October Meeting - Charity Quilt layout fun

Our guild is participating in the Modern Quilt Guild's QuiltCon Charity Quilt Challenge (wow, that's a lot of capitalization in the middle of a sentence). You can read more about it here, but basically all the Modern Quilt Guilds who want to participate are asked to make a quilt using a specific colour palette, and some guidelines about how to set it (alternate grid work, read more about that here) and then when its done we can donate it to a local charity. I love working collaboratively, and also, am always happy to do something that can benefit others in the end, so I think this is a great project.

Last month we were given fabric in the predetermined palette, and decided that we would go home and each piece at least one star. Any star. Ohio star, five pointed star, lone Star, paper pieced star - sky's the limit! But we decided that Kona Shadow would be our background fabric (love those neutrals!) and  we could use any fabric we had so long as it co-ordinated with our palette. The Stars would provide a thematic continuity, but would also give everyone the chance to make individual choices.

It was very exciting to see what everyone came up with:

Doris brought us this little beauty. I love how those light turquoise triangles really pop. 

Lisa J. one of our new members really knocked it out of the park with this star made of triangles

Debi did three different wonky stars (and incidentally wins for best hand modelling). 

Marilou brought us three of the same block, but in different colour combinations, illustrating perfectly how much of a difference colour choice makes in block construction.

Sabrina brought us this little loveliness. Which reminds me of how much I love blocks made with all solids. 

Adrienne made these crisp, clean paper pieced nautical inspired stars. You can find a tutorial and download the paper templates here.

Many of our members used took what they learned in the paper piecing tutorial last month and applied it to their block construction for this project. Katherine is fairly new to quilting, and yet went home and designed her own, crazy, paper pieced star. Very ambitious!

And Emily did this four pointed star. See, there a so many star options out there!

Zoriana could not make it to the meeting, but dropped off her block earlier in the week. So sweet. And also entirely hand sewn piecing!

And here's me (Andrea) with the Saw Blade Star I made. I got the pattern from the Fat Quarterly Shape Workshop for Quilters book. 

A little wonky star, also known as a Maverick Star (such a great, easy technique, here's the tutorial I used.)

And the good old traditional eight-pointed star made of half-square triangle blocks.

And that's not even all of them! I know at least one other member has a block that they will be mailing in and sneaky Rebecca managed to be too busy leading the meeting for me to take a picture of her blocks. 

And here's our preliminary layout. Thank goodness The Workroom has a big table. We worked at getting it put together, but didn't manage it all in the little time we had. But don't worry, we'll get it done eventually. 

We also did the usual show and tell portion of our meeting and there were some really beautiful things to be seen. Lisa R. made this gorgeous Marcelle's Medallion quilt from the Liberty Love book.

The back is completely different, but equally beautiful. 

 Also, note the really well done concentric circle quilting. I would love to do this one day.

And this is a table top piece made with the Sidekick ruler from Jaybird Quilts. You can find the pattern, called Rock Candy (also from Jaybird Quilts) here. Love the brights on the black background,

Emily K. brought in the centre portion of the same Marcelle's Medallion that she'd finished piecing. Isn't it incredible what a difference colour choices make? (for more variations check out the Marcelle's Medallion flickr pool. It boggles the mind.)

Emily B. had this little beauty to show us. A stunning wall-hanging featuring cathedral windows.

And on the back, some simple appliquéd circles.

Frankly, I am just blown away by this piece. The handwork on the Cathedral Window portion is crazy, and the dense quilting along with it makes this so wonderfully three dimensional. You should see it in real life. Its nearly impossible to keep your hands off it.

I've been so impressed with the beautiful work our guild members are doing. So inspiring. And that's such a great part of being a guild member - being exposed to new techniques and being urged on to improve in your own practice by the great work of others.