Tampon Tuesday:

Our meeting started off with an enthusiastic Thank You to our MQG members for their participation in the United Way Niagara Tampon Tuesday initiative.  The United Way representatives were so thrilled with our abundant donation that we were given a cheerful pink lei as a thank you!  It’s so great to see our members looking out for others in simple ways! Thank you, Ladies!

Judy Lyons Trunk Show:

Our plans to bring Judy Lyons in for a trunk show and presentation seem to be coming into shape.  Judy is a trained quilt appraiser from Burlington. Heather plans to confirm with Judy on an early 6:30 start to our September 12th meeting to accommodate her long presentations without sacrificing on our treasured Sew and Tell Time.

Christmas Tree Blocks:

Some of our members seem to be kicking into the Christmas spirit already, and have begun putting together a few of the Larger Amy Smart Christmas Tree Blocks and the mini version of the tree blocks for our Christmas In July swap.  After some deliberation, we decided that since both Amy’s quilts look great, we leave it to you to decide which size you like the best, and we’ll see what turns up for the big draw!  We are drawing inspiration from Amy’s Colour Scheme, so we are aiming to choose fabrics in Red, white and green with Brown trunks. Have fun whipping a few of these up as a leaders and enders project or do up a batch to keep the in-between season bright!

March 30th Sew-In:

All are welcome to join the Sew-In at our usual location.  You can bring any project you would like to work on, but a large group of us will be partaking in a Block-style Round-Robin.  If you would like to participate, we would recommend you bring:

• Some scraps that add up to about 3-4 metres worth of fabric
• Include a variety of values from light to dark
• About 1m of contrasting fabric for negative space if desired.
• A box, bin or bag that can be used to keep your fabrics together as the blocks make their way around the room.
• Scissors or rotary cutter, rulers and mat

We will have two ironing stations.

Some other details to keep in mind:  

• We have sent out a Doodle Poll to help us plan for numbers.  Please click here or on your email to participate as soon as possible, as we may be sending further details to those who will be participating once the executive have met.  Keep your eyes on your inbox!  
• Lunch is potluck–Keep your offerings Nut-Free.
• Bring your favourite drink. 

Superhero Quilt:

It’s a bird!  It’s a plane! It’s the Superhero Quilt committee! Tori, Brenda, Debbie, Carla, Jan and Tara have joined forces to create a quilt to donate to the Niagara Children’s Centre’s Superhero Fun Run this fall.  These Superquilters started designing a twin-sized quilt that will feature pixel-pieced superheroes, suitable for a wee superhero boy or girl’s room.  The guild will provide funding for the cost of materials, and the aforementioned Wonderwomen will be shopping for deals and looking for discounts from our local quilt shops to stretch our mighty dollar.  Keep your spidey senses on alert for updates and progress as we finalize plans. If you have small kids, the 1K run is a great family outing, so consider joining in the fun! We will be sure to keep you in the superloop about how to buy tickets in case you know a superkid who could use a warm, cozy superquilt!

What’s on the MQG Website:

Roxane did some investigation into what is new on our organization’s webpage and reported back to our guild.  Turns out, there’s lots to mention! A few of the things she mentioned included:

• The 2019 Riley Blake Challenge–they have no more free fabric to give away but they sure would like participants.  You can still purchase fabric online or maybe from one of our local shops.
• Cheryl Arkison led a Webinar  on March 14th
• Theresa Duryea-Wong is doing a webinar on April 30th on quilts made in Japan
• There is a free Block-of the Month pattern featured every month with a variety of layout options to choose from.

Thanks, Roxane for being our first explorer!  Next month, we are looking forward to see what our lovely Kathleen roots up.  

Get Access:

In the meantime, do take a bit of time to explore for yourself!  There is so much value in using the resources section, so let’s start by making sure everyone can log in and take advantage of the excellent variety of patterns, inspiration, Webinars, challenges and more:

• Go to the Modern Quilt Guild Website
• Login with the email you provided to the guild when you joined
• If you forget your password, click on the forgot your password button and then put in the email you gave us.  If that does not work, please email Tara at  niagaramqg@gmail.com to double-check the information that is on file.

Dorothy Goes to Nashville:

Dorothy came back from Nashville with a spring in her step, some great inspiration and a whole lot of pretty fabrics.  She shared some of the highlights of some of the presentations she attended, including speakers such as Christina Camelli,Mary Fons and Sherri-Lynn Wood.  

Thanks for sharing your notes with us, Dorothy!

Monthly Block Challenge Show and Tell:  SOLIDS

This month’s Challenge featured solid-coloured fabrics.  Check out these solid examples of modern quilting brought in by our keen quilters:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Progress on our WIP Challenge list:

This guild is full of motivated quilters who are checking off quilts from their WIP list like wildfire!  This month saw us rushing against the calendar to complete our WIP #1, with 13 exciting finishes for Brenda’s list, but we didn’t get pictures of them all.  Here’s what we got:  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keep your eyes on that calendar, and keep sewing, because April’s challenge is #3!

Open Sew and Tell

On top of our challenges, a few of our members had a showing of other finishes and WIP’s that get the room buzzing!  Have a look-see!

Carla’s Canada quilt with flying geese in different sizes to go with the scale theme for today’s meeting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Draws: 

We laughed when Janie pulled her own number out of the box and pocketed $27.00 worth of winnings!  Brenda won the draw for the Monthly Block Challenge! Door prize winners were Kathleen, Stephanie, Pam and Donna!

Use of Scale in Modern Quilts

Heather and Stephanie pulled together a presentation to get our minds processing how we can use scale in many different ways to get a gorgeous modern quilt put together.  Some of the ideas included:

• scaling up a smaller block to create a full-sized quilt made of a huge single block or four blocks (Like Roxane and Brenda’s baby quilts)
• zooming in and cropping out part of the design to fill part of the quilt
• Offsetting the focal point
• Using different sizes of the same block within the design (Like our 2017 Charity Quilt Challenge)
• Using differently scaled fabrics
• Using differently scaled stitching 
• Using differently scaled quilting designs 
• Using a variety of widths of strips to make stripes

 

 

 

 

 

February and March blogs written by Tara. Thanks so much my friend for In Need and a friend Indeed !!