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!

Pin Cushion Swap 2011

1. Scrappy Pincushion #2, 2. Mini Hexagon Pincushion Practice, 3. 29th July, 2010, 4. Skinny Pincushion Free Pattern, 5. Scrappy Pincushion Swap, 6. sew pin cushion

We hope everyone is excited about the pin cushion swap in February!  

Are you ready to get started?  

Need an idea or some inspiration?  

We are here to help!

This Flickr group has, count um, 35 pages of pin cushion pictures!

This Flickr thread has links to 32 tutorials!

Not enough?

How about this cute pattern from fabric designer Heather Bailey?

Got a copy of Sewing Bit's and Pieces by Sandi Henderson?  

There's a pin cushion pattern in there!

Got a copy of Sew it Seams by Anna Maria Horner?

There's a pin cushion pattern in there too!

So grab that new modern fabric you just bought and get to it!

In case you missed it, each participant will bring their unwrapped pin cushion to the February meeting for a show and tell.  We'll put all the pin cushions on a table and assign numbers to each participant randomly.  Number 1 goes first and chooses a pin cushion.

Number 2 goes next and can choose a pin cushion off the table OR she/he can steal a previously chosen pin cushion.

Note that once a pin cushion has touched three sets of hands, it is considered in-active and can no longer be stolen.

We will continue this way until all the pin cushions have a new home!

Feel free to comment with more pin cushion ideas or questions!