July Meeting

Holy Smokes!  Our LA Modern Quilt Guild Meetings are always soooo dang GOOD!  I really hope those of you hosting your own MQG meetings  have as much fun, inspiration, & support flowing as we do!

To kick things off Latifah and Lori passed around a few pieces of LA MQG merch they already picked up from our new Cafe Press Store!  Fabulous!  I am still trying to make up my mind about what I want to get!

This was our last meeting we will be having in Jenny’s cozy & welcoming Home Ec. space. :(  BUT we are not loosing Jenny, that is the important thing!  She will be closing her brick and mortar store but still keeping her online presence.  More about her decision, here.

In honor of her being the hostess with the mostest since The Guild’s inception, we presented her with a gift certificate to a local spa & 30 or so blankets made by Guild Members to donate to the Pasadena Humane society where she volunteers!  Oh, and we also celebrated with champagne and sparkling cider, because after all we are the modern quilt guild! ;)

She was pretty darn excited about it!

And LOOK!  The second of our charity quilt tops is finished, thanks to Leslie.

And the back is equally as fabulous, I LOVE it!

Lori, our super fab Secretary, gave a great talk/rundown on her experience learning how to use a long arm quilting machine at The Sewing Arts Center! I have to say after listening to her talk in detail about the process, how the machine works, and how simple it is to mount your quilt I am DIEING to try! But as I told Mr. K… there really isn’t any place to do it locally… that I know of… and I am intentionally not going to make an effort to seek it out. Dangerous I tell you, DANGEROUS!

Aaaaand while in Austin visiting her family a couple weeks ago, Leslie got together with the wonderful Laurie Wisburn over coffee and she sent along some journals and fat quarter stacks of her yet to be released Urban Circus line to giveaway! How great is that!? Here are the randomly chosen winners (minus one who did not want to have her picture shared).

THANK YOU LAURIE for your thoughtfulness and generosity! The winners were SO EXCITED!

And what would a meeting be without a fabulous show and tell??

Leslie swiped a few quilt tops from her mom’s house when she visited Austin a couple weeks ago that her Great Grandmother made!  How cool, right??

I’m even in here this time around, with some Wonderland goodness!  But you’ll have to hunt for me…

ummm, could we be any cooler?

Hot off the press thanks to our fabulous in house graphic artist, we now have our OWN official LA MQG logo– complete with a Cafe Press Store filled with more shirts, sweatshirts, and odds and ends than you can shake a stick at!  Check it out, and support us!

June Meeting

Our June meeting was ACTION packed, and since I know most of you are here to catch a glimpse of all the mini quilt goodness from our swap, lets kick it off with that!

Jake Finch, managing editor of Quilter’s Home, the one that wrote the article on the Modern Quilting movement in this month’s issue, and the one that featured Alissa’s quilt on the cover… YEA, THAT one!  She came to our meeting!  How exciting, right!?

And if that were not enough of a treat, Kaari Meng from the WONDERFUL French General came to talk to us about her passion for French textiles, her line of fabric with MODA!, how her shop came to be, aaaaaand her adventures & travels in the south of France!

It was fascinating to learn about her journey into creating fabric, how the process works, and more about MODA’s philosophy.  Thank you Kaari for joining us, it was a treat!

AND LOOK!  The first of the two quilt tops for our charity/raffle quilt! Thank you Nicole for so skillfully putting this together for us!

There were a few newbies as always, I hope they all come back!

And last but certainly not the least exciting, SHOW AND TELL!

… and just a few more actions shots for good measure!

categories LA MQG, feature | 1 comment, YEA, be #2!

mini quilt swap!!

Last night was our June LA MQG meeting and we had a mini quilt swap.  I have been itching to do a modern dresden, and this was just the excuse to get it out of my system with minimal commitment and time!  Those fab Heather Ross Gnomes were a lucky acquisition from Chris at one of our weekend sews!

I thought it fitting to pass on the fabric goodness to another MQG member, and THE PERFECT person got it!  Terri (and Chris) were my inspiration in the first place!  I fell in love with Terri’s mini quilt at the first meeting that I attended, and Chris’s @ that same meeting made me look at the traditional dresden in a whole different way!

