Friday, October 29, 2010

Quilty Inspiration

Today marks the start of the Fall 2010 Blogger's Quilt Festival.  Amy started this in 2009 to coincide with Quilt Market for those of us unable to make it to Houston.  I stumbled across the festival last year and spent way too much time on the computer, but the inspiration gained and the new bloggers discovered made it worth while.  I encourage you to head over there to see for yourself, and to enter your own quilt if you haven't already.  The festival runs until November 5th, and there are giveaways involved as well.

Amy's Creative Side - Blogger's Quilt Festival


Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Meeting Minutes, October 6, 2010




We had a great meeting today at the Sewing Studio in Maitland with 8 members and 1 guest in attendance.

The Minutes of the September 2010 meeting were approved.

Michele gave the Treasurer's Report. We have 26 paid members and a balance of $576.25.

Charity Project Update-All the donated hand made items are due at the November Meeting. Heather turned a lap quilt. We would like to present the hand made items in person on December 14th.

The door prize was won by Judy.

The library has approved our room reservation for the first six months of 2011.
Sew dates are Jan. 15, Feb. 26, March 19, April 30, May 14 and June 18th.

We have also requested three Monday evenings as possible dates for other programs and events. Those evenings are: March 21, April 11, and June 6.

The Birthday members, July and Margaret, were not present.

Rene, Hope, Michele and Kathryn presented their items each made with a fabric from the "ugly" exchange challenge.




A number of quilts were shared during  show and tell.  These are a few examples.



Amy Allen, the founder of the non-profit group, Global Change, Inc. (www.globalchange.me) which supports clean water and sanitation for areas of poverty, spoke to OMQG about the Global Quilt Project.  Quilt blocks have been donated from around the world for inclusion in fund raising quilts.  We assisted Amy in the design of the first quilt.  The quilt is to be auctioned on November 19th, which is World Toilet Day.  



Monday, October 4, 2010

Juanita Yeager Machine Quilting Workshop

Juanita's signature hand-painted flower blossoms.
On Saturday, the Orlando Modern Quilt Guild had the wonderful opportunity to have a unique machine quilting class. The fabulous teacher was the very talented Juanita Yeager who gave us a memorable trunk show at our May meeting. Saturday, she came to our Sew Day location at the Dr. Phillips library and taught us tips and tricks while encouraging some of us to get over our fear of machine quilting. Juanita does beautiful work and makes intricate machine quilting on a home machine look very easy. We learned about lighting, ergonomics, needles, thread, batting, backing fabric, stabilizers, finishing and binding.

Juanita showing us technique on one of her quilts.
Beth wastes no time trying her hand at thread painting.
Judy gives her machine a creative workout.
Juanita shows us her facing technique for binding quilts.
Hope masters a new machine with success.
Rene' caught on very quickly. She's going to write an entire blog post with her machine next week! ;)
Mary Ann was looking stylish and having fun.
Alejandrina adds an artistic flair to her practice piece.
Margaret was quilting so fast her hands were blurred.
Michele learned more about her sewing machine.
Juanita had everyone quilting their names right away. And then we moved on to different shapes and doodles. And some thread painting. She also demonstrated quilt show worthy quilt binding and her facing technique she uses to finish her quilts. There was ample time to practice our new skills and get hands-on assistance and encouragement from Juanita. Everyone had a great time boosting our machine quilting skills.