December meeting recap

Those of us that gathered at our December meeting had a lovely time with food, gifts, and of course, quilts.

Thanks to Heather who organized our catered dinner. Many of us remarked on how nice it was to just come to the December meeting and not worry about bringing food. Heather (with the help of her husband and sons!) did such a beautiful job with flowers on the tables and so much delicious food!

 

We had a fun "My Favorite Things" gift exchange and all went home with 3 fun, favorite gifts. Mine included this pot cover sewn by Diane. Other gifts included this handy seam ripper tool made by Cosette's husband for cutting apart strip piecing sections . There was chocolate, handmade soaps, Q-tips for cleaning your sewing machine, quilt pattern postcards, potholders, and more. Such a fun way to share our favorites and take home some fun gifts.

As always, we had beautiful quilts made by our members. Take a look ...

All in all, a lovely evening and fun holiday celebration!

Mark you calendars now for our January  meeting - Tuesday, January 30, from 6-8 at St. Gabriel's. Hope to see many of you there!

December meeting

Guild Friends,
Our December meeting is Tuesday, December 5th from 6-8 at St. Gabriel's Catholic Church, Ministry Cetner, Room D. Our holiday party will be catered this year so come and enjoy!

We will have a Favorite Things Exchange.We each bring three of the same Favorite thing- under 5 dollars each- it can be anything  - something you make, lip balm, candy , soda, kitchen gadget, quilt and sewing items, etc etc. ( In the past I have gotten stain sticks, toilet bowl cleaner, orange juice).

We put your name in a hat three times and we each go home with 3 new items.

Its a fun way to get to know people.

As always, bring your quilts and projects to show and share!

Hope to see many of you on Tuesday!

hello Neighbors! Quilt Exhibit at Free Range Brewing

Guild Friends,
Be sure and join us for an evening celebrating our guild's first ever public exhibit. Our "hello Neighbors!" Quilt Exhibit opens on Friday night, November 8, at Free Range Brewing Company in NoDa. Join us for a Quilters Reception from 7-9 PM.

Be sure and tell your friends about the exhibit and spread the word about modern quilting and the Charlotte Modern Quilt Guild!

October meeting tomorrow night

Guild friends,
Remember our October meeting is tomorrow night, October 24 from 6-8 at St. Gabriel's Catholic Church, Ministry Center, Room D.

If you have a quilt for the Hello Neighbors exhibit, please bring it, ready to hang.

As always, bring your finished projects to show and share.

Hope to see many of you there!

Hello Neighbors Quilt Exhibit coming up!

Guild Members - Many of you know about our upcoming Hello Neighbors Quilt Exhibit that will be hanging at Free Range Brewery in NoDa from November 8 to December 18, 2017. Here are a few more details for you:

 

¨ All Guild Members are encouraged to participate in our first Quilt Exhibit. 

¨ Quilts ranging in size from 18 inches up to 36inches (do not need to be square) Somewhere in this range.

¨ 10 inch Quilt Challenge– a 10 inch square mini quilt. This is one way anyone can participate. You're encouraged to submit a quilt and this will be a curated selection from all the 10 inch quilts that are submitted.

¨ Color Palette for the show– Reds, Rust, Mustard, Grays, Olive to Yellow Green, Blues. This helps give cohesion to our exhibit.

¨ All quilts must be brought to the October 24 meeting. Ready to hang. Refer to Hanging Tutorial Link below. If you need help with this just bring to guild meeting.

Hanging Tutorial

http://www.amyalamode.com/blog/2012/01/18/how-to-hang-a-quilt-tutorial/

¨ Each Quilt Artist must have a signed Free Range contract. We will have these at the meeting but if you are unable to attend, we can email you a copy which you can fill out and email back to Heather at bittybird.co@gmail.com

¨ Name and title need to be labeled on the quilt.  If you would like to write up a story about the quilt and send it to Heather please do so. And if quilt can be sold be sure and include the price.

¨ Friday November 10– Meet the Quilter– 7-9 pm– tables are being reserved in the community room - we need to have a head count of who would be coming. We'll be sending out an invite to members with info and RSVP.

