April Meeting Recap

The ChattMQG met on Saturday, April 11. 

Outreach Reports

National Quilt Day: Stitch in the Mall (Sandi Suggs)

Sandi was happy to let us know that this city-wide quilting event raised $650 for our local charity, The Next Door — Chattanooga, where women who are currently incarcerated are gaining job and life skills that will equip them for re-entering society. To read more about this organization, check out their website:

The Next Door

The Mall people who worked with the quilters estimated that between 1000 and 2000 people came through and saw the quilts. Afterwards, each guild president and event sponsor received a large and unique thank you note and we saw a stack of those at our meeting.

Hexies at The H*art Gallery (Denise Ohlman)

Denise received some feedback from Gallery worker Brooke Montague. Although the clients enjoyed the hexie project, it might be a better idea if we could share projects that they could complete during the art lesson. Denise suggested that we make finished bags, table runners, wall hangings, or painted pillows in advance and let the clients embellish them. 

The next visit to the gallery happened Thursday, April 24. We'll hear about how that went at our May meeting.

Project for April: Hexies and the Big Stitch

Project organizers brought us pre-cut grey fabric, fusible batting, and backing. They shared punched cardstock hexagons, needles, silk thread, 2-1/2" fabric squares (3 each person), pins, embroidery floss and moral support as Denise showed us how to make hexies from fabric, glue-baste them to our quilt sandwich, and prepare to quilt with big stitches. And Sandi walked around giving up-close and personal demonstrations , which helped greatly for the nearsighted among us who forgot to bring binoculars.

Here's a screen shot borrowed from Sandi's Instagram account showing her finished hexie mug rug.

We took our supplies and work-in-progress home with us. President Janet generously shared embroidery thread from her collection with those who wanted to add more color.

If you borrowed thread from Janet, please remember to bring it back on May 9.

So keep stitching on your mug rug / little art quilt and have fun learning what are new techniques for many of us!

Our next meeting will be Saturday, May 9 at 10:00 AM.