February 2016 Meeting ReCap

We want to thank everyone for coming to our new meeting location at the Jimmie B. Keel library.  We know our meeting location cannot be the best for everyone possible, but we hope this creates a more central location easier for most.  We are booked at the library for March 12, April 9, and May 14. Thanks to Anita for booking us in!  We hope to grow our members and do more sew days, either making charity quilts, learning new techniques, or challenges! We had fun this month learning tessellation from Flo.  Thanks to Flo for handing out the flannel squares to create her shamrock-esque blocks for next month!  Dianne is up for our March BOM.  We do need a volunteer for April's block. We received nearly all of our quilts to hang at the expo.  A few last minute sleeves need to hang and then we will be ready!  I am super excited for our exhibit next month at Lakeland Sewing Expo.

In March we will be creating the blocks for our Love Quilt Project.  Our members decided to create a rainbow of stripes with the children's art blocks.  Remember for next meeting to bring BRIGHT colors of fabrics for the strips.  Katie offered to bring her AccuQuilt Go to help cut the 2 1/2" strips we will be using.  As it is we will need the most of our 'white' areas.  We will be using white, tone on tone white, and low volume prints for these sections. Bring some fabric precut so we can get started as soon as we are there!

For those coming next month and want to let others know if they are bringing an iron/ironing board, extension cables, and etc please let us know in the Facebook event group page. Remember lots of fabrics for next month, bring your sewing machines, and supplies!  Let's see if we can get a quilt top done in three hours!

January 2016 Meeting ReCap

Welcome back to all those who joined us this month, we hope we have a grand quilty year! Some big news: MEETING LOCATION CHANGING. Due to our member size, we will no longer be meeting at Crafty Threads.  We want to thank Barb for all of her time and space at Crafty Threads, for letting us meet there for over the past year.  However leadership has decided we need more space!  We will now be meeting at the Jimmie B Keel Library on Bearrs Ave. For our longer lasting members, we are returning to where we used to meet!  In the past this was a more central meeting location, which we hope it returns to being. The library community rooms gave us ample space for working and having fun. Meeting times and days remain the same.

At our January meeting we began collecting quilts for our show at the Lakeland Sewing Expo in March. We have 13 quilts promised so far.  Let's hit 20!  Every member is welcome to submit a quilt to hang at the show. Your quilt must have a hanging sleeve on the back. When submitting the quilt we will give you a submission form to sign. In addition, please email Ellen BY the February meeting your quilt name, your name, and a description of the quilt.  We need to get the label information to the expo a month in advance of the show.

UFOs are now CEOs, Completely Executed Objects! If you didn't bring your fat quarters for our CEO game, still bring them!  Our first drawing for completing these will be given at the April meeting.  Bring as well any old projects you wish to swap with other members. I hope the new year brings you all lots of quilting time and fresh starts, see you next month at the library!

November 2015 Meeting ReCap

It's December. It may not look like it or feel like it, but the year is quickly coming to a close. Our guild accomplished a lot this year and I am very proud of where we have come. We have grown in size about 10 members this year, which to us is a huge percentage! Thank you to all who have continued to support each other with our guild and quilting. Our QuiltCon Charity quilt went so well together. We donated 64 pillowcases to Miles for Smiles and at our last count had 9 quilts for Project Linus.

At the November meeting we voted in our officers for 2016. President: Ellen A. VicePresident: Flo M. Treasurer: Anita A. Secretary:  Sandy M. In the coming week we will be paying our renewal with National.

We have thought of some fun new guild activities for us to do in 2016. There were 13 of 19 UFOs completed by our members this year. The rest of those can roll on over, if you wish!  We will continue the UFO Challenge and have a fat quarter as your ante for each UFO submission. Going along with the UFO Challenge, we have decided to do a UFO Swap.  For the January meeting, along with your list of UFOs, bring a UFO that you just don't want to look at anymore!  Something you started and have no desire to finish.  We will swap with other members and have a secondary challenge to complete or re-purpose the UFO in 2016. We also want to introduce Quilting Resolutions.  Instead of focusing on the past, lets look to the future!  What do you want to learn? What do you want to accomplish?  We will pass slips around at the meeting for you to fill out about your quilty hopes for 2016.  We will use these to help develop content and activities for our meetings.   As always, any of our guild activities are completely voluntary.  But we do want to remind you of our Think Spring Quilt Show in the Lakeland Sewing Expo!  Please bring finished quilts to the January meeting so we can have a final count to give the expo. Lakeland will be making the display signs for us.  I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday with lots of quilting!

October 2015 Meeting ReCap

October was a great, fun meeting where we all tried something new! Improv! Emily and Adelle initially gave us this idea for the group to try improv, based on Victoria Findley Wolfe's 15 Minutes of Play book.  Sandy, Barb, and Ellen shared their improv experience with Sherri Lynn Wood, which was earlier that week.  Some members felt like they didn't know what they were doing. Some loved the freedom. Many wished for a ruler! The Mimosas helped loosen everyone up! It was great fun to get out of our comfort zone and try something new.  We hope to see what becomes of these pieces! Project Linus quilts perhaps?

September Meeting Recap

We had a great turn out at our September meeting. We had one guest and one new member joined us.  It was a big sew day for us.  Thank you to all that came and sewed pillowcases. As a group we had 12 members creating pillowcases and ended with a grand total of 64! This is three times the amount we made last year.  In 2017, think we can sew 100??

Our current president, Ellen A. quilted our QuiltCon charity quilt. It received many oohs and aahs! It is now off to our member Adelle A. for binding! The quilt itself is not due until early next year, but we hope to see it complete next month. Our label and sleeve are already prepared for the quilt.

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.