They do serve wine in addition to beer : )

Let's make this a great event and spread the word about modern quilting and the Charlotte Modern Quilt Guild!

Septmeber meeting recap

Quilting friends,
We had a small group that gathered last Tuesday, but as you will see, it was a very talented and creative group. Such beautiful quilts.

Here are a few items to keep in mind ...

1) Our October meeting will be on Tuesday, October 24. We hope that many of you will be able to make it. We meet at St. Gabriel's Catholic Church, Ministry Center, Room D. During our October meeting, we will elect officers for the upcoming year. The positions we elect are President and Vice President (or two co-presidents), Treasurer, and Secretary. If you are interested in serving in any of these positions, please email us at cltmqg@gmail.com

You can read the descriptions of these positions in our By-Laws. Just click the tab at the top of the page. Don't worry, it's a short read and will help you understand how we are organized as a guild.

In addition to the elected offices, we have a couple of other positions - Swap Captain and Block of the Month Captain. These positions have been open for the last few months and we'd love to fill them and get some fun swaps and BOM's going again!

2) Thanks to those of you who contributed items for the St. Gabriel's Women's Lunch. As a guild, we provide these items to be used in St. Gabe's fundraiser each year as a way of thanking the church for allowing us to use the room at no charge. You can begin planning ahead and make something for next year. Every year, we start gathering items in September/October. If you're that organized, go ahead and mark your calendar and sew ahead : )

3) Our "hello Neighbors!" Quilt Exhibit at Free Range Brewing is coming up in November. All guild members are encouraged to participate in our very first Quilt Exhibit. Quilts can range in size from 18-30 inches, but do not have to be square. There is not enough space to display full size quilts so we are sticking to smaller sizes. We are also offering a 10 Inch Quilt Challenge - these mini-quilts will be displayed together.

The color palette for the exhibit is reds, rust, mustard, grays, olive to yellow green, blues. This helps give cohesion to our exhibit. All quilts must be brought to our October 24 meeting, ready to hang and each quilt artist will need to sign a Free Range Contract. We will have these at the October 24th meeting.

Please be sure and label your quilt with your name and the name/title of the quilt. If you would like to sell your quilt, please include the price on the label.

All quilts will be curated for cohesion. If any quilts do not make the exhibit, they will be hung during our Community Day on Saturday, November 18.

The opening of the exhibit is Friday, November 10th. We will have a gathering to celebrate. More details on this to come but mark your calendars now!

On Saturday, November 18, we will have a Community Day. We are considering bringing several sewing machines to the brewery and inviting folks to make a quilt square that we will use in our Friendship Tray placemats. Some of us may be there sewing placemats and telling anyone interested about this way that we give back to our community.  More info on this Community Day, including specific hours, to come. It will probably last for two to four hours.

Stay tuned for more information about our exhibit and guild preparations for the event. The exhibit will hang at Free Range Brewing Company for six weeks and is a great way to showcase modern quilting here in Charlotte!

 3) Remember, we do not meet in November because of Thanksgiving. Our December meeting will be  a social time on Tuesday evening, December 5th. We discussed having a "My Favorite Things" party in which each attendee brings three of their favorite things (three of the same thing). Anything from a favorite candy, quilting notion, household product, anything! We will have a fun way of sharing these with each other. You won't want to miss it!

As I said at the beginning, we had such beautiful quilts shared by our members at the meeting. Take a look ...

 

We've been small in numbers lately but there is a lot of enthusiasm and eagerness to grow and improve our guild. Hope many of you will be able to join us in October AND come to the Quilt Exhibit at Free Range in November.

September meeting

Guild friends,

Our September meeting is tomorrow night, Tuesday, September 26 from 6-8 at St. Gabriel's Catholic Church, Ministry Center, Room D.

A few things to note:

1. For those of you who would like to donate a quilted item for the St. Gabriel Woman’s Luncheon next month. We do this every year in exchange for not paying monthly rent on our room. A pretty good deal for us!

Please bring your bag, basket, quilt, or wall hanging to the Tuesday evening meeting and Dee Wittmack will be there to collect.  If you have a quilt to donate and will not be at the meeting, let us know in the comments or email, and Dee will contact you to pick up.Thank you CMQG members!

