June 2016 Meeting Recap

Our June meeting was a great success! Thank you to Katie for leading a paper piecing demo, many of our members completed their blocks! We had some wonderful submissions for our Botanical Gardens Challenge, very excited to see everyone's interpretations! Our June BOM is the Wheel of Fortune block, templates can be found here. Sharon would like two shades of bright, primary colors. Backgrounds are white/white on white/offwhite.

The guild decided upon the Lemoyne Star as our theme for our next Quilt Show with the Sewing & Quilting Expo at Lakeland next spring. We started a Pinterest page for ideas and tutorials. If you would like to 'pin' to our board, send Ellen your Pinterest email and she will add you to the group.  At our July meeting we will have a demonstration of how to make the block in the traditional and cheater methods.  Our theme is to take the Lemoyne Star block and modernize it. Change it up: colors, scale, piecing, etc.  The next MQG webinar is perfect for inspiration for our show: Making Traditional Modern. Members can read more and register here. The webinar is June 22nd, which will be recorded to be viewed at a later date if needed. We originally were going to have our July meeting as just the fun swap and Lemoyne  demo. However, I'm sure you all have seen at this point the news from the OrlandoMQG. National has now assisted them in their call and they are asking for heart blocks and quilts to donate to the victims and families from this past month's tragedy. We have decided to open up the July meeting as a Sew Day as well. You can sew heart blocks, you can sew blocks into quilts from finished blocks, you can cut Backings or Bindings. Or you can stay to sew a project that you need help with or just need to finish. Either way we would love everyone to stay and sew. Thanks to Anita, we now have the meeting room until 3pm.  See you all in July! ~Ellen

August 2015 Meeting - Quilt Con Charity Quilt Creation

At our August Tampa MQG meeting we created the quilt top for our 2015 QuiltCon Charity Quilt.  At the July meeting we discussed the fabric choices and style of the Improv quilt we wanted to create.  We decided to work with an alternate grid, assigning grid spaces to members.  We decided to stick to a Star theme, whatever that meant to members! Most decided have a 'wonky' approach to their star block.  A few members were fortunate to go to the previous QuiltCon and see the Charity Quilts as a whole.  They remembered that quilts that did not use white as the background color really stood out.  The guild decided to use the Aqua fabric as the main background element for this year's quilt.

For the August meeting members brought in all of our star blocks and we built the top based on our original sketch layout.  We looked to see where we could add a few new blocks for members that missed the previous meeting. We had a 'Magic Quilter' guide us in piecing the blocks together to form the top.  Many members learned how to sew Partial Seams for the first time.



While half of the  members created the top, the others started using the left over fabrics to create a pieced back.  Crafty Threads, the quilt shop where we meet donated three yards of the aqua to help fill in the holes of the background quilt top. Our current president, Ellen A. volunteered to quilt the top. We will hopefully see how it turned out at the September meeting!

March 2015 Meeting

Project Linus Charity Quilt!

Our guild decided to try something fun with one of our BOMs.  Normally, in our guild one member selects a block for the month.  All members make the block and return it to the member the following month.  For January however we decided to try something a bit different. We selected a simple block, the churn dash, and had it floating on a 12" x 12" square. All members were to make the block in their own colors. But this time, to quilt it as well! We returned our Quilt-As-You-Go panels in February and then combined the panels to create a quilt at the meeting. Hence, the fun patchwork-lattice backing. One member took the quilt home to bind. We were able to see the finished quilt at our March meeting, for Project Linus. 

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.

The Madrona Road Challenge

Violet Craft's latest collection for Michael Miller Fabrics, Madrona Road, is the focus of the newest challenge hosted by the Modern Quilt Guild. Within our local guild, the guidelines for participating in the challenge are quite simple: you can only add solid fabrics (or additional Madrona Road prints) to what you receive from the guild, and you must make something with a quilted element to it. A quilt, a quilted pillow, quilted tote bag, you choose! To participate in the challenge and receive some of the fabric provided to us for the challenge, you must be present at our January meeting and Sew Day, to be held January 19th at 11 a.m. For more meeting details and to RSVP, check our Facebook group right here.

The final projects will be shared at our March guild meeting, scheduled for March 9th. Want to see what some of the other MQG's are doing so far with the challenge? Check out the Flickr group!

The Negative Space Challenge

Our next challenge: The Negative Space Challenge

What is negative space? In basic terms, negative space is the space around and between the focal point of an image, work of art, or quilt. In quilts, it tends to not only surround our quilt blocks but is often also a part of the blocks themselves. Negative space is often a key element of composing modern quilts, and is useful in defining the focal part or parts of a quilt. In quilts with busy fabrics or intricate piecing, negative space is also important, for providing the eye a place to rest and therefore increasing the appeal of a quilt in a subtle way.

Negative space can also be a key element of a quilt design. Rather than making a repeating block pattern, many modern quilters "float" a block or blocks on a quilt top using lots of negative space, or create various improv pieces that they then separate with lots of negative space. Take a look at the examples and inspiration below, and see how the negative space enhances each quilt...

1. Mid century modern house quilt, 2. Colorsplash 2012, 3. Star Light, Star Bright, 4. Baby Math Quilt Front, 5. ffa2 quilt top #1, 6. Warm Spring: Front, 7. Orbs Away, 8. Scrappy Stripes, 9. Triangulate, 10. John's Birthday Quilt, 11. Colorbrick Quilt, 12. Blue Wave Quilt Front, 13. Cosmos quilt14. Not available15. Not available16. Not available

Our next challenge will run through our January meeting, and the challenge is simple: make a quilt top using negative space. It can be a small quilt top, a large one, whatever you like. Bring it to our January meeting for the challenge. Feel free to work on your project at our Sew Days between now and the January meeting. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to let me know!

Name Tag Challenge

This month, we'll be having our first Sew Day. I think it's going to be really fun to get together and work on some sewing together.

Since we are a new guild and we are all still working on getting to know each other, I think it's a great time to have our first guild challenge: The Name Tag Challenge!  At our August meeting, we'll have a show-and-tell for all finished name tags, but feel free to wear yours to our July Sew Day if you're done by then!  Better yet, feel free to work on yours at our Sew Day!

The only requirement for the challenge is that it have your name on it somewhere.  It can be as simple or elaborate as you want, and can be a clip-on tag or a lanyard-style tag, whichever you'd prefer.

Need some inspiration?  Check out some of these really fun name tags made by other Modern Quilt Guild members!