June Block of the Month

The June block of the month is easy peasy to make.  If you want to make one of each kind of block at the same time, cut three rectangles of color, three rectangles of white, (rectangles are 2 3/4 by 7 1/4) 2 squares of white and 1 square of one color and another square of another color (squares are 6 inches). String piece by sewing, do this twice, one color to one white rectangle. Iron seams and add one color to the white side of one block and white to the color side of the other block.  Iron seams. Cut the squares into half triangles.  Fold each square in half to find the middle. The tricky part is to make sure you put the  triangles to the proper side so that the quilt is uniform. If the colors are on the outside of the block, the colored triangles are attached to the top and bottom with the strips running vertically.  If white is on the outside of the block, the white triangles are attached to the top and bottom with strips running vertically. Then add remaining triangles.  You can find a link to the tutorial on our BOM Page.

Cracker Scraps block in the June colorway 

The colors are white, mint green, navy blue, deep red purple and light red purple.  

June Colors

Remember that you can purchase bundles of fabric in the colorways at StitchCraft, with a special discount for guild members - just ask at the front desk!

Improv Patchwork Quilt-A-Long

At May's SFMQG meeting, Patti and Kerrilyn introduced our next Quilt-A-Long - Improv Patchwork.

Improv quilting is so popular right now, but this style may take you out of your comfort zone a little (or a lot). Typically, many of us work so hard to get our blocks perfectly pieced and squared. It's a challenge to "wonkify" (or "unwonkify?!") our brains, but this is why we chose this set of blocks! The QAL tutorials will ease you into improv quilting with easy-to-follow instructions, plus you'll get lots of encouragement from our group!

The SFMQG Improv Patchwork QAL will run for 6 months (June - November), featuring a different block each month based on tutorials from TeresaDownUnder's blog Sewn Up. You'll make your own blocks with your own fabric and you can do whatever you want with them when you're finished! Below are some of the blocks we made following the first tutorial (yes, these all follow the same tutorial!). 

Participants should bring their completed blocks to the SFMQG meetings, and we'll have a little prize for anyone who keeps up and brings in at least 5 of the 6 blocks. Here is the tutorial for Block 1, which you should bring to our meeting on June 20, 2015.

If you didn't get a chance to sign up yet and you'd like to participate, you can sign up here.

We'd love it if you shared photos, comments, or questions in the South Florida Modern Quilters Facebook Group (Members Only)!

As a bonus, please read this brief article - Why you Should Sew - Badly. We also highly recommend Sherri Lynn Wood's recent book, The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters! 

Thanks for your participation and we're excited to see your beautiful blocks at the June meeting!

May Meeting Recap

Happy Sunday Everyone!

Yesterday's meeting was packed, thank you to everyone who joined us for the May meeting!

Monthly Topics and Demos:

Charlotte and Debby gave us a recap of their visit to Paducah, and they presented a slide show of the modern quilts on display there. It was great for all of us to see some examples of the modern quilts in the AQS quilt show. You can read more about it, and see the winning quilts on their website.

Kerrilyn told us about her retreat to Sewtopia in Chicago. She learned from two different Modern Quilting instructors, Rita Hodge and Latifah Saafir.

Rita Hodge taught the Kansas Dugout block:

Latifah Saafir taught her Molehills quilt (which is a pattern you can buy online.) If you are interested in making a Molehills quilt, there is a quilt-along which just started on Latifah Saafir's website.

 

 

 

Shelly did a demonstration of her turned-edge applique method, which will be used in our July BOM. 

Shelly's examples for the July BOM.

Round Robins and Charity Quilts:

 

Kathy distributed the different Round Robin quilts that were returned for our Project Linus quilts. She also talked to us about the organization, and where these charity quilts go after we give them to Project Linus.

 

Ivy brought in a great example of a modern block, which could be used as a Round Robin starter (as modeled by Allison). If anyone is interested in making single blocks for charity quilts, they're always welcome (in any size!). These improv pieced blocks are easy to make our of your scraps, and can be pieced together with blocks of other sizes to make an interesting, modern quilt top.



 

Block of the Month:

 

The May Block of the Month (French Macarons) was very successful, and we had a lot of participants:

 

Linda was the lucky winner of the BOM raffle.

 

Shelly posted example blocks and the color palette for the June BOM and Jelly Roll raffle. The June BOM is Cracker Scraps, tutorial can be found here. You can also check out our BOM tab at the top of this page to get more information about our upcoming BOMs.

 

StitchCraft news:

Tammie shared with us the upcoming events at StitchCraft, including the StitchCraft Challenge, starting on June 1st. You can see their upcoming classes and events here.

 

Show and Tell:

Francine showed a couple of quilts she had made for Project Linus

Patti made this Penta Pinwheel using Sew Can She's Tutorial

Patti made this baby quilt, using Kate's tutorial from the April meeting  to make the center.

Andrea brought in the baby quilt she made for her son. Congratulations Andrea!

Joanne showed us a scrappy baby quilt she had made.

Nicole has ready completed her Riley Blake challenge from the MQG for 2015, she brought in her completed pouches to share.

