--- Fat Quarter Shop --- Giveaway Results

I truly hope you enjoyed reading about Fat Quarter Shop and spent some time visiting their online store.  If you didn't get the opportunity to read about what they have to offer the Modern Quilter, you can scroll down or click here.



I know that I can speak for all of the St. Louis Modern Quilt Guild members when I say how Thankful we are to have had this opportunity.

Now for those of you who paid attention and entered the giveaway; which ran for an entire week.  You are probably wanting to know who the two winners are of the $50 Gift Certificates for use on their site.

With the help of Random Generator, the winners are...

  The author of comment #4 belongs to Tracy B.

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 The author of comment #26 belongs to Molly C.

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Congratulations to our winners !!!



--- Fat Quarter Shop ---

Hello Modern Quilters!


It’s the Fat Quarter Shop here today and I am going to share with you a little about a lot of things.  First off, a little about Fat Quarter Shop. Well, we were founded by an avid quilter-- now our Queen Bee-- Kimberly Jolly in 2003.  Kimberly and her husband Kevin have grown the shop to what it is today--providing the top quality products and customer service.

Besides our exquisite packaging, customer service & fabrics we also find many positive comments on our website. You will find everything is categorized by collection name, designer, manufacturer, theme & more -- making it very easy to navigate.

As a team we have grown from precuts and yardage and expanded to providing exclusive kits, quilt clubs, notions and more. The demand for contemporary fabrics has also seen a continuous growth as more young adults are joining the ranks of quilters and home decor seamstresses. Young mothers anxiously await the newest fabrics for nursery accessories.

When looking for modern / contemporary fabric a few big hitters are Moda, Robert Kaufman, Riley Blake & Art Gallery.  If you love precuts- Moda is your best bet, although other companies are catching up fast. You can just look under our “specialty cuts” section and it will give you all the different cuts from every manufacturer!  One of the great things about Modern Quilting is that it seems to be a quite a mix of old and new. Today’s fabrics offer limitless possibilities and the quilter can effectively combine more traditional patterns with the contemporary designs for very pleasing results.


Happy Quilting!

The Fat Quarter Shop Team
 

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The previous message was brought to you by the wonderful people at the Fat Quarter Shop.  They are super excited to have the opportunity to talk to our members about what their company has to offer and they wanted to show their appreciation by spreading a little love our way.
 
As a special Thank You to the STLMQG and it's members, the Fat Quarter Shop is offering not one; but two due-paying members a $50 Gift Certificate for use on their site.
 

Let's all say it together now................THANK YOU !!!

 

Now that you have picked yourself up off of the floor, you probably want to know how you can get in on all of this fun, right?  There are a few little rules that must be followed of course; but it's all very simple.

 

This giveaway starts Wednesday 2/16 Right Now and ends Wednesday 2/23 at 9pm.

The winners will be contacted by Thursday 2/24 no later then 9pm.

---Giveaway Now Closed at 37 comments (36 of which belong to due-paying members and will be the only ones counted), winners will be contacted within the next 24 hours---

 

The Fine Print:

-- You must be a due-paying member of the St. Louis Modern Quilt Guild

as of Saturday's 2/12 meeting to be eligible for this giveaway

-- One Entry: Leave one comment telling us what is on your  Fat Quarter Shop "Wish List"

should you be one of the lucky winners

--Second Entry: If you are a due-paying member and follow our St. Louis Modern Quilt Guild blog,

you can leave a separate comment telling me so.  If you aren't already a follower, what are you waiting for. 

--Once the giveaway ends, two winners will be selected at Random

--Only comments left by our due-paying members will count towards the final total

--The winners will be contacted and their names (First Name, Last Initial)

will be posted on this blog.

** ** ** ** **

The St. Louis Modern Quilt Guild is in no way affiliated with the Fat Quarter Shop.

Meeting Recap (February 12th, 2011)

Saturday’s meeting was the first at the Oakbend branch of the St. Louis County Library and the turnout was great.

