February Meeting Recap

Another enthusiastic group of quilters showed up for our February meeting!

The meeting started with the following announcements:

Membership—Members who joined the ChattMQG in January should have received an invitation from the national MQG to join their website. Members who have not received that invitation or are having trouble logging in, should email us @ chattmqg@gmail.com. Members who joined this month should receive their invitation within the next couple of weeks.

March Sew-In—Our first Sew-In of the year is Saturday, March 8th immediately following our March meeting, from 12:00—4:00. Bring a project to work on or join the group that will be making the "Ginormous Tote Bag". The fabric and notion requirements for the "Ginormous Tote Bag" can be found here. In addition to all your sewing essentials, you will need to bring a multi-plug extension cord or surge protector. You may also want to bring your lunch to get a jump on those projects. 

Tennessee Aquarium and IMAX Theater Quilt Exhibit—Our committee for these exhibits met with our Aquarium/IMAX liaison to preview the spaces allotted for the quilts. The themes for both the Aquarium and IMAX exhibits, quilt entry requirements and timeline for entries, were all discussed. The complete committee report was emailed to our members. This is a huge opportunity for our guild and we need to make it a great show.

The Modern Dresden Plate lottery blocks were turned in. Catherine and Linda each went home with some of these.

Jean presented the lottery block for March, a simple Plus block. Here is a quick tutorial. You can use any color scheme you want. Make them any size, wonky or straight. The only requirement is that the colors be true solid colors.

• Step 1. Select two contrasting or different value fabrics. Fabric (a) = background, Fabric (b) = contrast, different value. You will want to cut your background fabric a little larger than your planned block size.
• Step 2. Cut two strips (will become the Plus) out of the contrast fabric (b). Strips need to be long enough to be sewn to background fabric length-wise and width-wise and can be any width. The strips shown are 1 1/2" wide and will finish at 1".
• Step 3. Cut background fabric (a) in half length-wise, as desired (wonky or straight).
• Step 4. Sew one contrast fabric (b) strip to one half of background fabric (a). 

• Step 5. Press seams open.
• Step 6. Sew remaining half of background fabric to contrast fabric strip and press seams open.
• Step 7. Cut block in half width-wise, as desired (wonky or straight).
• Step 8. Sew remaining contrast strip to one half of the cut block. Press seams open.

• Step 9. Sew remaining half of the block from Step 7 to contrast strip sewn in Step 8. Press seams open.
• Step 10. Ta Da! You have a Plus block.

Sandi presented our program this month on two characteristics of the "Modern Aesthetic", expansive negative space and modern traditionalism. She gave a thorough description of both characteristics, while member quilt examples where shown. It was an informative and visually impressive presentation. Her goal was to help answer questions some of our members may have as to what denotes a Modern quilt. I think she was successful! Our members broke into their teams from last month. They were asked to think about ways their improv blocks could be worked into an expansive negative space or modern traditionalist quilt.

Time for show and tell.

1. Tricia Steadman   2. Tricia Steadman   3. Melissa Klingensmith

4. Mary Keasler   5. Mary Keasler   6. Mary Keasler    7. Mary Keasler

8. Marcia Taschenberger   9. Marcia Taschenberger   10. Kathleen McMullen   11. Kate Trundle

12. Catherine Price   13. Joan Thornbury

Melissa asked me to add; the product she used to get the "yellow" out of her high school dress was "Retro Clean".

It was another great meeting!

Make it Modern~Pam