March meeting details

The March meeting will take place at 1:00pm on Sunday, March 1st at the Pittsburgh Project. We will continue working through the lessons detailed in the book Lucky Spool's Essential Guide to Modern Quilt Making. Next up on our journey through this book is working with solids and effectively incorporating prints. Kathy will be leading our discussion for this session. She has chosen a fun little block to explore solids and prints: Hexing Around Block. The supply list for this block are as follows:

4” square - large/fun print material to fussy cut 2.75” hexagon (hexagon template will be provided)

12 - 1.5” strips - solids and/or prints

(Can be 4 colors/3 strips of each in prints; 12 strips in solid colors; take a look at the link above and decide what you would prefer)

2 - 5x7” rectangles and 2 - 1.5” strips - either solid or print

Ruler with 60 degree angle mark

 

Please bring supplies and your machine so we can all work together!

 

Other highlights of the upcoming meeting will be details about the upcoming sewing retreat scheduled for May 2nd from 9:00am-9:00pm, Melissa will share some details from QuiltCon, 2015 membership cards will be availalbe (and pins!), and last, but by no means least, the first installment of the Fat Quarter Club goodies will be disbursed.

 

Fingers crossed that Mother Nature is feeling favorable next weekend!

Pittsburgh MQG

Februrary meeting recap

A big thanks to everybody who braved the weather to attend the February meeting! The meeting began with a Show & Tell session.

 Lauren showed off a number of lovely items. First she had the mini-quilts that she designed and made for a course which she taught this Fall at The Society for Contemporary Craft. Lauren is also working on a lovely Christmas tree skirt and a colorful wonky star project. Another talented member!  

Lauren showing off her mini-quilts

Lauren's Christmas Tree skirt WIP

I spy some wonky stars!

Sally presented her recently completed quilt project. The colors are so vibrant and cheerful!

Sally's lovely quilt front

And the back!

Amanda showed off her “Tetris” block that she designed for her modern sampler project!

 

Amanda's Tetris block. These colors are so fun!

Cheralee, our newest member, displayed her “Imagine Dragons” quilt top that she designed and constructed. We can’t wait to see how it is quilted!

Cheralee's Imagine Dragons quilt top. Wow!

Payments were collected for the first offering from the “Fat Quarter Club”.  Melissa and Lauren will try to nab some exciting fabric at QuiltCon later this month.  Please have a look at the Fat Quarter Club page on this site for more details about this and future installments. There is still time to participate in the first installment. Please shoot an email to the guild if you have not made arrangements yet.

Sharing ideas, resources and fabric offerings will be part of our meetings. Melissa shared some excellent fabric buys that she has acquired through Massdrop.  Check it out.

The topic for this meeting was Color and how to build a palette.  Melissa started the discussion using some lovely cards that her artist grandmother has painted to show complementary colors, complementary split colors, and analogous colors with different values.  These were great examples. Several different color wheels that are available on the market were discussed. These are useful little tools for finding color complements and hue combinations.

Melissa also shared her color chart tool that she constructed by cutting up a Robert Kaufman Kona cotton color card into swatches and Velcroing them to stock card. Since the swatches are now removable she is able to audition different color combinations.  The Kona card is available for purchase for around $30 from several online sources, including the Robert Kaufman website. The color card has swatches of all 303 colors of the Kona solid line and is very useful when trying to match colors or when determining a color scheme for your projects. Warning: cutting out and adding Velcro is very timing consuming! 

Lauren finds the website Design Seeds to be a great resource for constructing clever and inspiring color palettes. Another good resource to look into for assembling a color palette is Palette Builder, by playcrafts. This is a website that will allow you to upload a photo, and it will translate the predominate colors in the photo to Kona cotton colors.

Attendees shared their color selections and their palette choice process, before moving on to make the Hack Slash block.  

Some Hack Slash blocks constructed by our members. This was a great block to play with color combinations!

Our next meeting will be March 1st, from 1:00–4:00 PM at the Pittsburgh Project. We will continue to work through the book “Lucky Spool’s Essential Guide to Modern Quilt Making.” The next topic will be Prints/Solids.  Watch for more details about the block that we will be making.  The first set of fat quarters will also be distributed at this meeting, and Melissa will relate some details about QuiltCon!

Please pencil 5/9 and 5/16 on your calendars as possible dates for our May sew retreat.  Kathy is ironing out the details and the date will be finalized soon!