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.