Dali Museum Trip

In September of 2014, our guild took a field trip the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Pete, FL. It was a beautiful day out and many of us had never visited the new location of the museum.  The museum contained the permanent collection of Dali's work ranging in size from a standard portrait to wall size masterpieces.
 


We went to the museum for inspiration and found many areas to build from.  Dali used color, design, and perspective all in amazing ways.

There was also a special exhibit on display, Marvels of Illusion.  We saw a quilt in the making!

After our trip, we created a mini challenge.  Based on your inspirations from the museum and Dali, create a mini! Here are some of the entrants from our guild. Everyone, even members who were unable to come to the museum enjoyed it. We hope to make a museum/field trip of some sort each year with a mini challenge.

Charity Quilt - Project Linus

The national Modern Quilt Guild announced a challenge, a Charity Quilt! If guilds contributed their time and talents, the quilt will hang at QuiltCon 2015! We asked our guild if they wanted to participate and everyone agreed.  The Tampa Modern Quilt Guild had already completed great charity work during the past year.  The guild donated an afternoon and created 20+ pillowcases for ConKerr Cancer.  The guild also chose Project Linus as our designated charity for the year and donated 14 quilts to our local chapter.

Adding on a group quilt excited everyone.  We had a block of the month going for our guild so we decided to set one month for Charity blocks.  Everyone was allowed to make as many blocks as they liked, using the modern quilt guild colors. Our only stipulation was the finished block size being 6" or 12" so the blocks would fit together easily.

Everyone brought in their blocks to our October meeting and we designed the quilt together.  The major elements were all arranged and put together at our meeting.  Our guild decided to work with improv design, and not focus on a grid work.

Our current President Ellen Ault and Secretary Sandy MacWilliam took the pieces home to finish the quilt top. We had some leftover blocks and originally planned for a piece back. However, after figuring out the math and tricky piecing seams to get the top completed, an executive decision was made. They bought an extra wide backing to put it on! Our current Vice President, Katie Ringo volunteered to do the quilting on her home HQ Sweet Sixteen. She said it was like wrestling a giant ball of fiber.

Bringing the quilt back to our final meeting of the year in November, we added a fun striped binding and surveyed our work.  Seeing that our guild is relatively small but growing fast, we all are quite pleased with the final result. A few members will be able to go to QuiltCon and take pictures of it hanging. When it returns it will be donated to Project Linus as well.