May meeting, quilt group or book group?

The answer is both! We decided as part of the show and tell to bring along a quilting book which has inspired us. What a fabulous selection we got!

First up is the quilt cook book! Pam loves this becuase of the modern slant on sampler quilts.

A firm favourite with a lot of us, Sarah Fielke Little quilts, this was chosen by lovely Barbara who is not very well at the moment, get well soon Barbara! This book is grest inspiration if you are doing mini swaps.

 

Next up was Sheenas choice, well we are a modern quilt guild so we choose modern quilt books!

Talking of modern you dont get much more modern than Nancy Crow! Chosen by new member Angela, great choice Angela, i cant wait to see the exhibition of quilts by Nancy Crow at the Festival of Quilts!

Susan Briscoe! Fabulous book, she gave a great talk to the region 16 area day recently so fab choice Diane, what an exclectic mix from our members!

Oh squee, this is my choice! I learned so much about my sewing machine from this book, incredible instructions.

 Now i hadnt come across this book before Quilt Love, but after hearing Adrienne talk about it how the quilts tell a story. I so want to go out and buy it!

Tula Pink! Well of course, we couldnt miss out Tula Pink and this is a modern classic, chosen by Ann.

 

Oooohhhhh now this is interesting too! Jo Averys choice, this is a book from the 80s but to see the quilts you would think they were done yesterday, so modern looking too. A real find.

last but most certainly not least here is Suzannes choice, Quilt me by Jane Brocket. Jane was the first quilter I followed, Suzanne loves her use of recycled fabrics, i love her use of colour and pattern.

 

 

So where is the show and tell!! Fear not that will be in another blog post, i thought about just keeping this one for the books. Watch this space!!

 

Knitting and stitching show!!! We did a stand!

*adopts nonchalent pose* oh  yeah we had a stand at the Knitting and  Stitching show in Edinburgh 😊😊  This was the second time the Knitting and Stitching show had come to Edinburgh, last year the Edinburgh Modern Quilt Guild had a table in the crafters in action stand which was great but we thought we could do more this year. Well anyway there was much planning, lots of choosing (thanks especially to Sheena for a lot of the organising) and we had a stand!! There was a doodle poll and a rota, all in all a true group effort. And do you know what? We had a blast! Setting up!

Can you see our incredible charity quilt? We are raffling it (plus other super prizes) for Richmond Hope an amazing charity which helps bereaved children, Jo is selling tickets st Mybearpawcraft. The tickets were flying off the stand!

Womaning  the stand!

       

Happy guild members with their quilts! 

Seeing them all hung in fabulous lighting was amazing.

These lovely sew together bags were reunited after first meeting at our sewing day.

On the sunday our chair, Cathlene met with Jane the chair of the new Borders modern quilt guild to hsnd over the pot holders for our guilds swap.

My favourite moment of the show was when i was busy taking pictures of the quilts, the ladies inside were killing themselves laughing, i turned round and this wee chap was looking longingly at me .... bless the wee chap he just wanted his picture taken!!

See you next year!

 

March meeting, all change!

March! When the flippity flip did it become March? Blimey, time marches on doesn't it? So what's changed? New committee! Most importantly new President! Cathlene takes over from Jo, that's Jo Avery from MyBearpaw craft no less, the founder and first president of the Edinburgh Modern Quilt Guild. No pressure there then! So lets start off with Cathlene's show and tell. Now this is one close to my heart, I live near Falkirk and I often cycle to the Kelpies at the weekend, so it took all my willpower not to snaffle this beautiful mini which Cathlene received in a swap from @quiltitis_di apparently this is her first design project!! Blimey. This is just stunning.

 

Next up, the EMQG play twister! Well that's what it looked like to me! But its Fiona and Margaret laying out bee blocks, carefully supervised by our new president.

Now because I am a bear of very little brain I forgot whose blocks were whose. But they are pretty, and thats all that matters :-)

Next up are next months bee blocks, a house, any kind of house for Lucy. 

Cathlene wants these lovely hexagon blocks. 