Oh, and thank you Nicole for loaning me your dresden ruler!  It was THE BEST, I have GOT to get one now!

Alissa’s got a great mini quilt blog post and book review over on her blog today too, check it out!

Tomorrow I’ll post all the June meeting pictures including all the other mini quilts that were swapped!!

May meeting…. eeek, sorry for the delay!

umm, I went from diligently posting pics and highlight of our LA MQG meetings the day after to… ugh, hummm, a delay of almost three week!  Sorry about that, I’ll blame it on the usual I have two kids, sickness, and the general “I’ve got other stuff going on!” K?

If that weren’t bad enough I feel like I didn’t take enough pictures, I was in La La Land!  I’ll stay more focused next time for ya though!

on to the fun stuff…

Latifah shared the much talked about Dale Fleming 6 minute Circle Technique that she has made famous at out meetings and “sews!”  We have all admired her circles she has been using in her projects lately and she was so kind to share the magic with us all first hand!

…and look what can be done with our new knowledge– completely pieced!

And of course there were some newbies that I hope we didn’t scare off…

… and our usual thrilling, inspirational, and drool worthy show and tell!

Just in case…

Just in case a few of you may still think I am a little nuts with this “Modern quilting thing,” let me just state for the record there are plenty of other nutty people out there too!  Today Sew, Mama, Sew has a great summary of our crack pot fun and how it all started, check it out! There are 59 chapters now, and it has gone international!  Wowzers!

Triple B Bee March blocks

Here are Latifah’s March blocks for our Bricolage & Butter bee!

She requested 14.5” pieced blocks any way we fancied, BUT no Log Cabin Blocks!

She was inspired by the blacktop and colors at a playground/park (the dark gray is Kona Charcoal).  Latifah is the queen of solids, if it isn’t obvious enough!  I can’t wait to see how all of our different blocks come together for this one!

While piecing the first improve block I almost went nuts, so there was NO way I was going to do it again. A little more planning the second time around with crayons & graph paper restored my sanity and view of the world as it should be– measured and precise.

Triple B Bee February blocks

… well we had more like two sets of blocks to do in March, so I am not really THAT behind in posting.

This week I handed these lovelies over to the amazing Jenny, I hope she likes my fabric additions, and I can’t wait to see all of them together!  We were instructed to do the Blind Paper Bag piecing just like January,  it was super fun to do again!  I still really want to do one of my own someday!

This one is my favorite b/c of the converging different shades of linen, I always try to keep my linen colors consistent with my projects, since it is a natural fiber it tends to vary a lot.  But after doing this, I actually really like them all mixed up!

oh, aaaaaaand…

… here are some pics from our weekend sew a couple weeks ago if you missed them on flickr.  Just like last time it was a blast!  I worked on some gifts for Mr. A’s birthday that was last week, I’ll post pics of all those adventures soon, too.

*I think if the LA MQG had a poster, this would be on it!  Thanks Alison!

That is Lori working on the fabulous Stacking the Odds quilt that I will probably be doing next for Mr. A!  And you will NOT believe it, she brought me all her templates to have for my very own last night.  So now I REEEEALLY don’t have any excuse not to get started!  Thank you SOOOO much Lori!

April meeting

Our meetings never disappoint and of course last night was no different!  Cate (nope, that’s not Alissa… but her twin sister) & Rebecca came to talk to us about Kivu Sewing Workshop, a new-er organization created to provide some of the Eastern Congo’s victims of sexual-based violence with the opportunity to rebuild their lives.

“In an eight-month program, students, all victims of the Congo’s years of devastating conflict, learn to sew, knit and embroider and eventually acquire the skills and capacity to work on their own as seamstresses who can provide for themselves and their families.” more…

I’d say that is a pretty darn good fit for our LA MQG to support, wouldn’t you?  We are currently working on blocks for two quilts that will be auctioned off later this year to raise money to acquire our official non profit status and to begin making donations to Kivu!  Please visit the Kivu Sewing Workshop site to find out how you can help women and their families in the Congo through sewing, too!

We also brought along our first quilts to share in their not-so-modern glory!  We all got a kick out of the stories and explanations that accompanied each of our beginnings.  It was amazing to see the variety of difficulty that each of us attempted right from the start, and how far we have come in developing our personal modern style.

