September 2018 Meeting Recap and Announcements

October 4, 2018

September’s meeting was all about foundation paper piecing (FPP). Emily Lang organized a series of presentations from herself and members Erika Mulvenna, Katie Cooper, and Sara Hochhauser.

This is one of the pieces Katie brought to show us.

Katie offered a beginner’s introduction to foundation paper piecing, showing off a few examples of her work and explaining some of the basics we need to know.

Sara incorporates FPP into many of her quilt designs.

Sara took it to the next level with explanations of essential how-to’s, and shared how we can include FPP in our bigger quilt designs.

Erika’s display allowed for lots of hands-on learning.

Erika shared a ton of tips, tricks, and tools that are essential for FPP. (She also made us a handy cheat sheet – click this link to download it!)

Emily’s got a thing for fandom, and she showed us this Golden Snitch pattern.

Emily rounded out the presentations with more design ideas and some guidance on creating your own FPP patterns.

The variance in approaches to foundation paper piecing techniques was fascinating! From table to table, each member offered their preferred approaches – and sometimes, they were quite different from one another. Just one more piece of evidence that there’s no single “right” way to do things.

As you move forward on your FPP journey, remember that whatever works for you is best…and that there’s always more to learn, especially from your fellow members!

Thanks, Emily, and all your co-presenters for a wonderful meeting.

Announcements

We finished turning in our charity quilt blocks to Heidi Parkes, and the stories our members told about each block were powerful and moving. We can’t wait to see it all come together. If you’re attending retreat in October, you’ll have a chance to do some hand quilting on it. Then it will travel to our November meeting for more member hand quilting.

The upcoming workshop with Season Evans on October 20 still has seats available; head to the blog post to sign up.

Season’s lecture on October 21 will highlight her work with minimalist improvisation.

On November 18, we’ll go back to basics with a member-led program about needles and thread.

On December 16, we’ll have our annual holiday potluck and swap (more details on the swap to come soon).

Social Media chairperson Jenni asks that folks consider contributing more #GetYourQuiltyWishesGranted requests to be included in future issues of The Full Bobbin newsletter. Currently, Shannon Dangerfield is accepting all kinds of goodies for the Evanston Jr. MQG; Jenni recently received a ton of yellow scraps from four members for a pink lemonade quilt; Natalie received a bag of blue scraps for a project she’s making for her mom. How about you? What do you want or need? Email Jenni to get your request in the next newsletter.

We have more charity quilt projects in the works. Sarah Shulman is leading the charge; send her an email to get involved.

There is a MQG national swap coming up! Swap sign-ups open October 5. You can get all the details (there are a lot of them!) here.

The national Modern Quilt Guild website is completely revamped. One of the biggest changes is that there is no longer a “forum.” Now, each individual member has a profile, and you can choose to join “social circles” with other members. The more connections you make, the more fun things you’ll see. One way to start making connections is to log in, click on Social Circles in the righthand navigation, then hop in the search bar and look for friends. A search for “Chicago” brings up all of our members, and you can connect to each of them. It will take a little getting used to, but we think it will be worth it because we’ll be able to connect more easily with people in our own guild and all over.

There are a number of webinars and talks hosted on the MQG site, including a photography webinar on October 10 with Christopher Thompson, which you can find at the Resources page.

Finally,  if you ever have a project going on that needs more hands… are teaching a workshop… read a cool blog post you really liked… whatever!… email Jenni to include it in The Full Bobbin. Thanks!

All meetings are 2-5 pm on the third Sunday of the month, unless otherwise noted.

This month’s meeting is on October 21 at 2pm

Meeting location:

Rush Oak Park Hospital 
Centennial Room 
520 S. Maple Ave Oak Park, Il 60304 

A list of our meetings can be found here.

Not a member, but would like to be? Click the button below to join our Guild!

We hope to see you there!

Become a new Chicago Modern Quilt Guild member

Photo: Triangles quilt by Erika Mulvenna