While we caught up with some friends, we were thrilled to see some bright new faces too and by meeting’s end we had gained 5 new members…Yay!

February’s meeting included two big highlights…first up was the Panel Discussion; where Cara, Jamie, Sally, Juli Ann and Laura answered some tough; but important questions about Modern and Traditional Quilting. Cara showed a brief PowerPoint Presentation which can be found here. It includes some amazing photos by many of our favorite bloggers.  Sally also put together a list of Quilting Books that she used as reference and wanted to share them with you as well.  The audience was very involved asking question after question, and I hope by the end of the discussion came away with a better understanding of Modern Quilting.

I want to give a BIG Shout Out to our Panelists. You did an amazing job and we all Thank You!!

The second big highlight was our Pincushion Swap. The pincushions that were exchanged included a little bit of everything. People’s mouths were certainly watering when we began the “Rob Your Neighbor” style swap, and there were certainly some thieves among us. In the end all of the pincushions found great new homes and I look forward to seeing pictures of them popping up in our Flickr pool.

Finally, I want to share some quilting-related news with all of you who couldn’t be at our meeting or may have forgotten about all the great stuff that is going on:

First up, our 3rd Member Spotlight is Cara (Me? A Mom?). If you haven’t yet seen her post, it’s below this recap.  If you'd like to share a little bit about your self like these other ladies have, please contact Mary Claire and she'll get you on the list.

Next, Westminster Fabrics donated some beautiful Amy Butler catalogues and Ty Pennington flyers for our members. If you didn’t get a chance to pick one up, I’ll bring the rest to our next meeting.

Quilter’s Home magazine is offering a free Modern Quilting Primer eBook; which includes 3 free modern patterns. All you have to do to get it is to sign up for their newsletter. The link is here.

Fat Quarter Shop will be featured on our blog in the next few days and I highly encourage you to read all about the great stuff they are doing, you won’t want to miss it...Trust me.

Our next meeting is March 12th at Bindings, Borders and Squares once again. We will be hosting a Mini-Demo Day and featuring a handful of great demos including Free-Motion Quilting, Continous Bias Binding, Hexagon Piecing, etc. If you have a technique that you’d like to share with the group during one of our next Demonstration Days, please contact me at stlmqg(at)gmail.com

Until next time...Happy Quilting! and Happy Valentine's Day!

Member Spotlight #3

Name: Cara (aka Me? A Mom?)

Flickr Name: Cara {Me? A Mom?}
Blog: http://www.meamomblog.com/
Area of Town:  South City

Misc: I have three little girls (4, 2.5, and 14 months) who light up my world and make a terrible mess of my house.  Good thing they're so cute!

What brought you to the STLMQG?

---A desire for community. I'm self-taught and for many years I quilted in a bubble. I have a network of fellow modern quilters online but didn't know anyone local. I wanted to meet other local quilters who swoon over the same fabric I do and make beautiful non-traditional quilts.

Do you participate in other guilds or bees?

---I just joined my first online bee -- Sew Beautiful -- through flickr.

When did you start quilting?
---I started quilting in late 2005 as a hand quilter (mostly because machine quilting intimidated me. I hand quilted three baby quilts before I got a walking foot and moved to machine quilting. The majority of my quilting has been done in the past two years.

Why do you quilt?

---Five years ago, at the bewilderment of many, I gave up a great job at a prestigious international PR agency. The long hours and travel had worn me down, but more than that I think I’d just lost my way. I needed to rediscover something besides my job that could light me up without burning me down.

So I resigned without having another job (much less the prospect of a job) lined up. It was probably the most spontaneous (and some would say stupidest) thing I’ve ever done. I lived off some modest savings while I tried to discover what really made me happy.

One day, I went into a fabric store to look around. I’d never sewn but I had fond memories of my mom sewing when I was growing up. Well, my spirits immediately lifted as I took in the row and rows of fabrics. I couldn’t stop touching them. I was drawn to them. I picked up a couple of bolts and took them to the cutting table. When the woman asked how much I wanted, I didn’t even know enough to answer her properly. Um, about this much , I said gesturing with my hands. Heck, I didn’t even know what I was going to do with the material, how should I know how much I wanted?

