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!

July 2015 Meeting

Thanks for everyone that came to our fun Christmas in July meeting! We of course had some business items to discuss, such as collecting the midterm dues. But it was a great party of a day! Adelle showed the finished quilt for Flood Texas with Love charity project, blocks collected the previous month.

We were able to give Barb from Crafty Threads our surprise thank you quilt to her, for letting us meet at Crafty Threads! This was a secret BOM we started in February and the secret never got out! Good job everyone!

We had our biggest swap table to date! And then enjoyed swapping handmade gifts for our fun Handmade White Elephant.

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 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!

What is modern quilting?

Per the Modern Quilt Guild website...

Modern quilting is a new and rapidly growing movement in the quilting world. A group of quilters applied their current tastes and points of view to this traditional craft and shared their work online.  Their fresh approach and new designs attracted sewers and quilters and the modern quilting movement was born.

Modern quilting, like all art, changes, grows and adapts from quilter to quilter as they find their own voice. Modern quilts reflect each quilter’s personality and personal style, and as the movement has grown, a modern quilt aesthetic, a set of principles that define and guide the movement, is beginning to emerge.

Modern quilts and quilters:

• Make primarily functional rather than decorative quilts
• Use asymmetry in quilt design
• Rely less on repetition and on the interaction of quilt block motifs
• Contain reinterpreted traditional blocks
• Embrace simplicity and minimalism
• Utilize alternative block structures or lack of visible block structure
• Incorporate increased use of negative space
• Are inspired by modern art and architecture
• Frequently use improvisational piecing
• Contain bold colors, on trend color combinations and graphic prints
• Often use gray and white as neutrals
• Reflect an increased use of solid fabrics
• Focus on finishing quilts on home sewing machines

Modern quilting has its roots in rebellion, in our desire to do something different, but simultaneously its feet are firmly planted in the field of tradition.  Modern quilting is our response to what has come before.  We are quilters first, modern quilters second. There are however, characteristics that set modern quilters apart from our traditional and art quilting friends.

Modern quilters are a diverse group of woman and men, young and old, experienced and novice, yet each of us feels the need to differentiate ourselves as modern quilters by how we work, the fabrics we choose, and the aesthetic of our quilts. We create in a way that supports our individual creative needs and our lifestyle preferences.  Modern quilters resist the imposition of hard and fast rules for making a quilt.  We pick and choose traditional techniques and methods that work for us and at the same time feel free to redefine or reinvent what is possible and allowable in making quilts.

Modern quilters have embraced the new options available in textiles: bold colors, graphic prints, larger scale prints, and Japanese fabrics.  Much like the Amish quilting tradition, many modern quilters are also exploring quilt designs made exclusively with solid fabrics or with just a hint of print.

The Internet has played an integral role in the development of modern quilting.  Through blogs, online tutorials and social media the modern quilting community interacts, providing inspiration and friendship for each other.  This has helped the community grow at an astounding pace, providing feedback and support at a moment’s notice.

In many ways, modern quilting has taken us back to the basics of the early quilters, when women of the day used the colors and styles of their time to express themselves creatively while finding friendship and community along the way.  Welcome to modern quilting!


How about some modern inspiration?  Enjoy!

1. double plus good quilt-04, 2. City Lot, 3. ModChevron7, 4. Fabricland - full frontal!, 5. kelp quilt with bee members identified, 6. Munki, 7. Button Play mini-quilt, 8. Oaks Park quilt. :), 9. IMG_6861, 10. Progress, 11. Urban Decay baby quilt., 12. tokyo subway map quilt, 13. urban garden, 14. Atomic Connections, 15. the youtube quilt, 16. Mid century modern house quilt, 17. A Day at the Aquarium Front, 18. The Green One, 19. Panaceia's Mantle, 20. Hideaway quilt, 21. flying farfalle quilt - quilting, 22. nautical quilt, 23. Rainbow Ripple Quilt Pattern, 24. Geese Around the World, 25. Mystery Puzzle Quilt