Monday, January 27, 2014

Flaunt Your Finish: January 2014


We're excited to be bringing back our monthly Flaunt Your Finish feature. In looking back through the archives, our last Flaunt Your Finish was back in April of last year. If you'll remember, in May, the tornadoes swept through Oklahoma and we had more important things to think about.  We'd like to thank all of you again for sending us your quilts for our Moore Love Project. We collected over 500 quilts and all recipients we so appreciative. There's no way we could have provided such a service without all of you, so thanks again!


Here's a look at some of the projects our member have recently completed. Remember to link up YOUR OWN Finish at the bottom of this post.

This first beautiful quilt was quilt made by Melissa. She quilted an orange peel pattern for the first time and found it to be super easy. The fabrics are PB&J by Moda Fabrics.


Shana's Ticker Tape Quilt was inspired by a quilt fellow guild member, Amanda of The Cozy Pumpkin, was working on at a guild Sew Day. Shana started the quilt soon after, but ran into a road block because she wasn't sure how to quilt it. "If you look closely you'll see the 'uniqueness' aka free motion variation. Many frustrations later.... It ended up at the long-armer's to be finished. It was that or throw it out :) "

Amanda has launched "Project: Happy Quilting" on her blog,  The Cozy Pumpkin. They are just little projects that make her happy. And really, isn't that what it's all about? This one is a Project Book Pouch.  Pattern by Aneela Hoey and fabric "Color Me Happy" by V & Co.  Amanda made this one to hold her knitting projects,and sees it as a really versatile pattern. "I love that the largest pouch can hold a book or magazine so I'll always have easy access to my pattern."

Also by Amanda, is this self designed eBook pouch in "Color Me Happy" fabrics.  It's a tight fit but it gets the job done.  


Angie has quickly become our "Queen of the Bags".  This one is the Fireside Bowl Bag from the book Big-City Bags by Sara Lawson.



Heather quilted this chevron pillow. She used a pattern from the Winter 2013 Modern Patchwork magazine. She used fabric from the new collection from Carolyn Friedlander, Botanics. "I love the accent of gold in the green print. Overall the project was easy!" 

Agnes made this small wallhanging type quilt for my mom, which she says, "is totally improv embroidery (just look at the central tulip, that was the first, then I just kept on going around it), and a string- pieced border.  lt is the final "Spring" quilt of the 4 seasons I made for her."

Ann made these adorable zipper pouches that were given away as Christmas gifts.


Ann also made this fabric bowl, which was her gift for our Guild Christmas Party Swap that was cancelled due to weather.

...pssst...we're having a workshop on how to make these fabric bowls, so please see more details under Meeting/Events.



And to get into the Valentine mood Shana and Elizabeth both made "LOVE" minis from Tula Pink's  Love Quilt.

Shana's mini:
"This says it all. I love it!"

Elizabeth's mini:

Elizabeth used a paper piecing tutorial found on Sew Mama Sew.

"I am not fond of Paper Piecing, but this was a fun doable project for me.  I picked my fabric from my stash with the Pantone radiant orchid color in mind."

And she finished it off with big stitch quilting!

Thanks for joining us! 
If you have a Finish to Flaunt, please link up and grab a button from the sidebar!



Thursday, January 16, 2014

Guild Meeting Wrap-Up: January 2014

 
Our January Guild Meeting was a great start to a new year of quilting fun! We had several visitors and new members and had great fun getting to know each other.

So much information was given out, that I can't really put it all down here. New "V.P. Shana" gave us an overview of the activities and events to come, and let's just say…WOW! There will be a lot of activities to participate in!

We do our best to keep this site updated, so please refer to it often. But…to be even better informed… join the Guild and receive our monthly newsletter! It is jam-packed with information. You can pay your membership dues by clicking on the PayPal link on the right side bar. And remember, when you join OKCMQG, you also gain membership to the National Modern Quilt Guild, which has its own perks!

We jumped in to Show & Share pretty quickly at the meeting. Amanda P. started this quilt at our June Retreat and we've all been anxious to see it completed. What a beautiful quilt! And the back is just…wait for it...


