January Meeting Recap - Announcements

Where to start!? We were pleased to start our first meeting of 2013 with around 86 in attendance! 

First and foremost we would like to give a big Thank You to our Board Officers from 2012! They all did such an amazing job bringing us exciting challenges, informative presentations and and wonderful opportunities to show our modern quilts at various shows! 

This year we decided to approach the Meeting Recap posts a little differently. There will be three instead of one, and they will be separated into one post pertaining to announcements, tutorials and upcoming events. Another that covers the presentation of the month, and the final post dedicated solely to Show & Tell. 

Without further ado, let's jump in! 


Announcements

At our December meeting we raffled off these two amazing Michael Miller Block Challenge quilts and raised $500 to distribute to the two selected charities below. How awesome is that!
We have several upcoming events to share with you. First is the Kaffe Fasset Essay Contest. Deadline for entry was January 25th at Midnight PST. Hopefully some of our members participated! 



QuiltCon is also coming up!

Speaking of QuiltCon, several of our members have been hard at work putting together the QuiltCon charity quilt. Our guild was given several blocks from the QuiltCon Block Challenge to make a quilt for the Austin Children's Shelter. Here it is in all its glory! 
A BIG thank you to Heather Davidson for piecing the blocks together to make the top, to Susan Beal and Anne Whiting for collaborating and putting together the back, to Nancy Stovall for quilting it, Petra Anderson for attaching the binding, Anne Whiting for hand stitching it down, Gail Weiss for making the label and to Michelle for putting the hanging sleeve onto the back and getting it to Austin!

Other upcoming events:

Bylaws:
Our new President Michelle is spearheading a rather daunting task of drafting bylaws for our guild this year. If you are interested in joining her on this venture please shoot her an email at portlandmodernquiltguild@gmail.com. Meeting dates to discuss this further are tentatively set for the months of April and August with firm dates TBA. Meanwhile please take a minute to fill out our Bylaw Survey on Membership and Dues: this will be up throughout the month of February and is part one of several surveys we will be posting this year.


Madrona Road Challenge:
While the challenge is still open to entries until the 31st of January, a lot of our members tried especially hard to finish and bring their projects to share early at the meeting. If you want your project to be considered for display in the Michael Miller Quilt Con Booth, please post a photo to the MQG Madrona Road Challenge FINISHED flickr group The MQG guideline for this challenge are "Create the challenge you'd like with just one rule: Please only add more Madrona Road (in any color way) or solids to the projects. There's no requirement to make quilts, but since we're a quilt guild, something quilted is encouraged" 

Here were the suggested challenge guidelines PMQG set out for our guild in December:
The turnout was so amazing I had to go to the back of the room, stand on a chair to take the picture, and it was still hard to fit everyone in! 
So many beautiful quilts!!!



BOM:
A fun new activity was introduced in the form of a curated Block of the Month and corresponding Charity Quilt Drive. Each month a new BOM will be introduced and a 10 minute tutorial on how to make them will follow. Mary Ann put together a post found here with all the details! You can also find information on each month's BOM including which block is assigned to each month and a link to a tutorial under our new BOM tab! 

For the month of January we presented the Scrappy Trip Around the World block by Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville. This tutorial launched over 2,000 instagram versions #scrappytripalong and you can find more links to some great blog posts on our BOM page. Teresa Coates gave a great tutorial on how these blocks can be quickly put together!
Teresa and Michelle

Example blocks

Six Charity Bees formed at the meeting including: 2 Bee or not 2 Bee, Our Hearts Belong to the Kids, CBGBee, Bee Brave. That means we need a minimum of 54 blocks so these bees can make their quilts! If you want to host a bee or join one we encourage you to start a flickr discussion on the PMQG flickr group.

Sew Days:
Our first sew day is Saturday, February 2nd at Fabric Depot. This fun event is free for members and $10 for non-members (although we are happy to register you at the event if you decide to join!) Don't forget to bring your Puzzle Blocks!

That's all for announcements and upcoming events! Up next is our presentation post on Quilt Backs! 

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