The Saskatoon MQG met on July 25th in Buena Vista park. Just so much fun again! We mixed it up and started with show-and-tell. See snippets of a few of the lovely quilts below. We also showed our traveling quilts but you can see those blocks occasionally on Instagram. Some interesting eye candy to follow while on Instagram includes saija_elina. And wren-collective.com has the Aftershock sew along beginning on August 2. Keep those fantastic links coming!

Dyanne showed us a cool technique. It is using flat felled seams so you don’t have to put anything on the back of the pieced project so it is just like hanging stained glass. She admitted to cheating and using a 1/2″ seam to make it a bit easier to do the technique. And a hammer might help when the seams get thick. But don’t over pound or the fabric could shatter. When you hang it, the project hangs flat. She sewed pipe cleaners into the top and bottom seams to help with hanging. The seams don’t show well in the photo of the back on the right. It is the seam on blue jeans!

And to end out the meeting, Deb showed us tons of embroidered projects and even brought the supplies so we could try out embroidery. Check out the embroidered animals made from brown variegated thread in the quilt below. Inspiration can come from colouring books, purchased patterns, or free embroidery patterns online such as the Holiday Stitch-a-Long with Moda (embroidery design below by Susan Ache). And there are books like Elegant Stitches by Judith Baker Montano that can help teach the different stictches. Deb’s labels are so cute. The dinosaur is just waiting for some text. And our other fantastic stitcher Nancy phoned around and found places to buy thread in Saskatoon including Prairie Lily Knitting and Michaels, and of course, it is worth a visit to one of our local quilt stores to check what threads they carry.

So what is there to look forward to? On August 29th, we will host our 2nd impromptu quilt show in Buena Vista park (rain date September 12th). And sew days have been reserved for September 26th, October 24th and November 28th, and a Christmas gathering from 12 to 4 on December 12th. The last travelling quilt blocks will be completed in August and we will share our negative space projects in September. Then we can also decide if we have enough of us to try the Kinship blocks.