2. It's that time of year again for nominations to the executive board of the Charlotte Modern Quilt Guild. We elect new officers in October.  If you are interested in serving as an officer, please let us know.

3. The Hello Neighbors Exhibit at Free Range Brewing is coming up. If you have quilts you have ready to be submitted please bring them to the meeting.

4. We are working on our QuiltCon Charity Quilt Challenge. WE have our flying geese- now what? Come on Tuesday and help us design the quilt. Bring your sewing machine if you want to help put it all together!

5. As always, bring your quilts to show and share!

Hope to see you Tuesay!

Hello Quilting Friends,

 Our August Meeting is tomorrow night at 6 pm at St. Gabriel's Catholic Church.

We are still working on our Challenge Quilt. We had a lot of  fun last time, sewing together. 

Bring your Sewing Machines and quilting tools. Provided the ironing pad and iron. Extension cords and pwer strips are helpful.

We have an idea about how to use our improv blocks so we'll play with that idea tomorrow night.

Whoever is doing "My Charming LIfe" will present and we look forward to that.

Don't forget to send pictures of quilts you would like to have considered for the exhibit in November- to Lucy  704--345-4414 or by email cook.holiday@gmail.com - please include dimensions.

Don't Forget Show and Tell.

Modern Quilt Guild August block and quilt of the month-

https://community.themodernquiltguild.com/resources/august-block-month-mod-economy-square

https://community.themodernquiltguild.com/resources/august-2017-quilt-month-positively-transparent

At MQG there are some new interesting webinars.

See you soon!

Hello Guild Friends,

Tuesday July 25 at 6 pm is the next Guild Meeting.

We are having a Sew- in to work on the QuiltCon 2018 Charity Quilt.

All the fabric will be provided- bring sewing machines and scissors/rotary cutters/ mats. Pressing Pad and Iron will be provided.

At the last meeting the members decided to be inspired by the Modern Triangles Quilt Book. Everyone will be given fabric and will create a block {maybe a little Improv) that will be cut into a right triangle and then composed into a quilt.

Cosette Blackmer will share her Charming Life.

Don't forget to bring show and tell. We had some great items last meeting shared with us.

June Meeting Recap

We Discussed the Hello Neighbors! Quilt Exhibit with Free Range Brewery Quilts need to be delivered by October 24th. Opening Night Reception is November 10 7-9pm.

Don't Forget the 10 inch mini quilt challenge. Everyone should participate in this one. it's like a potholder sized quilt- bind it anyway you like.

Shakerag Workshops   http://www.shakerag.org/  - this is the workshop Lucy Attended.

Diane also suggested having a demo/discussion about quilt binding and ways to troubleshoot binding issues

We hope to see you all next week to help create our Charity Quilt.

May meeting tongiht

Guild friends - our May meeting is tonight from 6-8 at St Gabriel's Catholic Church. Hope you can make it. As always, bring your projects to show and share and inspire us all!

March meeting

Guild friends - we hope you'll all be at our March meeting this Tuesday, March 28, from 6-8 PM at St. Gabriel's Catholic Church, Ministry Center, Room D.

Our program will be all about organizing your sewing space. This will be a time for all to share so come with your great ideas for organizing your sewing area, how you manage your stash, and other sewing space related topics.

If you have taken the Block of the Month Challenge and made the Modern Quilt Guild February block, please bring and, as always, bring your projects to show and share!

Hope to see you all there!

January Modern Quilt Guild Block of the Month

A couple of our members took the challenge and tried the January Block of the Month from the national Modern Quilt Guild. If you are a member of our Charlotte guild, you are automatically a member of the national guild and have access to all the great resources including block and quilt patterns, webinars, and so much more.

Here are the versions of the January MQG BOM made by our members:

Using prints ...

and solids ...

 

We're going to use the Modern Quilt Guild's BOM each month for our own BOM and hope many of you will join in the fun! If anyone wants to try the MQG BOM for February, here's the link.If you do try it, be sure and bring your blocks to  the guild meeting on March 28.

