Samantha hosted our September meeting on September 7th at A Gathering of Stitches in Portland, Maine. She opened this space for fiber and textile artists of all kinds in August, and she kindly showed us around her place for making.
We had 14 members in attendance, as well as three guests and one new member.
Amy opened the meeting with some announcements and reminders.
- Riley Blake Challenge: the fabric is supposed to be available in September but is not yet here. Photos of challenge projects MUST be shared on the MQG site by the December deadline. Our guild will present projects and decide on a guild "winner" at our January meeting. The prize is Patchwork Please by Ayumi Takahashi.
- Please respond to the invitation you recieved from Amy to register on the MQG site. Make sure you are "following" and "join" the Seacoast Modern Quilt Guild on the site. People are starting to chatter on our group's message board and you won't want to miss any news!
- Officer nominations will occur at our next meeting, in October. If you'd like to serve on the committee, please consider nominating yourself for an officer position.
- The annual business meeting will be in November. Officer nominations will come to a vote; the proposed dues increase to $50 (last year's $36 plus $14 each to cover National MQG membership) will also come to a vote.
- Programming is set for the first three months of 2014. In January, we will have a photographer present to our group; in February, we will watch the Superior Threads video about needles; and in March, Nancy will teach the group how to do continuous bias binding. All meeting times and places for 2014 are already scheduled and arranged.
- Denyse Schmidt is lecturing at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell on November 15th. Information and ticket purchasing here.
- Lizzy House will be coming to speak to the SMQG and the BMQG at the West Newbury Town Hall Annex on November 23. If you are a paid member of either guild, the lecture will be free. Guests are welcome, and can purchase $10 tickets at the door. Please see Amy's post for more information.
- The Northampton MA guild and the SMQG will be doing a mini quilt swap in the beginning of 2014; details will come later.
- The end-of-year party will be held in December and we are still planning on a small-item Yankee swap. Please make and bring either a small sewn item (pouch, mug rug, pincushion, etc) or fun sewing notions worth about $15 for the Yankee swap.
- Fat quarter swap at the October meeting! If you would like to participate, please bring a fat quarter of any fabric that "goes with grey." (This excludes grey itself!) Bring as many as you'd like and you will take away the same number of FQ's you came with.
Paula started off show and tell with her happy Churn Dash mini quilt! The back is one larger churn dash. Such bright and cheerful colors!
Diane showed off a quilt made using some fabrics she found out shopping with Paula. She used a paper-pieced "butterfly" pattern, but found that if she flipped the pieces differently, she created an interesting octagon shape. I didn't catch a photo of the hexagons hanging out in the white negative space, but she hand-appliqued small bright hexies in the center of the grey ones you can just see at the bottom of the photo. Her blanket stitch looked perfect! She quilted it herself using a variety of FMQ designs.
Peg's little purse is a cute, smart pattern that allows for the bag to be constructed as a folded rectangle, and then when you turn it inside out, the lining just snugs into the bag and it has cute folded corners. The pattern (which she sells) is so appealing...
...that Nancy and Barbara both made one too! (I believe Barbara's is even straight-line quilted!) This little trio of bags caused much oooh-ing and ahh-ing.
Peg also made this Rail Fence quilt using bright corals radiating out to cool greys and blue-greens.
Amy brought her Applecore quilt. It is entirely machine-pieced using Baby Jane fabrics. She used bias binding to maneuver around the curved edges. A true once-in-a-lifetime quilt!
This month Amy also finished her paper-pieced Garden quilt. She designed all of the paper-pieced blocks. It is backed with a lovely panel print of girls in a garden. (I love that all of the quilt-on-table photos I took have loving hands petting the quilts! Quilters never can resist touching a quilt.)
I showed my Ocean Waves quilt made from scraps.
And I brought my daughter's minky-backed Patchwork Frames quilt.
Nancy made this bright tote (called a Chubby Charmer!) to help her haul all of her things to and from her other guild meetings.
Mary busted a whole shoebox full of scraps by making this quilt. The tiny squares making up those frames are not strip-pieced!
Jessica didn't get very much done this month. She started on some pillow covers using a variation on the Disappearing Nine-Patch block.
And she finished this blue wonky star quilt top, which will be a gift for a friend's son.
Jessica continued her unproductive streak by quilting this warm and lovely housewarming quilt
and this coral and grey Irish Chain quilt. I know it's really hard to be productive in August, and we all wish her more success next month! ;)
Samantha is experimenting with half-square triangles. She recommends a baby quilt size as the perfect size for quilting experimentation! Her background fabric is a Kaffe shot cotton.
Samantha also showed off a scrappy wonky star quilt top.
Many of us were seeing stars this month--when it came time to draw a block lottery winner, we had a whole design wall full of amazing star blocks.
Someone noted that even though all these stars are VERY different, the quilt top made from them is going to look surprisingly unified. I couldn't agree more. Diane was our lucky winner! I can't wait to see how she will set these blocks. I found this particular group of lottery blocks quite inspiring--thank you for the awesome theme, Samantha R.!
I hope you will join us for the October meeting. It will be held on Saturday October 5th from 10 am to 12 pm, at the Stratham Public Library in Stratham NH. We'll be hearing an applique presentation by a representative from Thermoweb. Guests and prospective members are always welcome! See you all then.
