CMQG meeting

November 13, 2013
Centennial Barn

Business

Membership to the guild is still open and dues are prorated to $12.50 for the rest of the year. We will be collecting dues for next year at the rate of $25 starting in February. Please make sure you are current on your dues to stay an active member of the guild. 

A new board will be elected in February, so please begin to think about if you'd like to help serve. Contact Jessica if you have any questions about the elections. The board consists of the following positions:

President: 
a. Preside at all general, special and Executive Board meetings.

Secretary: 

Treasurer:

SewDown Nashville takes place in April, 2014. The tickets for the event sold out very quickly and Jessica, Ellen, Michelle, Teresa are going.

The quilt show at the Harvest Festival was great. Thank you to Cass and everyone else who helped set up the show. It was great to see people walking through and talking to people about our quilts and was a nice way to introduce modern quilting to the general public.

         

The sale wasn’t that great, in terms of the number of things that were sold. Jessica heard that none of the vendors did that well. There is leftover merchandise that can be purchased by members at breaks at tonight’s meeting, as well as December's meeting. All money raised will still go to our guild as a fundraiser. Whatever is left over after the December meeting will be returned to the makers.

The deadline for the Riley Blake Challenge has been extended to Feb. 17, 2014. Thirty of our members are taking part in the challenge. There are fabric prizes that RB is giving away, and details of them are on the Modern Quilt Guild website. Participants have to upload photos of project to the community RB challenge forum on the MQG site. Ten finalists will be chosen on Feb. 19, 2014, and the winners will be announced on Feb. 24. You can post photographs of your works in progress, and please use the hashtag  #MQGRileyBlakeChallenge on social media.

Gillian is collecting craft and quilting books and starting a guild library for us which will be a collection of resources that our members can check out and use.

Gillian will keep a log of books and who checks them out. All current members can sign out books and keep them for a month. Gillian will send out a courtesy email reminder before the meeting when the book is due.  Members can also loan books out for an extended period of time to add to the library. Please let Gillian know if you have anything you would like to donate to the library. 

Amy shared information about the Secret Santa swap and distributed the forms to those who want to participate. Please make a small item such as an ornament, bags, etc. to swap next month at our December meeting.

     

Jessica would like to improve the swap situation for next year  by creating small groups of 4-5 people to work on a round robin project. People at the meeting seem to like this idea, so Jessica is going to start sign-ups next month so we can start in January

Michelle passed around a sign up sheet for the holiday dinner next month. 

Jessica handed out our official MQG member cards during the break. If you did not receive yours, please let her know. 

Special Guest Megan Frock

Megan is from Arkansas and studied fine art in college. Her website is the Downtown Housewife and she just released her first book called "The Hand Embroidered Haven: 20 Home Sewing Projects with Hand Embroidery, Twilling, and Applique." Her style is urban/modern and some of her projects show how pre-made objects can be embellished with handwork.  

She also like to incorporate embroidery in quilts to give, handquilting with embroidery thread, etc, and she would like to become a fabric designer as well. 

Her book includes lots of embroidery stitches, basic quilting and sewing terms and it is available on her website at www.downtownhousewife.com.

Her in-laws own the Sew Sweet Quilt Shop in Brunswick, MO.

Show and Tell

First up was the ugly fabric challenge!

Cassandra made this in 1999. It has hearts and ugly fabrics that she got from a friend. She feels that it looks nice from far away with the braid design and color selection, but up close there are some ugly fabrics.

Susan shared this African inspired quilt. Her son went to Ghana and she asked him to bring back fabrics. She thought the fabric he brought back was ugly, so she used it for the backing of her quilt. The front of the quilt has African women appliqued on it , made out of a waxed batik fabric that doesn’t go with anything in her house.

Carol made a partridge in a pear tree pillow and used the fabric as a challenge to try different things.

She also made a large floor pillow that was in a more modern design, but it has not been stuffed yet.

Regular Show and Tell: 

Holly made this adorable pillow using a Moda bake shop pillow tutorial.

Lynn shared her Do Good Stitches quilt from March. It was quilted by Jill and the blocks are Road to Tennessee blocks.

She also shared her August Do Good Stitches quilt. This is the Gem Stone block from Freshly Pieced.

Kayla shared an adorable dress she made for the Riley Blake challenge. 

She also shared a chevron quilt that she made for her new baby. It was finished by Jill.

And it has her son’s name on the back. SO cute!

This member made a beautiful paper pieced quilt. The blocks are tiny log cabins and it was quilted by Jill. Gorgeous!

-Kay Larson shared a beautiful star quilt made in bright orange and green fabrics. 