February Meeting Update

Guild friends ... thanks to all of you who attended and shared your work at our February meeting. It was great to see the beautiful work you are doing. We started our meeting with a few announcements including a short discussion of the possibility of doing a gallery show for our guild sometime later in the year. Beth shared about her time at Quilt Con and encouraged guild members to consider going to Quilt Con in Nashville in 2019! Road trip, anyone?!!

We did our usual Show and Share early in the meeting so that we could use the rest of the time for sewing. Such beautiful work our guild members shared ...

After Show and Share, we got to work making hearts for the I Found A Quilted Heart Project. Several members brought their sewing machines and we pulled from several bins of scraps to create the quilted hearts. Some of us did hand sewing and embellished with lace and trims. Heather had printed some cute labels for the hearts which give info about how to share online if you find a heart. Everyone enjoyed the time to sit and sew and talk and we look forward to seeing if any of our hearts are found and shared online! The main point, though, is that the hearts bring a little joy to someone who finds them, whether we ever know about it or not.

If you missed the fun, we hope you'll be able to join us in March. Mark your calendars now - our March meeting is Tuesday, March 28!

Color study

 

 "Color is one of the simplest and most effective ways of dramatically changing the look of a quilt. By trying new color palettes and finding color inspiration in the things you love, you can expand your use of color and come up with exciting and surprising results. In this Block of the Month lesson you will learn some color vocabulary and a couple of fun exercises for coming up with new color palettes."  - from the description of the January 2017 Block of the Month from the Modern Quilt Guild


We'd love for several of our guild members to try this block and share what you learn about color with the guild. If you're interested in trying this, contact guild President, Deanna at quiltedoncloud9@icloud.com

We hope that several of you will give this a go. There just might be a little reward 😉 for those that do!

For February

Guild friends - Mark your calendars now - February is a short month and it's speeding by! Our next meeting will be Tuesday evening, February 28, from 6-8 PM at St. Gabriel's Catholic Church, Ministry Center, Room D.

February Program
Our program/activity for the meeting will be making quilted hearts for the I Found a Quilted Heart Project. To learn about the project, visit the website. It's helpful to read the sections on Sewing and Sowing. See the map with Locations where hearts have been found is also very interesting!

We will make quilted hearts at the meeting and will then ask for volunteers from the guild to spread them around, to sow them

To participate, you can prepare ahead if you like by using some of the improv techniques we talked about in January and make some pieced "fabric" from which you will sew a heart. Or you can just bring fabric scraps and anything else you might want to use for embellishing your heart. It'll be a fun evening, creating these little hearts to spread a little love around our city!


Clean out your stash, share with others 
Guild members have been incredibly generous in the past in sharing fabric with others. Here are a couple of opportunities if you want to clean up and clear out and share.

Make Welcome Refugee Sewing School. Co-founder and Director, Beth Pinckney (that's me) is always happy to accept your donations of fabric. Currently, we're focusing more on garment sewing so accepting fabric in one yard or larger sizes. Cottons and knits are welcome. We also sometimes take used machines in good working order that we pass on to students who need machines, as well as notions, thread, and other sewing supplies.

The Red Bird Project. Former guild board member, Xandi Hamilton alerted us to this wonderful project. A neighbor of hers is collecting fabric, ribbon, buttons, and any other kind of embellishment to pass on to the maker of these little dresses that are sent to girls in Africa. She makes over 1000 dresses a year. If you have fabric or embellishments you'd like to share with her, bring to the guild meeting in February and Xandi will deliver. In addition, she includes a beanie baby in the pocket of each dress, so if you have a stash of forlorn beanies in a box in your attic, bring them too.

 In the next post, we'll let you know about an option for sharing your learning with the guild at our February meeting. Stay tuned ...

Heart of the Triad Quilt Guild Show

Friends - mark you calendars for the Heart of the Triad Quilt Guild Show, "Not Just Another Quilt Show," April 21 and 22 in Greenboro. Follow this link for more information.

How to find us and more ...

Guild friends - we've got a LOT coming up this year. So many fun new ideas and projects that we are considering for 2017. If you are a member, I hope you attended our January meeting (and paid your dues 😊).

