The Saskatoon MQG met on May 29th for a sew day. This was hosted at Home Inn & Suites. Sherry did a fantastic demo on making improv blocks using a stack of fabrics. We asked her to do this based on quilts she had submitted to our gallery show at St. Thomas More College earlier this year. “Improv squares” and “Improv Quarter Circles” were the result of a class she had taken from Carl Schmold. Deb Baumann had used a similar technique on quilts named “Bullseye” and “Spirals”, and Bev had also submitted a Bulleseye quilt. See the link to our show at https://stmcollege.ca/gallery/2022/01/saskatoon-modern-quilt-guild/.

The technique is simple which is to make a stack of fabrics. We are going to try this using 10″ squares and 6 fabrics. In the demo, Sherry made 6 cuts to end up with 7 pieces. Then it is just a matter of mixing up the fabrics to result in the number of blocks corresponding to the original number of fabric squares. Just be sure to cut the pieces big enough to allow for a 1/4″ seam! We hope to see some finished projects over the next month or two!

We saw some beautiful quilts at the meeting. Anne brought a quilt that she worked on at our retreat (below). She is going to demonstrate how to do the “Scrappy Trip Around the World” pattern at the next meeting. She will be sewing six 2.5″ wide strips, approximately 17″ long into a tube. Do feel free to do the same and bring this to the next meeting. She will show how to convert the tube into a 12.5″ square. The quilt below was made from 35 squares.

To get everyone excited about summer, below is a a beach tote that Barb made from a “30 days of improv” quilt along by Shannon Fraser and Amanda last summer. The blocks were all 5″ square so Barb found a tote pattern that used 5″ charm squares. We can always count on Barb to do fantastic quilting.

Next meeting is June 26th, weather permitting. We will be meeting in Buena Vista park in Saskatoon, and we park in the 1300 block of Melrose Avenue. Please bring lawn chairs.