And she also shared a baby quilt in orange and black and white, improvisationaly pieced, that isn't quite finished yet. 

Janie shared this great quilt. The large hexagons are made out of Heather Ross fabrics and embroidered bees. 

She added some hand embroidered details, using the design of the fabrics as inspiration. So sweet! 

Cassandra made a template for a flower that can be used for a hexagon quilt that she brought last month for her educational program. She is willing to lend the template out for this in our library. It works with Moda’s precut hexies.

Amy T. shared an old quilt that she bought and wants to find out the name of the quilt block. Hopefully someone can help her!

Michelle just got this great quilt back from Jill. Michelle didn't like it at first, but now thinks it's cute again now that Jill fixed it. It’s got tlittle houses and grass with lots of texture. All the houses  have different quilting stitches and she’s really happy with out it turned out. She thinks that she will sew button on the houses for doorknobs.

Michelle also shared this fun Christmas quilt, which was from a kit from Sewn.

Teresa shared a beautiful fabric made out of Amy Butler Belle fabrics. The pattern is a disappearing 9-patch.

Connie, Carrie, Ginny, Charlotte shared quilts that they made for the neonatel until at Good Sam Hospital. All of the quilts are made out of coordinating fabrics so they might be used for multiple births, etc.

Janine shared the quilt she made for the Riley Blake Challenge . She challenged herself to use all the bits that she got, but she did add solids. The design is her own pattern and she used raw edge applique. 

Ruth shared her quilt for the Riley Blake Challenge. She appliqued them on black fabric with half circles.

Jessica brought a shop sample that she made for Sewn. It's a large zig zag quilt and the pattern is by Tula Pink called field study.

She also shared a quilt she made for a friend’s baby that is having their third baby.

Gillian shared an adorable doll quilt made out of Denyse Schmidt's Chicopee fabrics. 

She also shared a quilt that her mom made for her when she was a child. The quilt is completely hand pieced and hand quilted.

Her mother's quilt inspired this quilt that Gillian made for her daughter. She used Heather Ross's Briar Rose fabrics for the pinwheels and the binding is a vintage fabric.

Please join us for our next meeting which is December 11, 2013 from 7:00-9:00 pm at the Centennial Barn. 

CMQG Meeting

October 9, 2013

Centennial Barn

Holly brought her brand-new baby, Blake! Congratulations, Holly and family!

Business

Cincinnati Museum Center Community Quilt Project

Two months ago we had two people here from the Cincinnati Museum Center working on a Cincinnati community quilt project. This project has been canceled. Carol made a Cincinnati block, and if anyone else made one, we can turn them into a quilt or a fundraiser or some other project. Carol mentioned that the Sunday paper did have an article about a quilt history exhibition at the Freedom Center.

Riley Blake Fabric Challenge

Our fat eighths for the Riley Blake fabric challenge fabric are here! We have eight different prints, and they are all basic prints that can easily be paired with other fabrics. For this challenge, you can add any other solid fabrics and any Riley Blake prints (solids = any manufacturer; prints = Riley Blake only). Deadline is (see update below). You can make any project you want to make—it just has to be a quilted project. Remember to take pictures and upload them on our MQG group site, Flickr, etc. Use the hashtag #mqgrileyblakechallenge for Instagram and Twitter.

Centennial Barn Harvest Festival

Sunday, October 20, is the barn’s fall festival, and our guild is a big part of it this year. Our quilts will be on display in the center of the barn, and we will have a craft table too with items for sale for a fundraiser. The festival is from noon to 5:00.

Modern Quilting Library

Gillian, who works at Half-Price Books, has found a lot of inspiration in the modern quilting movement via books. Some really good books are published by smaller presses and therefore aren’t as well known as other titles, so Gillian discussed the idea of a modern quilting library for our guild. We could check out a book at one meeting and bring it back to the next meeting, so we would have a book for a month at a time. Anyone who would like to donate a book to the guild for the library can do so. If you would like a specific title for our library, let Gillian know, and she’ll see if she can get it. Gillian passed around a whole bunch of books for everyone to look at. We’ll start the library next month.

CMQG Promotional Cards

We have a new batch of CMQG promotional cards. These are helpful to give to people when we’re talking about modern quilting or our guild, so that people have something to see about the guild. Please take a few to have on hand to give to others who are interested in the guild or in modern quilting.

Sew Downs

The Portland Sew Down does have a few spots left. The Nashville Sew Down, scheduled for April 11–13, 2014, is not open for registration yet but will open this month, in October. This would be a great event to go to since it’s the closest one to us.