For starters, we want you all to know how you can interact with the guild during the month. We only meet once (last Tuesday of each month) but there is so much going on that we want you to be able to be connected.

If you're here, you know that we have a blog. We'll use this space to update you on upcoming meeting. share links for tutorials and projects, let you know about upcoming events, and tell you about what we've been doing. So, place #1 - the blog. If you want to tell someone how to find us, just tell them to google Charlotte Modern Quilt Guild. That will normally lead them right here.

If you're on Facebook, we have a page for the guild. Again, just search facebook for the Charlotte Modern Quilt Guild and you'll find us. Like the page and you'll get updates. We'll use the fb page for announcements, photos, meeting updates, and the like. Feel free to comment on posts, ask questions, share ideas or quilting related events that you want us all to know about.
https://www.facebook.com/The-Charlotte-Modern-Quilt-Guild-142528345816277/?fref=ts

If you're on Instagram, we are, too! Follow us at cltmqg. https://www.instagram.com/cltmqg/

If you are a member of the Charlotte Modern Quilt guild, then you are automatically a member of the national organization of which we are a part, the Modern Quilt Guild. As a guild member, you have full access to all the resources of the national guild. There is so much there - tutorials, webinars, patterns, challenges, articles - and you can access it ALL!

Finally, if you want to get in touch, email us at cltmqg@gmail.com  You can also contact us via private message on facebook.

OK, how about some eye candy from our meeting ...

Those are teasers, friends. Stay tuned for more ...

January meeting and Dues due!

Quilting friends - don't forget! Our January meeting is tomorrow night from 6-8 PM at St. Gabriel's Catholic Church, Ministry Center, Room D.

Skip down to this blog post for details and especially, don't forget to bring your dues of $40 for the year.

Hope to see you all tomorrow!

Charlotte Quilters Guild Show coming up ...

The Charlotte Quilters Guild 2017 show, "A Walk Down Memory Lane" will be help on March 10 and 11 at the Union County Agricultural Center in Monroe. For more details, see their website.

January meeting details

Happy January, quilting friends. I hope you've all marked your calendars for our next meeting, Tuesday evening, January 31, from 6-8 PM at St. Gabriel's Catholic Church. Here are a few details for the meeting and a little challenge for you to try between now and then!

- Dues are due! Our yearly dues of $40 per member are due in January. Please come prepared to pay up for another year in the guild. You can pay by check or cash.

-January Program - Our next president, Deanna, will demo her Mile-A-Minute Improv Blocks. These blocks are a great way to use up scrap fabric and play around with improv piecing. She has written a tutorial which is posted on her website here.

-A challenge for you. In the next couple of weeks before our January meeting, try making a few improv pieced blocks. You can use Deanna Mile-A-Minute method, using her tutorial as a guide. Another helpful explanation of improv block making is from Victoria Findlay Wolfe's 15 Minutes of Play website. Her website shows LOTS of examples of improv piecing by quilters who have joined in the fun on her website. Her instructions are here. 

-A swap - Want to have some fun with these improv blocks. Bring the blocks you've made and swap with a guild member. Take your swapped block home and use it to make a mini quilt to give back to your swap partner OR use it to make a placemat that we will give to our guild charity, Friendship Trays.

-Finally - Quilt Con East is coming up soon - February 23-26 . For more details about the annual convention of our umbrella organization, the Modern Quilt Guild, visit the Quilt Con website. For those guild members that are planning to attend, it would be nice to chat at our January meeting and perhaps figure out if we want to do any carpooling!

A look back ...

Just a quick look back, friends, at our holiday potluck/guild meeting in December. We were a small-ish group but what we lacked in numbers, we made up for with good food and conversation and lots of beautiful quilts. Enjoy a few pictures from the meeting and plan to be with us in January!

More details to come on our program for January and some improv play for you to do before the meeting ...

 

See all that good food we shared!

 

 

And here's another stack of placemats for Friendship Trays!

Great work, guild!

Treasures, large ...

 

 

 

and small ...

 

So much beauty and creativity in our group! I know every time I come to a guild meeting, I go home encouraged and inspired.