husband's 10th anniversary

Yet another HST quilt by Kelly S.

Last, but not least, Kelly B's Rainbow cross quilt

And here's a group picture with (almost) everyone!

As everyone was revealing their quilts, we heard several times that this really was a "challenge."  A lot of us had never made a quilt using nothing but solids, and some of the colors were out of our comfort zone.  But that's the beauty of this particular challenge - it pushed us to try something new, and the results were beautiful. 

A special thanks to Robert Kaufman for providing not only the charm packs for the challenge, but also FQ bundles to hand out as prizes.  We're a new guild, and a little late to join in all the Solids Challenge fun, so we're very thankful for the opportunity!  If you want to see what other guilds who participated in this challenge have created, check out the Flickr group.

February Meeting Wrap Up

The February meeting of the ECMQG was great! Our attendance was up to 14 people (the most ever), and we had 7 new members, which means we're up to 16 dues-paying members! We're growing!

During the meeting, we talked about QuiltCon, which is the first-ever Modern Quilt Guild convention coming up in February of next year. It's very exciting, and will feature some really amazing instructors and lecturers like Denyse Schmidt, Malka Dubrawsky, Elizabeth Hartman, Anna Maria Horner, Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr, and Ellen Rushman.

Kelly S. did a demonstration on improvisational piecing. There are many different takes on improv piecing and really, it can be whatever you want it to be. But Kelly featured two different kinds of improv blocks.

The first was a block using improv curves to make a kind of wonky circle. She used a tutorial by Penny, who blogs at SewTakeAHike.





She finished the block after the meeting, and this is what it looks like -


The other block Kelly featured was a wonky log cabin, using a tutorial by Jacquie of Tallgrass Prairie Studio. Here's the finished result of that block -


Improv piecing is all about having fun and letting go. If this is new to you, and you'd like to try it, take a go at either of these tutorials - or any of the many other tutorials you can find online. Or just try it without a tutorial and see where it takes you! There is no right or wrong way when it comes to improv. For some other tutorials, The Modern Quilt Guild did a tutorial round up during the 100 Days of Modern Quilting, found here.

After the demo, it was time for Show and Tell.















We're getting together to sew on Saturday, March 17 at First Baptist Church in Crestview from noon to 6 pm, so bring your sewing stuff and a project (or two, or three) and sew with us!

Our next meeting will be on Friday, March 30 at Lynn's Sewing Center in Fort Walton Beach at 10 am. This will be the reveal of our Kona Solids Challenge quilts, and we're all very excited about it! Hope to see you there!