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

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.

April MQG mintues

Introductions

 10 members present, Business meeting 10 am 12 pm, sew day 12 pm – 1 pm

Michael Miller Fabric Challenge

Official deadline June 23^rd , submit to official forum.  There is a current challenge in progress topic you can look at and upload to. We’ll look at our guild member’s pieces at the June Meeting. 8 members received their fabric. Thanks to Terry for giving her fabric to Katie!

MQG Webinars

Design Fundamentals & Starting a Business online, check the Webinar section in the forums to view in case you missed the live feed.

Meeting Ideas –What do you want from our TMQG?

I am very glad we brought this topic up. I personally have had ideas of what I want this guild to be and how I currently see it.  Everyone chimed in and was happy to have new ideas for things to occur during our meetings. The biggest topics all related to building a better “Community” between the members.  We enjoy seeing each other but know little about each other and when we leave have little to know about the next meeting. The main ideas were skill building, a bigger online presence, reaching out to more members, and charity sewing.

The group decided instead of having Sew days every month when you are unsure of people staying, we should use that time to learn something new.  The group consensus of the Improv Workshop we previously had was very successful and to continue in that fashion. Ideas brought up were free motion quilting, paper piecing, curved piecing, new binding techniques and even technological related ideas such as how to photograph your quilt or blogging.  If anyone wants to volunteer to teach the others something at a meeting, please let us know! We return to Inspire in May and do not have any skill building topics set for the meeting.

There was also a stress on a bigger online presence to inform current members and to help reach out to new members. Current members were unaware that we have a blog (http://tampamodernquiltguild.blogspot.com/) and that our personal TMQG website is under construction and never been used. The group brainstormed ideas to be put on either places such as lists of member’s personal blogs, calendar dates of meeting times and places, meeting minutes and local quilty stuff happenings. For example listing quilt shows that you can submit your work to or places to go as a group as a field trip, such as a museum or quilt show. Also adding our challenges and sewing items to the blog.  A Guild newsletter was also mentioned, and highly received. We will begin creating a format and sending these out. The blog can be directly linked to the website.

Our Flickr group was also mentioned pertaining to its little use.  Members have requested to join the group and have not heard back. We are unaware of who is in charge of the flickr group, to accept the newer members. This could also be added as a gallery or side bar to the blog and website.

There were many ideas in terms of reaching out to others.  In its simplest form, a TMQG avatar/button needs to be made so our current members can have a link on their own personal blogs to direct people to us as a group.  Ideas were mentioned to create a simple flyer to put at local quilt shops to let others learn of us, and on their websites.  Also putting flyers at local libraries if allowed. We will contact our current two locations that we hold our meetings first to add our information on their site.  There was a question of USF having a quilting group, to reach out to them to visit us. For local quilt shows, to look into getting information together to have a table/booth to show our work and members, to help gain others.  And then in the hopes of finding these new members, we need to have a ‘New Member Packet’ to give them all the information so they too will not feel lost.

Also looking at building community amongst our members, we decided to have a yard swap/sale type of event twice a year. Starting in September, then again in March, members are encouraged to bring fabric, books, patterns, and anything crafty to our meeting for a swap.  There was the question of actually selling the items or having this as a swap.  We are still a small guild, the comfort of just swapping works for now. However if we do plan to move forward with some of our larger ideas such as quilt shows or field trips, we may add prices such as 10 cents a fat quarter or the like, to help build guild funds. 

We already have our Holiday Party Swap set for July, where members will bring in a handmade item wrapped to swap. Other ideas for community building were to start sewing for each other.  Looking at the size of our group, we decided against bees and round robins as of yet.   Ellen initiated our ‘Modern Block of the Month’ for each meeting.  A member will be selected to bring in directions for a quilt block for the other members to make.  The member will pick a color scheme for the members to follow.  This will give all members the opportunity to make something during the month to bring at the following meeting.  The block information will also be posted online. (See the next post about Aprils BOM.) Members are not required to make the block. Blocks should be from a free pattern source.  The block does not have to be seen as ‘modern’ although this is where we can challenge each other! All members present were very excited about adding this to our meetings! (Yay! Glad I thought of it and brought it). Emily has chosen May, Ann has chosen June, Katie has chosen July, and Terry has chosen September.

The final item we discussed at our meeting was charity sewing.  The group feels the need to give back to the community, even if it is only a small amount.  Ideas were proposed such as ConKerr Cancer Pillowcases, Project Linus, Downy Quilts for Kids, NICU Quilts, Quilts for Kids, Easter Seals, etc.  Ellen will look up more information about these charities before the next meeting. She will bring her findings for the group to discuss and vote on a group to support.  There was also the idea to have a sew day specifically for one of the charities, such as a Pillowcase Sew Day. We could support two groups in this fashion. Having a more quilt based charity for the year and then the pillowcase sewing day.

Other small ideas that were discussed for future meetings were the topics of food! We all agreed for the July Holiday party that it should be a potluck (food to be assigned later.) There was an idea to bring our lunches to meetings so not to lose time going elsewhere.  For the moment this will be up to each person, but perhaps later we can decide on lunches in house to eat together at specific meetings. 

