Southwest Virginia Modern Quilt Guild

Hey Everyone

Our Feb 8th meeting will be at Ippy's Restaurant in Rocky Mount. Let me know if you need directions by contacting me at dani@danimiller.com

See you tomorrow at 6pm at Ippy's!

Dani

Hi Everyone

We are meeting tonight at The Crooked Stitch at 6pm to put together our Quilt of Valor quilt top, and to have our regular monthly meeting. Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Dani

Hi Everyone

Hope to see you all at the Rocky Mount Library tonight for our monthly meeting! We have tons going on, you are not going to want to miss out. Among other things, I will be teaching a binding class with lots of different options. Please come and make me feel teacherly!

The meeting is in the childrens room at the library this month. Just ask at the front desk and they will send you to the right place

See you tonight!
Dani

Hi Everyone

Just wanted to let you know that we have a newly created yahoo group to make it easier to communicate with each other. Please follow the below link and request to become part of the group. I will approve you, and then you will be able to see all the good stuff that we have been posting over there. If anyone has any questions feel free to contact me at *dani at danimiller dot com* (replacing the at and dot appropriately)

Thanks!

Dani

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/swvmqg/

First, my apologies for the substandard leadership over the summer. Things have been a bit crazy but I will not offer excuses, only my sincere apologies to the group for letting things slide. I will post a general update within the next week. I want to post these 3 important tidbits today:

1. Monthly group meetings -- still on the 2nd Tuesday of the month from 6pm - 8pm. BUT, they will be held at the Franklin County Library, just around the corner from the shop, in the 2nd floor meeting room.

2. Monthly stitching time -- this is now on the 4th Saturday of each month from 1pm - 4pm @ The Crooked Stitch.

3. We are creating (Dani created, thank you) a yahoo group -- if you would like to join this group, please respond to the email you will soon receive. This will allow a more open line of communication, rather than these very one sided and often insufficient posts.

Welcome to all our new members. I hope to have things going a little more smoothly in the near future. Thank you for your patience and I appreciate your particpation.

Lori

Hi everyone! We are really moving along as a guild. Every meeting has more members, more things to plan and more ideas. This month, we chatted a bit about how to get rid of your stash. It was fun to hear how everyone has their stash organized (or not so organized, in my case!) and how they use up those little bits. We traded some stash stuff (wait, that makes our stashes bigger....oops) and set a challenge for the next meeting. Everyone should bring something - quilt, pincusion, fabric weight, toy - just anything made from their stash without buying new fabric. We're trying to stretch our creative genius a bit. I have added my notes to the site and emailed them, too. If you didn't get a copy, please let me know.

Next order of business - we're ready to start some charity work as a group. Our first project will support Quilts of Valor. These quilts are donated to sick or wounded soldiers. This is a powerful project and one dear to many hearts, as some in our group have military family. Please bring a block 6 1/2 or 12 1/2 inches (or many if you want) made of red/white/blue/stars to begin our first group quilt. Free patterns are available on their website if you need inspiration.

We're planning our next field trip! June 25th, we will join our NOVA modern quilt guild sisters for an outing. Details are in the works and updates will be posted. Final arrangements will be discussed at the May meeting. There is a quilt museum and a couple nice shops (Patchwork Plus) in Harrisonburg. This would be a nice halfway mark, so hopefully it will work for them as well.

Sunday Stitch-In for April is moved to the 3rd sunday - that's this week, April 17th!

The Franklin County Public Library regularly has quilts on display. They have asked our group to bring quilts for the month of July! I would love to see everyone's name tag hanging as well as any other quilt you would like to show off! 

Melinda, Lindsey and Whitney all had their name tags to show off - nice job girls! Each was unique and inventive. In gratitude to Robert Kaufman for supplying our little charm packs, please sign up  and post to the "MQG Robert Kaufman Kona Solids Challenge Quilts" flickr group and post a pic of your name tag. Thanks.

Wow! 3 full months of having a modern quilt guild chapter in Southwest Virginia -- time is flying! We've already done so many things and there are so many yet to do!

Thanks to Dani for hosting our tutorial at the March meeting! The Color Workshop was awesome. I certainly came away with some fresh ideas and a new depth to my color choices. I was inspired to take a closer look at my stash and do a little more research on the subject. If you missed it, I'm very sorry. I'd be happy to give you a copy of my notes. We used a Ruby Beholder and a few color wheels -- both can be purchased at many local quilt/fabric stores or online. For more in depth info, Dani had an excellent reference book: "Color Works" by Deb Menz. I encourage all of you to check it out.

We also had 3 "Name Tag" challenge quilts on display. Nice work, ladies! Beth, Dani and Lori shared their finished (or almost) name tags and I'm sure there's more to come. Please check out this Flikr group to see what other guilds created with their Kaufman charm packs.