...incredible!  


But wait a minute Amanda, you don't have a long-arm quilting machine. How did ever you quilt those straight lines on a regular sewing machine?!

"Painter's Tape."

Ah…brilliant.

Melissa is in a Birthday Swap Group and made this cool and cute modern table runner. Here's the genius of the Birthday Swap. There are 12 people in a group and they try to  have only one person celebrating a birthday each month. Once a month you make a small to smallish item and send it to the birthday person. Fun, right? But, when it's YOUR birthday…you get 11 handmade items in the mail!  Wowza!


I shared this baby quilt I made for a friend. I love it! The baby is about 3 months old now and I really need to get it to her!



Debbie shared this adorable pieced  "Love" that will become a pillow. I'm looking forward to seeing the completed project. The pattern comes from Tula Pink's Love Quilt and will part of a free class at our local quilt shop, Oklahoma Quiltworks. Contact them for details.
 
 
And we wanted to show everyone, before we send it back, the beautiful banner that The Modern Quilt Guild sent for the quilt show. It's quite fantastic!


The amazing quilting was done by the talented Angela Walters.


Next up at the meeting, we played a little "Get to Know You Bingo". This got us out of our seats and talking to each other. The objective is to simply find a person that fits the activity and have them sign the box. You cannot have the same person sign your sheet twice. When you have 5 in a row, call out BINGO! These sheets were double-sided so we were able to play two games. After the second BINGO, we didn't want to stop so we continued on for BLACKOUT. After a while I noticed that everyone seemed to be going from person to person rather quickly and not finding anyone to fill the slots. That's when I took a quick count and realized we were 2 people short of being able to get a blackout. It didn't matter though, we had a great time getting to know each other. Thanks Amanda L. for the great activity!

 

Thanks to all and Welcome! to our new members. Our Guild Meetings are always on the second Monday of the month so just go ahead and mark yourself "BUSY" on your calendars for the year.

Next meeting is February 10th, 7:00 PM at New Hope OKC with guest speaker Randy Coleman, an Oklahoma City Life Style photographer and owner of Randy Coleman Photography.

See you there!



Sunday, January 12, 2014

OKCMQG at the 2014 Oklahoma Winter Quilt Show


This last week, the OKCMQG was asked to participate in the Oklahoma Winter Quilt Show. We were given a booth and a HUGE space to display approximately 30 quilts. For those of you who have been with the guild from our early days of 6 quilters huddled around a table, you know what a tremendous opportunity this was for us! It's kind of like that scene from the movie "The Jerk" when Steve Martin's character sees his name in the phone book and he screams, "I'm somebody now!"

I signed up to help "man" the booth Saturday afternoon. Photos and comments from other members had been posted on Facebook the previous two days and I was excited to hear some of those comments for myself and talk to people about modern quilting.

BIG THANKS to The Modern Quilt Guild for lending us this AMAZING quilted banner!

Overheard at the Quilt Show: 

"That's not modern. That's just messy quilting."

"They're so…contemporary..."

"I'm not a quilter, but these are the kind of quilts I like!"

"That's the kind of quilting I like! It really speaks to me."


Overall, we had a very positive experience. One woman's eyes, literally, lit up when she saw our quilts!  I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing her at our next meeting. 

I also observed a man in his late 20's view the quilts as if he were in a museum. He stood still as he thoughtfully studied them, one by one. I thought, "That's right. Quilts are cool!"


The show also gave us a chance to meet quilters from other guilds not just in Oklahoma, but also from neighboring states. We talked about free-motion quilting, the next QuitCon….and...seriously...what's more fun than that?


THANK YOU! THANK YOU! to Ann Solinski and Shirlene Davis, the masterminds behind the planning and organization. Thanks to all who assisted in set-up, manning the booth, take-down and, of course, lending quilts. It takes a team to put on a show and we couldn't have done it without all of you!

To view all the quilts from the show, see our GALLERY SLIDESHOW at the top of the sidebar!