Not everything shared were firsts, though, as always my mouth and mind were salivating with inspiration!

Just look at this FANTASTIC take on a giant log cabin by Latifah!

WOW!

And oh my gosh!!  LOOK at this original design by liz!  Those are pieced, people, NOT appliqued.

And guess what internet?  YOU are in luck!  Liz is currently working on a pattern to share with the rest of us!  So stay tuned to her blog!  I for one, am SUPER excited!

Triple B Bee January blocks

As mentioned yesterday, I’m in a Bee, and Jane kicked off our adventure in January (I know, I know, I am a wee bit late in posting this… I don’t know WHAT my problem is!) with a beautifully inviting package containing instructions to construct her blocks using “The Denyse Schmidt Improvisational Method of Blind Paper Bag Piecing.”

Printed paper bags and all…

What the heck is blind-paper-bag-blah-blah-blah-piecing??

Ummmm, only the best thing EVER!  For those of you who don’t know what this method is, I sure didn’t, the basics are first you cut up, or use your scraps, into three categories, small, medium, and large.  Then you start with two pieces of fabric from the small bag, sew them together and trim however you want, next take a third out of the bag repeat sewing and trimming however you would like.  When your small pieces are too small move onto the Medium bag, and then to the Large when necessary.  Jane asked for blocks between 13 and 14 inches, so in this case, that was pretty much my only boundary.  BUT here is the catch, there are a few “pesky rules,” as Jane instructs, that make it even more FUN!

1) No peeking or dumping back, you have to use what you pull.  That is the beauty of this method.  I will let you cheat 1 time per size.  So three put backs per block.

2) I would prefer to have things pieced a little more square (wonky is fine, but no hard angles please.

Let me just say, for me, this was SO FUN, satisfying, & LIBERATING!  I’ll admit, I did peek a bit, I was the kid that tried to unwrap my gifts at Christmas days before, I couldn’t help myself!  But I did not dump them out or anything, and it was just to get a sense of the color pallet so I could add a little of my own fabric which she gave us permission to do.

I actually didn’t put anything back even though it was permitted either, I pulled pieces out of the bag and sewed, which is evident in the first one with the addition of that large piece of natural fabric.  Another thing I did was I decided to NOT iron in between joining pieces; I made this decision to stretch my comfort zone, try something new, and to get just the right amount of wonk.  Mission accomplished, and boy was it freeing!  I am for SURE going to be doing this for a quilt for myself in the near future (read near as next couple years)!

I’m in a BEEEEEE!!!!

…. a quilting bee, that is!  After our second LA MQG meeting (my first) Jamie so fantastically rounded 12 of us up to form a quilting bee of our very own, I was pretty much beside myself to even be considered– it was like when I was in elementary school all awkward with glasses and the teacher told me I did a great job on a project or something!!  I’ll spare you the braces analogy!  Anyway… If you are SUPER observant, you were probably already onto to me.  In my side bar over there —> you’ll see links to all of the members of our Bricolage & Butter Bee, or Triple ‘B’ Bee for short.  Smarty Jamie explains what Bricolage & Butter means over on her site as, “… a reincarnation of our favorite childhood pastime—playing house.”  Playing House??  I’m pretty darn good at that these days, so I’m thinkin’ it’s a pretty good name!  You can check out all of our progress over the next year over at our flickr pool.

What the heck IS a quilting bee, anyway!?

I suppose there are different ways of doing a  bee, but here is how we are working it:  There are 12 of us.  Each of us picks a month of the year.  On our chosen month we bring to our monthly meeting fabric, instructions, & guidelines for the other 11 members to make a specified number of blocks, usually two or three, and then return them to the lucky lady the next meeting!  THIS MEANS YOU GET 30-ish blocks for a quilt of your VERY OWN!!!  How exciting is that???  Very!

Here is the amazing quilt that got me all twitterpated about such a thing in the first place! Look at all those unique blocks!  People,  there is no way that they could all come out of one person’s head, that is what I LOVE most!!

Alissa’s Block Party quilt
photo by Alissa
more about this quilt, here.