If you haven't stopped in yet, I strongly encourage you to go to the Taubman and visit the "Quilt Art" exhibit (on display until April 24). It certainly broadens the perspective and gives a rich color tutorial all on its own. This weekend would be an excellent time to have an entire day full of quilts. The Star Quilt Guild show is being held at the Roanoke Civic Center on Friday and Saturday. Times are listed on our event calendar. I know Whitney and Dani will be there with The Crooked Stitch booth - we've gotta support our local shop! We did not designate a specific "field trip" time for this one but I'm sure to see most of our members there!

This month's Sunday Stitch-In is the 27th from 1-4. Please bring any project you like and enjoy the quiet space, comraderie and dedicated quilting time. Beginners are welcome - free advice from seasoned quilters sure to be given without solicitation.

Upcoming events/planning:

• April meeting will be on Tuesday, April 12th at 6 pm. We'll be talking about some fun ways to "spring clean your stash". Many quick patterns available.
• Sunday Stitch-In will be moved up one week to Sunday, April 17th in honor of the Easter holiday
• I know summer is coming with vacations, holidays, summer camp and just plain fun -- please bring some suggestions for possible dates we could field trip with our NOVA modern quilt guild sisters (probably a Saturday, for an all day trip/shop hop)
• FYI: AQS huge quilt show in Paducah, Kentucky April 26-30. See americanquilter.com for more info

Ok gang, we'll get the bad news out of the way. Unfortunately, we will not have space available for our Sunday Stitch-In later this week (2/27/2011). So sorry! It's too short notice to get other, free space. Don't let this slow you down - if you've set aside the time, use it! Now for the good news - we're not having our get together because of 2 other awesome events:

Whitney had her baby! Emaleigh Clarke joined the world on Tues, Feb 15th. As far as I know, mom and baby are doing very well. She's certainly cute as a button based on phone pics!

Dani and Laura are showing their newest creation in Hampton this weekend - good luck gals! Here's the link to check out their dress: http://www.danimiller.com/blog/?p=480.

But don't forget - we have our field trip planned for March 6th to the Taubman. We're heading into the museum at 1 with lunch before if you'd like.

Another upcoming event: Star Quilters Guild 2011 Show. I'd love for this to be our second field trip! I'll get it on the calendar and we'll talk about it on the 8th!

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. swvmqg@gmail.com

Wow! Big meeting this month. We almost doubled our attendance - yeah! Everyone had a great time getting to know one another. It seems obsessive thoughts about quilting/fabric/sewing is common among our members, so don't be ashamed to share. Our group is steadily gaining toward a structured guild - we elected to take dues of $1/month or $12 per year ($10 for this month). This helps cover the cost of membership cards, photocopying, and other such expenses. We're incredibly lucky (and very grateful) to have FREE space at The Crooked Stitch. Any fun festivities outside of meetings will be at the members' expense for now.

With our logo complete and membership growing, we have "Member" cards on the way! These will confirm that you are a due-paid guild member. In many shops and other quilting events this will afford you a little discount, not to mention the extraordinary prestige...oh, wait - going a little over the top there. We'll stick with the awesome discounts for now.

To make up for money-talk, we have some excellent activities planned for the upcoming weeks! Our next "Sunday Stitch-In" (the now official name for our sunday gathering) is February 27th! If you don't have a current project, come in with your due funds and receive a FREE Robert Kaufman charm pack in "bright" palette and participate in our first-ever member challenge. We're making "Name Tags" -- mini quilts to display your name and the guild name. More information located on the "Downloads" page.

On March 6th, our guild will embark on its first Field Trip. The Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke is featuring "Quilt Art: International Expressions". Admission cost is $10.50 per person. We'll be grabbing some lunch around 12 if you want to join and heading into the museum @ 1pm. Please drop a email to swvmqg@gmail.com so a rough head count can be had - don't want to leave anyone out! If you're not able to join us, the exhibit runs until April 24 or check out the group's website: www.quiltart.eu.

Whew! What a blog-ful! Looking ahead, things are only going to get more exciting. For the March meeting, Dani will be presenting a color workshop. We'll be exploring color value and making good color choices. There are no required materials, but try to grab a handful of whatever out of your stash - mix it up, anything goes. The more varied fabrics we have to look at, the better. To help us get a better grasp of color and add some variety to our stash we'll also have a FAT QUARTER SWAP at the March meeting. Bring those lonely fat-quarters that you're never going to use and trade it for another! We may even have a fat-quarter friendly color challenge to seal the deal! Ok gang, thanks for joining. I hope to see you all very soon!

January was super productive! We have a logo (see below)! Yeah! I'll figure out how to get it worked into the website soon (with a little help). We also have a great idea for our first challenge using Robert Kaufman Kona solids. We'll discuss the reqs and timeline for this at the next meeting.

At the sew-in some serious progress was made: one quilt completed, a king-size halfway bound and a baby size top all done! What diligent little quilters we were. Bring your projects, new or old, in for some quality quilting time on February 27th.