February Meeting Recap

Our February “Make Do” program began with discussions and short presentations on frankenbatting, mending, and using free online tools for quilt design and layout.

If you’re not familiar with “frankenbatting,” it’s a term for piecing together batting scraps in order to make a larger piece big enough for a project, and we learned several different methods for doing this. Carol Matlak showed how she cuts thin strips of fusible interfacing, and then uses those to bond separate pieces of batting together. Carolyn Strug showed us a method of using an elongated zigzag stitch to sew pieces together — she simply butts the edges against each other while feeding them through her sewing machine. Lauren Krause also sews pieces together with a wide zigzag stitch, making sure to use batting scraps that are the same type — not mixing cotton with a cotton/poly blend, for example.

Laura Hartrich gave a demo on darning socks with and without a Speedweve (or similar) loom; then Bill Keller shared some everyday kitchen items that can be used as darning aids, such as substituting a serving spoon for a darning mushroom. This tutorial shows how the Speedweve works.

Then Amy Struckmeyer shared how to use the Layout from Instragram app in place of as a design wall, or as a tool to find secondary and tertiary patterns that occur when blocks are duplicated, rotated, and/or flipped or mirrored. Simply snap a photo of a finished block or drawing with your phone, then load it into the app and play. She shared a few other free online tools that can be used to design quilts: PreQuilt‘s colour pages for easy coloring in of many commercially available quilt patterns; Play Craft’s Palette Builder (a tool for creating a color palette from an uploaded photo); and Inkscape (free, open source, professional vector graphics software). Learn the basics from Yvonne Fuchs in this Quilt Pattern Design in Inkscape MQG webinar.

Following these presentations, we split into breakout rooms to discuss our own “make-do” solutions over this past year. Here’s a compilation of many of the ingenious ideas generated in that brainstorming session.

There was so much to see in our Show and Tell this month — it was inspiring! You can see some of what was shared in the February Show and Tell album found in our member Facebook group. Please continue to upload your show and tell pictures to each month’s Facebook album (especially big quilts and other items that are hard to show off on the Zoom platform), and we’ll create a slide show to present during our meeting’s “show and tell” time. You’re always welcome to share in real time during the meeting as well.

Upcoming Board Elections: The following slate of candidates for the 2021-22 CMQG Board was announced:

MQG news: We celebrated CMQG members Laura Hopper, Rebecca Cynamon-Murphy and Laura Hartrich, who all had quilts in the QuiltCon Together 2021 show. With our guild’s charity quilt in the Community Outreach category, that makes a total of four member quilts in the show! In addition, Jenni reported that an impressive one third of our guild attended QuiltCon Together this year.

Heather Kinion spoke briefly about the success of QuiltCon Together. The participation numbers well exceeded the MQG board’s expectations and they are thrilled. As a result, they recognize a substantial need for online events to give people who can’t attend QuiltCon in person an opportunity to participate. The organization doesn’t have enough staff for a hybrid event next year, but they are working on plans for a big virtual event annually, as well as a separate in-person events. You can still log on and fill out surveys for events you did attend; feedback will be used in planning future events, so please take the time to fill them out if you can.

Weekly Sewcials! Open to all CMQG Members: Sewcials on Zoom are every other Tuesday evening and Wednesday afternoon. These unstructured sew-ins are for members who want to hang out, catch up, sew a little (or do any craft, really) and meet other members. Jenni Grover will host them as we begin, but we’d love to have other volunteer hosts as well. The next Tuesday Sewcial is February 23 at 6pm, and the next Wednesday Sewcial is March 3 at 1pm. Check your monthly newsletter (the Full Bobbin) or the member Facebook page for the Zoom link.

CMQG Tenth Anniversary book: It’s happening! Final edits are being made, and preorders will begin later this month.

Guild-wide sew along: Month Seven block instructions for the Big Fun Mystery Sew-Along are up on the blog. Don’t forget to tag your progress photos on Instagram and Facebook with #BFMSAL and #chicagomqgsewalong so we can see your progress.

Modern Quilt Bee: Follow along with the progress of the #chimodbee on Instagram. And please reach out if you’d like to be part of a future bee!

Spring Retreat: We won’t be doing the Spring retreat in-person, but have scheduled a sew-in day (or Virtual Retreat) instead for Sunday, April 25, 10:00am-5:00pm. Katie thinks the chances are very good for an in-person Fall retreat!!! Members who signed up for the cancelled Spring 2020 retreat will be given priority to sign up for the fall retreat.

Star Stitches: We hope you’re enjoying this way of recognizing members for achievements and triumphs both large and small — not just quilting related. Each month you can submit your friends’ achievements (or your own) for announcement and celebration at the upcoming meeting. Look for a link in each month’s member newsletter.

Saturday, March 6 AND Saturday, March 20, 10:00-5:00, virtual workshop via Zoom: Color Interaction with Tara Faughnan. The workshop (which is now running twice to accommodate the demand) is limited to 20 participants each session and will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis. Workshop fee is $75. All current members should have received an email with the sign-up link. Email Emily with questions or for more information.

Sunday, March 21, 2:00-5:00, virtual meeting via Zoom: Guest Speaker Tara Faughnan. Quilter, teacher, and master of color, Tara Faughnan, will talk about her design process, from initial spark to finished quilt. She’ll share the ways in which she takes an idea and develops it; how the role of scale and color are integral to her process; and how she resolves issues and deals with a creative rut. You will surely be inspired! Non-members are welcome to join for a $10 fee, so invite your friends to sign up as a guest here.

The guild’s complete list of programs and events through December 2021 is now available, so take a look at the rest of our programming and mark your calendars.

Use and follow our guild hashtags!

#chicagomqg

#chicagomqglecture

#chicagomqgshowandtell

#chicagomqgdingdingding

#BFMSAL

#chimodbee

#chicagomqg10yearmini

Meeting location: Online, via Zoom.