January 2014 Meet-Up - A Slight Change of Plans

Voting on the New Leadership Team

Greetings everyone, and an early Happy New Year!

There is a change to our January meeting. Ginger will no longer be teaching her Free Motion Design Class. The design workshop has been rescheduled for the February meeting, which gives all of us an extra month to practice our free motion skills. (Let's all breathe a collective sigh of relief!) Instead of Ginger's design class we will be fulfilling two of the suggested program ideas shared at our holiday party...

Everyone that attended the holiday party was asked to provide three suggestions for 2014 programming. The following list was created based on those suggestions. For those of you unable to attend, we are still taking suggestions. Please post a comment here or shoot us an email.

2014 Programming/Activity Suggestions from Guild Members

• ·       Color theory (2)
• ·       Up-cycled materials fabric challenge
• ·       String piecing
• ·       Joint project or collaboration (4)
• ·       Donate group project to The Pittsburgh Project or other organization (2)
• ·       Quilt journal
• ·       Planning/Completion Tips Workshop
• ·       Completed projects competition
• ·       Improv piecing continued
• ·       Modern quilting/artist trading cards- suggested as a possible challenge for quilt show and/or fundraiser
• ·       Community outreach with local focus
• ·       Scrap fabric swap (2)
• ·       More lectures and workshops (5)
• ·       Sewing together (2)
• ·       Retreat (4)
• ·       Sister guild partnership
• ·       Scrap sewing
• ·       Block exchange- round robin concept (2)
• ·       Shop hop participation (3)
• ·       Mystery quilt
• ·       Quilt show (2; but when discussed the entire group wanted this to happen again)
• ·       Creative ways to piece backs of modern quilts

At our January meeting your new leadership team will go over a suggested program calendar for 2014. In lieu of the free motion design workshop, we will also host our first-ever modern fabric scrap swap and challenge. Here is how it works:

1. The swap: Fill a gallon-sized freezer bag with modern fabric scraps to the meeting (Please bring scraps that are large enough to work with.)
2. Every participant will dump their scraps in a heap, which will then be mixed up
3. We will then each take our turn filling up our gallon-sized bag with new scraps 
4. The challenge: Before the February meeting take your new scraps and make a quilted item
5. Share the quilted item you make with your swap scraps on the guild's Flickr page and/or February show & tell

This is a great opportunity to do a little scrap house cleaning at the start of the New Year, and add some new gems to your scrap collection!

Holiday Party Attendees Showing Off Our White Elephant Gifts

In addition to discussing programming for 2014 and the modern scrap fabric swap we will also have show & tell. Please bring newly completed projects or WIPs to share with the group.

Feel free to drop us a line if there are any questions about the January meeting. As of January 1 Gina, our newly elected President, will be answering guild emails. We apologize for the change of plans, and we will get a list of required materials for Ginger's class during the month of January.

Again, we wish you all a safe holidays and Happy New Year!!!