April Meeting Report

The meeting was Saturday and we flew solo, as our fearless leader, Adrianne, was down with some dread illness. It must have been bad to keep her away.

A-B-C Challenge
We had another reveal of the A-B-C Challenge blocks and, again, they were were fabulous. Because of the missed March meeting, we had 4 blocks due: K, L, M & N. People are trying to catch up, so we had a lot of blocks.

Events

QuiltCon is coming.


 Challenges and Swaps

The Echo Challenge and the Pillow Swap were both due this meeting. Awesome work! There were zippers, ruffles, piping and covered buttons, among other techniques.

Joy-Lily used the leaf pattern from her book, Carefree Quilts. It is fun to see the block in different colors.

Mel's pillow has a brighter version of the French provincial look to it.

Everyone who participated gave in a bag of scraps, which meant that they would like what they got back, hopefully. There was lots of excited squeals when people saw their pillows.

Spiderweb is a very popular pattern in the Modern Quilt World. This rendition is really striking. I like the pink with the dark grey/charcoal.

Amanda's pillow, yellow and blue with the lozenge shapes, is wonderful. I really liked the block the maker used and want to find out the name so I can make it. Perhaps I can include it in the A-B-C Challenge blocks?

Members brought their Echo Me! Me! Me! challenge pieces in as well. There were a wide variety of items from hand and tote bags, quilts, placemats, pillows, journal covers and more. It was wonderful to see the variety of items that people made. The amazing thing was that people made their pieces with only fat eights. Many people added additional fabrics, or bought additional yardage, but some did not. It was great to see what people could make with that much fabric. There was definitely no room for cutting errors! Thanks to the guild for supplying the fabric for this challenge.

Marci is trying not to buy fabric in 2012, so all of her extra fabrics came from her stash. Great colors!

Claire was inspired by Jaye's pencil rolls. She made a sewing tools roll from her challenge fabric. Claire was really SMART to add a kind of elasticized top to the roll so that the tools wouldn't fall out.

I think that these would make great gifts for other sewists. Hint hint, Claire! ;-)

The next challenge is the Modern Quilt Guild's block design challenge, which is called the QuiltCon Block Challenge. Elizabeth Hartman of the ohFransson! blog will jury the blocks.

The fabric can be purchased at:

• Fat Quarter Shop
• Pink Chalk Fabrics (not listed on the QuiltCon site, but they have the bundles for less money than the other shops)
• Marmalade Fabrics
• CheFab
• Sew Modern

All have fabric packs available for purchase. Not all of the packs on the sites listed above are solids, though solids are suggested.

Rules and guidelines are listed here. More information about that challenge will be forthcoming so check back.

An additional local challenge is to make a block from the BAMQG colors. The blocks made in these colors will be made into a banner to display for external public relations.

Amanda hasn't told us what the next swap will be so stay tuned for that.

Charity
Our AWESOME charity coordinators are back again with a new and exciting Q2 block: string blocks. String blocks are great for using up strips. You can make them according to the directions or using your own widths of strips.

Q2 quilts will be given to Project Night Night. Directions are posted on the forum for members. Directions will be posted her soon, so check back.

They had a very fun example with bright and cheerful colors and someone may do a demo on joining blocks built on a batting foundation at an upcoming meeting.

The group has already made 20 finished quilts to be given to the chosen charities. Awesome work!

If you are not a member, but want to send in blocks or tops or quilts for our donation quilts, please leave a comment and someone will get back to you.

 Sew Time
As usual, we had a bit of time to sew. People chatted and made progress on their own projects.

See you all on May 5!