Our first international swap!

This post has been waiting patiently to be posted! Now our partners have recieved their minis and we have recieved ours I can post this!

How exciting! As a group we have talked for a while about swapping with other Modern Quilt guilds. The lovely Tatyana emailed round a few and the first one to be set up was with the Melbourne Modern Quilt guild.

We all decided on making a mini, with a loose theme around the fabric choices, EMQG members to use UK fabrics and vice versa, this wasn't a hard and fast rule but gave us something to start with.

Once partners were allocated, contact was made and we all started beavering away on our minis.

Without any further ado, here they are!

Karen Lewis featured in a couple of minis, here is Helens gorgeous one.

This is a mini! Amazing foundation piecing from Jaqui.

Another stunning example of foundation piecing from Ann, love the Kaffe fabrics.

A mesmerising black and white quilt from Fiona.

I adore Bargello and this is a great interpretation from Janice.

Plaid but not as you know it! Soft and soothing but still plaid by Lesley.

 

 

 

 

You don't get more British than Liberty! Katy giving us an exemplar in how to use HSTs.

 

This is just pure and simple genius! Polaroid blocks each with a Scottish theme, the music block (middle top) is the music for Auld Lang Syne! Well done Audrey.

 

 

I don't think you could get much more Scottish than this! I love the wee Scottie dogs surrounding the monarch of the glen, beautiful work as ever Barbara.

Next up is me! Another Liberty mini, all foundation pieced.

Liberty also feathered in another quilt, you can guess whose this is by the stunning quilting, Tatyana knocks it out of the park yet again!

Robins quilt is so bright and fun, I could spend ages getting lost in this one.

Beautiful appliqué and hand quilting? Well that could be none other than the fabulous Jo Avery!

Karen Lewis features again in Janes mini, love the pairing with text fabric.

 

Inspired by her class in the Stitch gathering Lynsey made this gorgeous nosegay mini, all hand sewn!

 

Here is Sheenas mini which is inspired by the Sottish landscape and using oakshott fabrics, how very modern is this!

 

 

Love this very modern colour palette from Pauline, very chic!

You have to see the back! Loooooook it's Nessie :-)

All the goodies parcel led up and ready to go to their new homes across the seas.

 

November meeting, we make new friends

Friends are so important, and at the EMQ we love making new friends. So it was so nice to meet two lovely new members in the November meeting.
First up is Cathlene, when a new member starts we ask them to bring something along which speaks about them as a quilter. Cathlene brought along this stunning flying geese quilt.

Mesmerising colours.

Just look at this hand quilting! Welcome Cathlene we look forward to many more show and tells.

Our second new friend is Sue, this is Sues first quilt! How amazing! Well done Sue this is amazing, Sue did this at the peekaboo class at mybearpaw.

We were all entranced by Sues travelling hexie project. Place names embroidered in the hexies, what a great memory quilt.

Jane had two new friends for us as well, look a chook! And a sweet mouse comforter, she was lucky to get this back I didn't want to let it go!

Action shot! Honestly Jo never sits still, literally! Apologies for the poor quality but she is a dynmo! This quilt sprang from the Anna Maria Horner modern corsage class at Quilt Con, I heard someone say 'how playful' that's a great way to sum it up!

Peek a boo!

We all loved the nosegay block from the class by Fiona Calvert at the stitchgathering, Margarets take on it is fabulous, love the colour palette.

Do you love this fabric? Well this is one you won't be able to buy online, Sheena dyed it herself! I'm hoping she will take orders, I would love some.

Sheenas second show and tell is this lovely cushion, started at a Sheena Norquay class.

Bee blocks next! Fiona is getting us in the mood for Christmas with a disappearing nine patch.

Sheena would like some house blocks, I love a good house block!

Ann showed us this brilliant project bag, just big enough to hold cutting mat etc and made out of IKEA fabric, I think the EMQ single handedly keeps Ikeas profits up!

Jaqui has gone sewtogether crazy! Three of these pretties! This one is destined for a Canadian friend, loving those cute appliquéd maple leaves. The patter is by sew demented. We all agreed that the tutorial by the quilt barn is soooo useful in helping putting these together.