The blocks that Cristin has been getting back over at Sew This Is My Life have me pretty excited about the possibilities too!  I am in love!!

photo by Cristin

So, my month is July!  What am I going to do?  I. have. no. idea.  Only that I know I want it to be an everyday quilt that I can leave out in my living room and oogle at on an hourly basis…. not that it has to match anything, I just don’t want it to be girly so Mr. K can love it too.  Oh, and I think it will involve gray since I am currently obsessed.

Tomorrow I’ll show ya the blocks I did for Jane in January!

March meeting!

It feels like every other post is LA MQG related… umm, that is probably because it is TRUE!  You would think by the look of things that it is all I do, as if I am consumed with it, LOL.  Quiet the opposite, it just happens to be a good excuse for me to get out of the house once a month, meet with women that I am tickled to call my friends, and a reason to get Mr. K’s rear in the door by 6pm– oh, and you know, the fabric & quilt inspiration are part of it too!  AND I haven’t had a chance to do much else.

Alissa gave a most stupendous talk on improvisation piecing this month, and it was just what this by-the-rules-girl needed to gain the confidence to cut loose and give it a try.

And while I am name dropping, LOOK at who came to visit us all the way from Vermont, Ashley from Film in the Fridge!!!!!  (I choose to ignore the fact that she just happens to be taking a vacay in San Diego at the same time.) I must mention that Ashley has, hands down, my favorite quilt related blog to read and oogle at!  Her layout, design, clarity, and usability make it a joy to visit, and I am pretty much smitten with EVERYthing she puts up!  It is a problem.  Especially some of her latest work she did with Denyse Schmidt’s Hope Valley.  Oh, and there is this one, and this… oh-oh, and this– you get the point!

Alissa, Ashley, & Latifah

Forgive me for not having much more than show-and-tell pictures this time around, my flash batteries died, and my 100% positively charged batteries I brought as a backup didn’t get the memo!

As always you can see all of these and more from our meetings over at the LA MQG flickr pool.

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Another FAB meeting, and a V-day swap

Last night we had another fabulous meeting!  This time we did not do our usual show and tell, instead we had a great presentation from The Batty Lady, and a Valentine’s Day swap! Alicia brought all kinds of batting to present, sell, and dispense pearls of wisdom about! It was great to touch, drape, and see how they worked up into finished projects! Thank you so much for coming to see us! We all learned SO MUCH! Who knew that perhaps an 80/12 Jeans needles is the best to quilt with!? We didn’t!

Here is my little pouch I put together for the swap using oh Frannson’s! tutorial, sans the strap to make it a wristlet because I didn’t have the hardware when I went to put it together(this is actually a super good thing… more later.)  I especially like her method of putting fabric on either side of the zipper… does that make sense?  I didn’t take, a picture from that angle before gifting it away, but look at the pics of her tutorial pics in her shop, you get the idea.

So here is the thing, if you have known me for ANY length of time, you pretty much know that pink REALLY is not my thing, especially light pink… put that with red, and hearts… and sprinkle with some poodles… NOT SO MUCH!  BUT I got this fabric in a Japanese linen FQ stack last week @ Strawberry Patches.  While not crazy about this fabric myself, it didn’t mean OTHER people wouldn’t like it, and so I decided to use it for my upcoming swap… great idea, right, RIGHT??…. again… not so much…

Take a look at his expression… go on, do it! (Click the pic you can see it larger)  Now, take a look at the few ladies you CAN see in the picture…  multiply that by 10.5, and that pretty much sums it up.  A big fat FAIL is what that is!  DANG IT!  We, including me, got a great laugh out of it though.  While his less than hearty reaction was a bummer, Andrew did seek me out at the end to thank me and said he really did like it… but, honestly– come on! …. Pink-poodles-and-hearts aren’t really my thing either, so I understand Andrew.  I just hope you can find a good home for it.  And for the record, the fabric WAS a hit to some who came up afterwords to ask where I got it!  Honest, I am NOT crazy.

Here’s more of our fun!

Teresa & Alison

Jaime, Chris, & Jane

And some more Valentine’s Day Swap goodness! These and others are up over at the flickr LA MQG group, too!