Toronto Modern Quilt Guild June Newsletter

View this email in your browser June 2020 Newsletter Hello TMQG! Happy Summer Solstice! With summer weather arriving and tempting possibilities for outdoor activity (albeit socially distanced ones) it can be hard to contemplate sitting indoors at the sewing machine. Sometimes though, quilting can be a much-needed meditative activity, especially in times of continued uncertainty. Those purring sounds from our sewing machines can be soul-soothing. This Month's Meeting In lieu of our JUNE MEETING, we will be hosting an online workshop with Melissa Marginet. See below for details. This workshop is almost sold out, so if you are interested, sign up while a spot is still available or join the waiting list.   Melissa Marginet Workshop                                           Melissa Marginet will be leading her online workshop Planning Your Walking Foot Quilting on Sunday June 28th, 10:30 to 5:00. Please click here for more details and to put down a $20 deposit to secure your spot in the workshop.  Registrants who have placed a $20 deposit on the workshop will be invoiced the proportional cost of the workshop once registration has closed. Workshop participants will need to have Marginet's book Edge-to-Edge Walking Food Quilting Designs, which can be purchased in her Etsy Shop.   We will be doing a VIRTUAL SHOW AND SHARE in our June meeting recap email.  We hope all you workshop participants will send us photos of your work. Please email us to share a quilt!    Looking Forward   We are excited to announce that the TMQG and the York Heritage Quilters Guild will be welcoming Chawne Kimber  at our Zoom meeting on Sunday, July 26. Dr. Kimber will present her lecture   When the Cotton is High: Social Justice and Textiles For centuries women have used their utilitarian and decorative textile work to express their politics and opinions on issues of the day. We'll take a look at some historical examples and then romp through my own work. My quilts use the lens of identity and difference to confront social conflicts like campus rape culture, Black Lives Matter, and censorship.   Chawne Kimber is an award winning textile artist who exhibits quilts and embroidery in museums, galleries, and festivals in all over the United States. Through cultivation of cotton in rural Alabama, some of her ancestors (unwillingly) participated in building the United States. Inspired by quilts made by these ancestors in the late 1800s, Chawne interprets traditional patchwork forms in an improvisational style and indulges in political confrontations in quilt form. When not manipulating cotton, Chawne is a professor of mathematics at a small liberal arts college in the Northeast. Other Announcements The guild executive is thoughtfully working on a long term action plan for Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity. As a member guild of the MQG, we follow the MQG's Community Guidelines. We welcome the input of all our members as we examine our policies, learn, and develop plans going forward. We welcome our members to explore the Anti-Racism Resources curated by the MQG. Would you like to host a pop-up virtual social event for the guild? Our Zoom account is available for some informal events. Please email us if you have something in mind.  If you signed up to do the President's Challenge, your assigned characteristics can be found on the sign-up spreadsheet. It's not too late to sign up!  We have all been enjoying Brandon's "Everyday Objects" quilts, so the news that he is organising a virtual quilt show is fantastic. Please visit his website for submission information.  Do you have an area of expertise to share with the guild? Sign up to give a Spotlight Presentation at one of our upcoming meetings! Click here to sign up, or to suggest a topic you would like to see included.  The TMQG has been collaborating on a quilt for the The Maritime Modern Quilt Guild and it's almost finished! The Maritime Guild in Halifax, Nova Scotia is collecting quilts to be distributed in order to show love and support to the victims' families and first responders affected by the tragedies on 4/19/20. Our members and a couple of non members contributed blocks in the requested blue and white colours, which were sent to Karen Brown to be sewn together into a top. Other members have volunteered to do the quilting and binding in order to get the quilt out to Halifax. We very much appreciate all of the support from our guild members and those outside of our guild. We sincerely hope that this quilt brings some comfort to its new owner. Thank you to Theresa Aqui for her many contributions as Communications Officer since January. Going forward Karen Powers will be wearing the Communications hat with assistance from Brandon Wulff, our social media volunteer.