April Meeting - Quilt Journal and an Outreach Project

Please join us at 1:00 pm on April 6, 2014, at the Pittsburgh Project for our monthly meeting.  The Pittsburgh Project is located at 2801 North Charles Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15214.  At the April meeting, we will be introduced to the Quilt Journal.  Following the presentation, all are welcome to stay and help piece a special project.

Quilt Journal

In this first session we will lossen up and use found images to inspire sketches and design exploration emphasizing shapes, patten and compoistion.  This fun exercise will allow us to fill the first few pages of our journal and may just lead to new quilt ideas!

Supplies:

• Sketchbook (size can be 6 x 8, 7 x10, 9 x 12) 
• examples:
• Fabriano soft back 5.8" x 8.25" blank sketchbook (available in art section at Michael's)
• Moleskin blank journal (not lines)
• Any spiral or soft back sketchbook (Amazon) 
• Blank journal 
• Sketching pens 
• examples: 
• Sharpie ultra fine point (note: these will bleed through paper)  or "no bleed" sharpies (any office supply store) 
• Faber Castell Pitt Pen (try different point sizes to see what you are most comfortable with) 
• Micron pens (Michael's) 
• 1-2 pencils 
• Colored pencils or markers 
• basic set of 12-24 pencils (Michael's, Local Art Store, Amazon have student grade sets ...nothing fancy required) 
• Markers can even be Crayola (i.e. Supertip set of 20); Michael's, Target or any art store also have well priced sets
• 1-2 glue sticks
• 1-5 images from magazines, catalogues, personal photos, online images showing design, shape, color combination or compositions that is pleasing to you.  (These will be used for the first exercise on exploring shape and composition) 

Color Exploration 
Time permitting, we will begin to explore this exercise at the first workshop session.  The journal/sketchbook work will be an ongoing series of prompts and ideas so we will continue color in the following month.

Supplies above along with:

• 1-5 scraps of fabric or images of color combinations that you would like to explore in a quilt  (can be actual fabric scraps or:  patterned paper, even print outs of fabrics you like but have not purchased yet, magazine or catalogue cuts that show interesting color schemes, a photo of nature...any thing goes here) 
• Once you have some color inspiration, take a trip to Lowe's or Home Depot and grab some paint chips that match your inspiration image(s).  TRy to find chips that match your colors and also pastel and shade versions of the palette....also, select a range of whites and gray chips!  

A note from Gina: I sometimes sew paper and/or fabric scraps into my journal.  I save a machine needle for this purpose (when dull or ready to be changed for regular fabric sewing).  If you would like to try this at our first session, please bring your machine and needle that can serve for all paper sewing.  Any color thread is fine.  It helps if your sketchbook/blank journal is flexible enough and not overly large to be able to sew directly onto a page.

Spectrum Quilt

Pam M. is working with a  special education school in Monroeville (Spectrum) that is in the process of creating a quilt to hang in the entrance to their school. A group of about 40 students between the ages of 17 and 21 who are on the autism spectrum with widely differing abilities and interests have been working hard to get the quilt in the works!

The school received a small grant to fund the project and bought digital cameras for students to take pictures of things related to the school. The photos have been taken and printed on fabric. Now the quilt is ready to be assembled!

The PMQG is helping Pam with this wonderful endeavor! During our April meeting, anyone interested in helping piece a portion of the quilt can jump right in!!

We look forward to seeing all of you for an afternoon of happy sewing!!