I took my fabric home and unfolded it and folded it – over and over again. And then I went back to the shop a few days later and bought more. Soon, I’d amassed a small little stash.

Baffled by what I was doing, the practical side of me decided I needed to find a way to put the fabric to use. Quilting seemed like a good way to use it up lots of fabric so I went to the library and checked out four books. Reading those books was like reading a book in Chinese. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. (At that time, there weren’t – or maybe I wasn’t aware of — the amazing modern quilting bloggers.) I persevered and taught myself through trial and error. I made lots of mistakes but loved it.

Nowadays, quilting is my Great Escape. I quilt because it helps me feel centered. I can simultaneously unwind and challenge myself. And it gives me the creative outlet I crave. It may never be my career path but it definitely is my passion.

Ironically, my life has come full circle and I've just rejoined that same prestigious PR firm I left five years ago. This time, though, my career will not define my life. And that's a lesson I hope I can teach my girls many times over.

What was your most recent fabric purchase?

---Oh boy, I fell off the wagon recently and bought a bunch of things but I'm most excited about the new Alexander Henry "Heath" patterns. They were previously only available in home dec weight and now they come in quilting cotton and six wonderful colors.
 What is on your "I want to make this" List?

--- A baby quilt of various improv pieced houses

A really large string quilt

A wonky log cabin

An all-solids quilt

Anna Maria Horner's hide and seek color spectrum quilt

A wonky star quilt

Anything from Boo Davis' Dare to Be Square book

A spiderweb quilt using my collection of vintage sheets

The Single Girl quilt pattern or something equally fun like this 

A quilt-as-you-go quilt

The perfect bag -- still searching for this.

What is something you struggle with?

--- Finding the time to turn my ideas into reality and not getting frustrated when I can't. 

What do you do when you aren't quilting?

--- I'm love to blog, read blogs and connect with other modern quilters online. And, of course, I cherish spending time with my daughters and husband. That pretty much fills my time. Every once in a while, I try to sneak in some sleep. 

Anything else you want to say?

---Someone once told me: If you can’t see the mistake from across the room, no one will really notice it. In the past, I have let many a mistake or imperfection derail my creative process. Now I realize that I’m my greatest critic. Perfection is overrated! And sometimes mistakes teach you the best lessons.

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Here are some photos that Cara wanted to share with you

Meeting #6 February 12th, 2011

Hello Modern Quilters,

Are you done with this wintry white stuff yet?  The only good news about being snowed in, is it makes for perfect quilting weather.  Hopefully, Mother Nature will take a weekend off and we'll be able to get together, as we have some really amazing things planned.
Here's what you need to know...

Date: Saturday, February 12th
Time: 9:30am-Noon
Location: St. Louis County Library -Oakbend Branch
842 South Holmes Avenue
St. Louis, MO 63122
Map

**It's safe to say that the weather looks like it will cooperate with us - YAY! See you Saturday**

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Agenda:

-Welcome & Guild Business
       --Membership #s and Treasury Report
       --Special Announcements / Quilting News
-Panel Discussion
       --What is Modern Quilting?  Info here
-Show & Tell
-Pincushion Swap 2011  Info here
-Next Meeting Date (March 12th), Location (Bindings, Borders & Squares Quilt Shop)
       --Demo Day (Mini-Demos)
-Open Call for Demonstrators (for March, July, September, November)
-Remaining Questions/Comments
-Closing Remarks
-Door Prizes
-Mix & Mingle


**If you would like to share a quilt during Show & Tell, please make sure that it is of the Modern variety. As we are part of the Modern Quilt Guild, we have a responsibility to uphold the identity of the guild.

**Also make sure that you wear your nametag, otherwise you will NOT be eligible for Door Prizes

**Remember your pincushions are due, so if you haven't started...what are you waiting for?