MQG Membership

If you have not yet received an email from Jessica about the MQG website registration, please let her know so that she can add you to our membership. We have a forum there specifically for our guild, where we can post pictures, ask questions, and connect with each other online. On the MQG website, first log in, then click the Groups tab, and then scroll down to the Cincinnati MQG. Click that link, and our discussion threads will be visible to you.

Education

Cass presented several different quilt-as-you-go techniques that she has learned over the years. Quilting as you go is most beneficial when you have a small domestic machine and have a difficult time quilting a larger quilt on it. With quilting as you go, you make a block and quilt it, one at a time. When all the blocks are completed, you join them together and your quilt is done!

The first technique is to sew, quilt, and bind one block at a time, and then whipstitch the blocks together by hand to make a full quilt.

You can also piece as you construct a quilt, as Janine did with her cathedral windows quilt. When you sew the circles together, you’re assembling the quilt.





Joyce used this method with a hexie-shaped quilt block and batting and a flower-shaped backing piece. Then the background is flipped over to the front, concealing the raw edges of the front fabric and the batting. The edges are turned under and stitched onto the hexie to make one complete block. She hand quilted each hexie, but the quilting and even the sewing of the backing piece onto the front could be done by machine. Then the blocks are whipstitched together.

Cass made a Christmas quilt for her grandmother. Each block was constructed individually, like her all-blue quilt-as-you-go quilt. With this method, the front of the block is smaller than the back, and the batting is the same size as the front. Sew the front together just as you would anything else, holding the batting and backing back. Then you turn under the raw edge of the backing and hand stitch it down to cover the raw edges.

The Six-Hour Quilt is done using the front and back pieces with a strip of batting in between. Layer it so that the next backing and batting are sewn, then serge or stitch around the raw edges so that it doesn’t keep shifting. These are big six-inch strips of fabric, so if you’re going to wash it a lot, you’ll want to quilt it more.

Nancy Zieman talks about using flannel instead of batting and then uses smaller strips. She quilted flannel to both the front and the back, and then sews them both together. She also suggests pinking the edges to reduce bulk in the seams.

In Machine Quilting Unlimited magazine was an article that has a strip-pieced unit, then adds a piece folded in half to cover the raw edges.

Another author in the same magazine used a wider sashing. On the front is a single layer with the sashing attached to each block. Add a strip of batting to the sashing, then add the sashing to the back, enclosing the raw edges and the batting. You might need to quilt that so the batting doesn’t shift.

A similar method is to add sashing to the front, add the batting, then add the sashing again to the back but machine stitch it down using a wide stitch all the way down to catch the batting in the seam.

The cotton theory is this—leave about an inch unquilted at the end of each block, then turn it back and sew down the flange with a decorative stitch. This method adds some texture to the back also.

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Small Bag Swap

Everyone who brought a bag to swap drew a number from a bag and exchanged the cutest small bags ever!

Next month: Ugly Fabric Challenge. Make something out of an ugly fabric that you’ve had awhile or just don’t like and bring it to show off at next month’s meeting.

Show and Tell

Christy brought four amazing, colorful projects. We all loved the beautiful colors of the solids she used in each project.










and then her daughter’s quilt that she’s been working on awhile; it’s Elizabeth Hartman’s Sparkle Punch pattern and is backed with a thick, fuzzy minky-like fabric (that Christy hated quilting but loved binding).

Carrie and Connie made charity quilts for the same group for Good Sam. Carrie brought two colorful baby quilts.

Vicki is new to modern quilting and brought two quilts, one with curved piecing that is completely finished,




and an alphabet quilt top that is not yet done but she will get busy on it when she has some grandchildren. ;)

Ellen brought a do good stitches quilt that is almost finished, that she brought one quilt block for last month. It is a disappearing nine patch with a strip in between.

Michelle modeled a handmade skirt while she showed a Circle Sewing Tote from Elizabeth Hartman. It has a zillion pockets, which are really nice (now that it’s done!). It has both short handles and long handles and holds a ton of stuff.

Janine brought two quilts: one that she made for her nephew’s yet-to-be-born child,

Andie made a sample New York Beauty block that she made for a class that she’s teaching at Sewn Studio on two Tuesday evenings, November 12 and 19.

Kathy received permission to make a Charley Harper quilt. It uses a combination of techniques, including raw-edge appliqué, and satin stitch appliqué.

Gillian brought a quilt top she made from the Happy Go Lucky line of fabric by Camille Roskelley. The aqua sashing is perfect!

Next month’s meeting is November 13. Bring the project you made for the ugly fabric challenge and anything you want us to ooh and ahh over!