Suzi brought in this red, white and black equilateral triangle quilt

Suzi also showed us her wonky star quilt.

 

Quilt Along:

 

Kerrilyn and Patti presented the format for our new Quilt Along. They also brought in some examples of the first month's block.

You can see the first month's block examples on the design wall behind Kerrilyn and Patti

If you are interested in joining the QAL, but didn't sign up at the meeting, please let us know! Instructions will be sent to everyone shortly, and updates will be posted here on the website, and on our facebook group.

 

As a reminder, next month's meeting with be held on June 20th at 10:00am at StitchCraft. Please bring a BOM for June, and a Jelly Roll strip using our color palette for June.

 

Happy Quilting everyone!

Kate

New BOM Fabric Bundles

We have been having so much fun with our BOMs lately, haven't we? From what I've seen online, it seems like there will be enough French Macarons in this month's lottery for a king-size quilt!

We wanted to make the BOMs as usable as possible for the lucky winner, so going forward we are going to be choosing a color palette use each month. You can see the blocks, the colors, and links to tutorials, on our BOM page.

And now we are excited to announce that we have teamed up with the wonderful folks at Stitchcraft to put together fat quarter bundles in our monthly color palettes. Each bundle is made up of four fat quarters of modern designer quilting cottons especially selected with our BOM in mind. That's more than enough fabric to complete several blocks for the lottery, and have some left over! Every month there will be two options available. Below you can see the top two bundles which are June's palette of "flora hues", and on the bottom two bundles in July's palette of "freshly picked" hues.

Each bundle is available from Stitchcraft at the special discounted price of $10, which is more than 15% off the regular price. You can buy the bundles now - just ask the lovely ladies there to help you find them.

We hope these bundles will make it even easier for our members to participate in the BOM raffle, which has become a highlight of our monthly meetings. And what a great stash builder!

May Meeting Reminder

Our next general meeting is this coming Saturday, May 16th. We meet at a lovely quilt shop called Stitchcraft, which is convenient for the fabric hounds among us (and who isn't?)

We have a fun agenda planned, including recaps of visits to the AQG Quilt Week in Paducah, and Sewtopia in Chicago. We are also being treated to an appliqué demonstration.  Of course we'll have the usual BOM lottery and Show & Tell. And we'll be launching our guild Quilt-a-Long!

If you are already a member, we'll be asking everyone to sign in at this meeting so that we can keep our membership and mailing lists up to date.

If you are not yet a member - it's easy to join! We do not currently charge any membership dues, so all you need to do is turn up and a meeting and fill in a form.

We look forward to seeing you on Saturday.  Until then, happy stitching!


What to bring to the meeting on 16th May

• Make sure to wear a name tag!
• May BOM Blocks: French Macarons. The more you bring the more chances you have to win!
• Name Tag Swap - finished name tags for your swap partner
• Jelly Roll strips to contribute to June's raffle prize: 2.5 inch x 18 inches (or longer) in aqua and red (black & white is also acceptable)
• Small scissors for the appliqué demonstration.
• Show & Tell: Bring your modern projects to share.
• Door prize donations: fabric, books, patterns, notions all welcome!
• Snacks to share.
• Project Linus donations: fabric, batting, orphan blocks all accepted. Crochet and knit blankets too.
• A creative spirit and an interest in modern quilting!

A new Facebook group for members to connect on

One of the things that the new board has been working on is finding ways for our members to connect and stay in touch in between meetings.  

We have recently started a members-only group on Facebook. If you are not familiar with Facebook Groups, they are a great way to form an online community with shared interests. Everyone who joins a Group can post photos, links, and comments. It's a wonderful way to share the projects you are working on, or to ask for advice if you are stuck on something. Groups are also just a great way to chat about modern quilty goodness in all its forms.

If you have not already joined, hop on over to the South Florida Modern Quilters group now and ask to join!

If you are not an SFMQ member, please go to our Join The Guild page for more information.

We will continue to maintain our Facebook Page as well.  Pages are the public space for brands or organizations on Facebook, and they are great for reaching out to the wider community and attracting new members.  

For our members to talk amongst themselves, the new Group is really where we can have fun and let down our quilty hair.  Posts are visible only to our members!

We hope to see you all on Facebook in between meetings.

Happy stitching!

May 2015 Block of the Month

For our May 16th meeting we are working on a cute raw appliqué block called French Macarons.  It's a small block that comes together really easily.  It's proving popular and many of our members are going nuts with this!  Remember the more blocks you make, the more chances you have to win the block lottery.

The tutorial can be found on the Empire BOM blog, and we have not got a color theme this month, so go crazy with whatever you fancy!

Linda Johnson's four blocks

Here are my six bids for the win!

Charlotte Noll's bright blocks include some bees. 

These are only SOME of the many blocks that Ivy Bagnall made.

Carolyn Rhodes Miller picked some lovely background fabric.

We'd love to see all the blocks made by members - please drop by our Facebook Group and show us what you've done!

For information on upcoming BOMs head on over to our BOM page.