Jaqui just whipped this one up :-) EMQ members you are such over achievers! Shows the versatility of the good old HST

How sweet is this baby quilt from Janice, I may be biased but i think the quilters of the EMQ are pretty fabulous at putting colours together.

Audrey showed us this fabric at the meeting when we went to the pub, look what she has done with it!

Not satisfied with one medallion quilt Audrey showed us a second one. This one is a modern take on the medallion quilt. Yet again showcasing the amazing colour placement our members achieve.

I only had little show and tells, it's been a pouchy kind of month for me, these cute triangle pouches are from a tutorial by spoonful of sugar.

Two little boxy pouches with exposed lace pattern from the eternal maker. I love the hippos!

I was the lucky recipient of the bee blocks this month, a table full of colour and fun all destined to go to project Linus, cheers ladies!

October meeting -sssshhhhh secret sewing going on!

This will be a short post as most of Octobers meeting was taken up with showing off the minis we made to go to the Melbourne Modern Quilt Guild as part of our very first international swap!

All will be revealed in due course, watch this space.

We were joined by the lovely Rachel Seed from Holm Sown in Castle Douglas, Rachel was interested to see how the group works, it was great fun having her there!

We still had bee blocks, cute cute cute wonky stars for Jaqui!

Soft, classic elegant colour scheme for Audrey's snow geese blocks.

Are you farmers wifing?? It seems the whole internet is farmers wifing! The EMQ is no exception, here are Barbara's blocks, I know the Melbourne modern quilt guild had a sewing day for their farmers wife enthusiasts, maybe we should too!

If you want to know more about the farmers wife quilt alongs there are two going on just now verykerryberry is hosting one, with guest blog posts by our very own Jo Avery, Angie at Gnome Angel is hosting one too.

Whoof! Look at this beauty, Margaret completed this on a course run by Pat Archibald.

My paltry photographic skills haven't captured the beautiful bead work and metallic thread on this stunning composition.

How sweet is this by Jane! Who doesn't love a Dresden plate, such a versatile pattern.

 

charity quilt - take 2!

Many of the EMQG members attended the third annual Stitch Gathering last weekend. We were delighted to see the launch of the EMQG quilt raffle.

You may remember the quilt we made for the QuiltCon charity challenge last year. Here it is before we sent it to Austin to be exhibited.

It was a team effort made over a number of 'sew-ins' and quilted by our master long-armer (and treasurer!) Tatyana Duffie. You can read more about it and the whole MQG challenge in this post.

After QuiltCon all the quilts were donated to local charities. This one went to local charity The Yard. You can read all about this in a post on our EMQG blog here. The MQG will be exhibiting another charity quilt challenge at QuiltCon 2016, we are not taking part this year (having a year off!) but you can read all about this year's challenge here.

Jenny Fox-Proverbs, the editor of Love Patchwork and Quilting, saw our quilt at QuiltCon and fell in love with it. She asked our leader Jo Avery (who also organises the stitchgathering event) if she could create another version as a pattern for the magazine, with this quilt also for charity (the magazine also gave a generous donation to get things started!).

So here is the EMQG charity quilt version 2. You can do a little 'spot the difference' puzzle if you like!

Jo's aim was to rationalise the design without losing that improv style. As before it was quilted by Tatyana in the same stunning design. Tatyana is now taking commissions and you can contact her here.

So again a real team effort - designed by EMQG, pieced by Jo and quilted by Tatyana!

And we are now raffling the quilt for charity!!

First prize is the quilt, second prize is a £50 myBearpaw gift voucher (can be spent in the shop, online or on classes), and third prize is a year's subscription to Love Patchwork and Quilting - thank you so much to them for their help and support!

All proceeds are going to the Edinburgh Clothing Store
"The Edinburgh Clothing Store is a charity run by volunteers, offering clothing, shoes, bedding, etc for people in genuine need. It's a free service and no money changes hands." for people in genuine need.

Raffle tickets are £1 each and you can buy them from Jo's Edinburgh shop or online here. They will email you your numbers so no postage costs. Draw will be Tuesday 9th February 2016.
I really hope you can support us in raising money for such a worthwhile cause, our target is £1000! And you never know you may win this amazing quilt!