Right lets move on swiftly to the show and tell, wow, just wow, does this look familiar? Well it should do it was in our last blog post about our retreat to Gartmore, stunning quilt in William Morris fabrics by the lovely Lucy. I'm still so in love with the yellow background fabric.

 

How funky is this!!!! Love it, gorgeous mini made by Heather at a class by Jo Avery. It doesn't get any more modern and improv than this.

This is called winging it. Sue made this from her bee blocks from last year, she got us all to make flying geese. These are framed to look as if they are seen through a window.

I'm going to put in another picture because  it captures Sue's lovely enthusiasm, she had us in stitches telling us about the making of this, also Sue is having a rubbish time waiting for a new hip, so lets give her a little bit more love as she is sooper. 

 

Can you see this? The lighting is rubbish but this is Katie's quilt made with the improv letters from our Sarah Fielke class last year. It says Hardie gang, love it.

I say Audrey! Little diamonds by Lynne Goldsworthy! This is stunning!

OK Audrey not one but two show and tells ... #overachiever look at Pauline, she doesn't look as if she is going to let go of this one, I think she wants to take it home. Well who wouldn't, fabulous off centre medallion.

Gratuitous shot of cake, the bought cakes were my offering as I am rubbish at baking.

 

Let's finish with this, Diane brought this gorgeous quilt along.

It deserves two pictures as well, Diane's son served in Afghanistan, this quilt is made with his combat gear. Lovely Diane, really lovely. 

I think we all agree that Cathlene did a fab job chairing her first meeting, see you all in April, happy sewing.

Quilt for quilt con

When the Modern Quilt Guild released the theme of scale and the mustard, blue and green colour scheme for the 2016-2017 charity quilt challenge the Edinburgh Modern Quilt Guild (EMQG) decided that this was something we wanted to do!  Many months of discussions and planning resulted in us deciding on a underlying Scottish theme to the quilt.  For the theme of scale we decided that we would combine different sizes of a tartan inspired block with quilting of Scottish words for small and large.  We also decided that the colour scheme would also reflect the colours of the Scottish landscape and to further reinforce the scottish connection that we would use Karen Lewis, Blueberry Park fabric and original screen printed fabric in addition to the bella solids. It just so happened that Jo had a business meeting in Nov with Karen Lewis for their Thread House pattern and quilting retreat business collaboration and managed to source some of the fabric we required directly from the source! Huge thank you to Karen Lewis!

Cathlene and Robin were tasked to design a tartan inspired block and the scale inspired quilt setting.  Once the tartan inspired block and quilt setting was met with the approval of the whole EMQG,  a charity quilt sub-group made up of Barbara, Helen, Katie, Sheila, Margaret and Lucy (skinnymalinky) was set-up to lead the creation of the physical quilt and solve any problems! Block testing began in earnest.  

   

The improv-tartan block worked really well when made in the smaller scale but in the larger scale the tartan stripes became noticeably misaligned resulting in the loss of the tartan effect.  

After a bit of experimentation we discovered that if we made the large blocks about 20% bigger and then removed  a strip from the block that corresponded to the width of the new stripe to be added then the stripes matched up!  

We had two block making sessions and one quilt construction session in December where the charity quilt-sub group plus a few others volunteers got all the blocks made and put together into the the quilt top in Jo's shop. 

 The plan was to then pass the quilt to our long-arm quilter, Tatyana, to be quilted with the Scottish words over the Christmas holidays ready for binding in January.  However, Tatyana had a family crisis and was unable to take on the quilt so at the last minute Jo and Lynsey stepped in to avert the quilting disaster!  Lynsey, hand-quilted Scottish words onto the blocks over the holidays and then the trusty EMQG volunteers had a hand-quilting session at Jo's shop and at the guild meeting in early Jan to finish off the hand-quilting!  

Jo filled in the background of the quilt with an all-over Paisley design which has strong Scottish textile design links and attached the scrappy binding that Lucy H made over the holidays.

Cathy then took the quilt to hand sew all the binding and attach the sleeve - that's a lot of stitching so well done Cathy.

All that remained is for the label to made and attached and to send the quilt off! Phew,!


How utterly amazing is the finished quilt!