Hello everyone, here's your summary of what happened at this month’s meeting for everyone who wasn’t able to attend (and as a future reference/memory jogger for those who did).
News/etc. from the meeting:
- A couple members brought some books and magazines they no longer need or want, and I think all found new homes. BTW, if you have quilting books or magazines you would like to de-stash, do feel free to bring them to a meeting.
- Membership is due and we need to send things in to the MQG in a few weeks. If you haven’t renewed yet, please email us to sort it out.
- Also, if you’re a new member and you have not yet received your MQG pin, please let us know at the December meeting.
- If you are interested in submitting a quilt to the Quiltcon juried show, the deadline is December 2. More info at: https://www.quiltcon.com/
submit-a-quilt - We had info about some spots open at a Stacey Day workshop being put on but the “regular” Nanaimo guild, and she brought the sample quilt for us to look at. The workshop will be Saturday March 21, 2020 and will cost $40, for more info: www.islandquilters.ca/
newsletters/newsletter0519.pdf - We got into a discussion of the need for a new leader of the guild as neither of the current co-leaders can continue, for a variety of reasons. We discussed splitting the role into a leader/president role and a program director role, and this led to a broader discussion about how as the guild grows we will need to have some more formality to how things are run, such as bylaws, a constitution, proper meeting minutes, and breaking up the various duties of the executive into smaller jobs. This is something that will come up again as we grow, but in the meantime there have been a couple people who expressed interest in sharing the program director role.
- Someone asked about the round robin, so there was some discussion of how that went last time. For those of you who participated in the previous round robin, if you have yours finished/quilted, could you bring it to the December meeting to show?
- There was also the question of whether there would be interest in a field trip of sorts to Dressew in Vancouver. If so, who would like to organize it and when?
- After the break, the group did a design exercise with coloured paper, mimicking the process of improv piecing a block from a selection of scraps. The original inspiration had been Stonehenge, but we thought it would be fun to put it to a vote as to whether to reveal the inspiration or just lead it through color by color (starting with a blue “sky” block). Everyone wanted to not be told the inspiration, and hey, that’s better anyway, since it’s fun to just let the fabric (or, in this case, paper) lead you where it wants. It was great to see how varied the end results were (same Instagram post as our show and share below).
- And of course there was show & share (also has pics of the results of our improv piecing with paper exercise):
POTLUCK and SWAP: As always, our December meeting is our annual potluck - bring a dish to share, can be hot or cold, dessert or salad or whatever, plus your own plate, cutlery, and mug.
Our swap this year is fabric Christmas ornaments or decorations and we’ll be doing the usual stealing game as well during the swap.
Also, due to setting up with food and all that, the December meeting starts at 6:30pm instead of 7:00pm.
DONATION QUILTS: 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. We’re now up over 35 totally finished quilts (and two more finished ones were in our show and share tonight.
We had a brief discussion about whether to continue with the HSTs theme or move to maybe using more panels as centrepieces and adding borders. It was decided that we’ll open it up; if you’d like to continue making the HSTs as last year and described below, awesome. If you’ve had enough of HSTs but want to do a different pattern or do panels, that’s cool. Just make it modern and make it overall about 45” x 60” if you’re doing an entire quilt on your own, bonus points for that size plus borders to beef it up.
We also have a huge roll of batting for the donation quilts, so get in touch with us if you have a top done because there is batting to be had for it and we can cut it for you if you tell us what size your quilt top is.
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 meeting: Tuesday, December 3rd, 6:30pm
Upcoming quilt shows:
Maybe Island Quilt Guild: July 18, 2020, more info on their website here: http://
Links for our guild:
Join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
See you in December - happy quilting!