Another idea members had was to add an evening meeting to the month.  The idea was to have the evening meeting as the business meeting so then the sew day can be spend on all sewing! This idea appeared in favor, but will take more planning on our part. We will have to find locations that can accompany us and an evening that will work for the majority of the group.  There was an idea to have the business meeting at those houses of us who have the space.  Since it will be the business meeting, there would need to be room for people but not machines. We will also look into this for the future!

We ended the meeting with our Sew and Share!  Many people were intrigued with Terry’s ‘Add A Border’ quilt. Here is the link to the flickr group for it: https://www.flickr.com/groups/add-a-border/pool/

We hope everyone enjoyed the meeting and what we discussed!  I see some great things in our future! Let’s turn our guild into what we want it to be!

Next Meeting: May 10^th, 10am, Inspire Quilt Shop

March 2013 Meeting Minutes

We had twelve members present at our March meeting!

At our March meeting, we discussed some news from the national guild, shared our Madrona Road projects and voted on a winner, as well as talked about modern quilting resources online.

The national MQG is moving toward a new membership model which will include yearly dues to the national organization. These dues will yield many benefits to us, and Elizabeth will be sharing more information on this at our April meeting. Benefits will include discounts and priority registration for educational events like QuiltCon and regional SewDowns, discounts with affiliated companies and sponsors, as well as access to a new centralized website for managing our guild as well as conversing with our guild. The new website will be rolled out toward the end of 2013.

Speaking of SewDowns, there are currently five different ones planned between now and the next QuiltCon (which will be 2015) - Philadelphia in September 2013, Portland in February 2014, Nashville in April 2014, Minneapolis in July 2014, Scottsdale AZ in September 2014.

There will again be a Modern Quilt Guild showcase at International Quilt Festival/Market this fall - entries open now through April 26th - for more info visit MQG blog - themodernquiltguild.wordpress.com

The Madrona Road challenge was a great success for our guild, with a total of nine entries. Thanks very much to Katie, Maria, Anita, Donna, Sandy, Ellen, Ann, Elizabeth and Bree for taking part in the challenge! Members can view the photos of all of the entered projects on BigTent in the Files tab. As a group we voted blindly on all of the projects, and Elizabeth's project was the winner. Maria and Ann tied for second place, and each received/will receive a bundle of fabric. At our April meeting, we'll discuss starting a new guild challenge.

This month's educational presentation, Find Your Tribe, was about finding modern quilting resources and community online. These educational presentations will become a recurring part of our monthly meetings. Members can log into our BigTent site to find a copy of the presentation.

Our next meeting is April 6th at 1pm at the Jimmie B Keel Library, and our educational presentation for this meeting will be What is Modern Quilting. Our May meeting will be held on May 11th at 10am at Inspire Quilting & Sewing in Plant City.

February Meeting Minutes

At our February meeting, we met at Inspire Quilting & Sewing in Plant City, a lovely quilt shop with lots of beautiful space for us to sew in. We had six members in attendance at this meeting, as well as two visitors from the Orlando MQG.

We discussed the upcoming Original Sewing Expo in Lakeland March 14-16, the Madrona Road challenge currently underway, as well as the upcoming evening mixer planned tentatively for 2/26. We also discussed setting some basic bylaws for the guild and a steering committee for this task was gathered.

Our next meeting is scheduled for 3/9 at the Jimmie B Keel Library. The JBK Library is currently under construction and will be for the remainder of this year, so they are limiting the use of meeting rooms, so we may meet more often at Inspire, as they have offered to host future meetings in their spacious classroom.

Our December Guild Meeting

Thanks to everyone who made it out to our December meeting! We had a really great turnout, with nine of us in attendance, and I think fun was had by all :)

We chatted about our upcoming meetings, currently slated for:

January 19, 2012 at 11AM at the Jimmie B Keel library in Tampa
February 9, 2013 at 10AM at Inspire Quilting & Sewing in Plant City

Please remember that if you plan to attend, please RSVP either by leaving a comment here or by RSVP'ing in our Facebook group.

At the meeting, we discussed the current guild challenge, the Negative Space challenge, and collectively decided to put the challenge on hold for the time-being, due to guild members' time constraints and the impending Madrona Road challenge, sponsored by Michael Miller Fabrics. Stay tuned for more information about the Madrona Road challenge, including sign-ups and details, coming soon, as well as a revival of the Negative Space Challenge some time in 2013.

We had a wonderful amount of projects to see for Sew & Share this month, from beautiful English paper piecing to applique and string piecing and so forth. Unfortunately, the pictures I took seem to have gotten eaten by my camera's memory card. I'm reformatting is as I type this, so hopefully next month, we'll have photos to share.

We also chatted about ideas for the guild over the next year, since 2013 is merely a month away. Ideas ranged from sewing days with a certain technique or focus, like free motion quilting or foundation paper piecing, a day or weekend guild retreat, a block swap or an add-a-border block project, a swap with another modern quilt guild, and so forth. There's definitely plenty of ideas to get us rolling into 2013.

I hope to see at our next meeting. Cheers!

Meeting #1

We had a great first meeting yesterday, with three members in attendance: Ann, Katie, and Elizabeth. We made tentative plans to set up a Sew Day for our next meeting in July, so stay tuned for information about our next meeting on our Facebook page. We also talked about ideas for other guild activities as the guild grows, and we've got some great ideas on the table. I'm really looking forward to our next meeting!