Hello everyone, here's your summary of what happened at this month’s meeting for everyone who wasn’t able to attend (and to jog memories for those who did).
This meeting, we had a couple new guests - nice to meet them and we hope to see them again soon!
The big urgent business: this weekend is the Nanaimo quilt guild’s show and we have a booth in the merchant mall, right next to Troll Brothers Quilt Designs’ booth. We passed around a sign-up sheet, and there are special nametags for those volunteering at the booth so they can get into the show for free - these will be at the entrance. Several of our other members are volunteering at the show in varying capacities, so be sure to come say hi. (Details below on time and place.)
Other news/etc. from the meeting:
- The church we meet at has requested that we switch from Wednesday to Tuesday starting in September as one of their own weekly groups needs the room on Wednesday evenings. We discussed the change and agreed that it will work, so from September 3rd on, we’ll meet on the first Tuesday of the month at 7:00pm.
- Re: last month’s surveys: while we got lots of good feedback in the meeting, no one who was away responded when we sent out the questionnaires via email. We know a lot of you were busy working on stuff for the Nanaimo quilt show or away on retreat, so we’ll send the questionnaires again. Please take a few minutes to give us your ideas and suggestions for next, they’ll be very helpful in planning next year’s programs to make things fun for everyone.
- Our president is taking VIU’s textile/fibre arts class and she brought some examples of her class work and demo’d a couple transfer techniques from the class.
- We worked on hand-sewing some labels onto some of the many finished donation quilts.
- There will be no meeting per se next month, but we will be having our annual picnic. (Details below on time and place.)
- We assigned the summer challenge: up cycling. More info below.
- And of course there was show & share:
Picnic: 6:30pm Wednesday July 3rd at Matteo Sutton Park in downtown Nanaimo (same spot as last year’s, the big park with the parking lot at the corner of Comox and Terminal where we’ve had it before).
It’s a potluck, so bring a dish to share as well as your own plate/cutlery/water bottle or other beverage. We’ll be grabbing a picnic table or two, but bring a lawn chair or the like just in case.
We’ll also have a clothesline put up so bring your show and shares and some clothespins to display them.
SUMMER CHALLENGE: This summer, the challenge is all about up cycling. For those of you who were at the May meeting or saw the show and share Instagram post from last month, you saw an example with turning an old dress into a modern pillowcase, but you can do the challenge however you like with whatever you like. Take an old or unwanted fabric item or item of clothing, table linens, whatever… and turn it into a new quilted item. You choose the style and size, the only rule is you have to take a photo of the original item before you make any changes to it to show us along with your new finished item at the September meeting.
DONATION QUILTS: with a couple more quilt tops and a couple more finished quilts coming in tonight, I think we’re now up to 25 totally finished quilts and 6 or 8 tops waiting to be quilted. Well done, everyone! (And of course, if you have time over the summer, keep on working on them!)
Donation quilt HSTs general info: As we discussed in previous meetings, we have an ongoing project to make half square triangles for quilts to be donated to kids in foster care.
If you missed the specs on the HSTs: we’re going for a scrappy sort of look, but big and modern. Half square triangle blocks should be trimmed to 8.5 inches, with one side lighter and the other darker (relative is OK, like pink against white), and we also discussed having one side be a solid (or a subtle print that reads as a solid) and the other a print. The target age is the slightly older kids and teens, say 6-16, as there tends to already be a lot of donations aimed at the really little kids. Final quilt sizes will be lap size (5 blocks wide by 7 blocks high, plus borders) or twins, but you can also just keep feeding us HSTs and we’ll build the quilts later on. As this is an ongoing project, just make ‘em as you can and bring ‘em – great way to work through your stash.
Next (non-picnic) meeting: Tuesday, September 3rd, 7pm
Upcoming quilt shows:
- Island Quilters (the traditional guild here in Nanaimo): June 7-8, more info in the members section of http://www.islandquilters.ca/index.htm
- Not an official quilt show, but lots of quilts to look at at the Cowichan Exhibition’s quilting division in Mellor Hall on the Cowichan Exhibition Grounds, September 6th-8th in Duncan. You might even see some of our members’ quilts there. More info at http://cowex.ca
- Maybe Island Quilt Guild: July 18, 2020, more info on their website here: http://mayneislandquiltersguild.com/quilt-show/
Upcoming retreats:
- Stitch, Sip & Splash: presented by Troll Brothers Quilt Designs - July 12-14, 2019 in Shawnigan Lake. More info: https://trollbrothersquiltdesigns.com/collections/stitch-sip-splash-quilt-retreat-2019
Links for our guild:
Join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/258471184565888/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nanaimomqg/
Blog: http://nanaimomqg.blogspot.com
See you at the picnic - happy quilting!
