We met at Home Inn and Suites for our second sew day of the year. Roxanne introduced us to the second Dreamlines strip: Big Square Dots. Our guild is now following the patterns of Brenda Gael Smith, and we highly recommend other guilds reach out to Brenda for this wonderful improv quilting project. This will be a 10-month project in total, with month 11 dedicated to showing us how to assemble the quilt. Month 1 and 2 samples are shown below.

Next, Elizabeth led a demonstration of the “Quilt as You Go” technique. One of the benefits of her method is that all of the work stays on the left-hand side of the machine. Elizabeth has prepared a handout, complete with photos of her samples, which will be emailed to members. A great tip she shared: to create larger borders between rows and columns, make the batting larger than the center piece. Roxanne then demonstrated quilting Granny Squares by Liz Thompson. You can find more details on this technique here. See Quilt as You Go quilts below.

Before ending the meeting with a gift exchange, we were able to admire several beautiful quilts. Two patterns of note were: Cabin Fever using five fat quarters (find it here) and the sampler quilt by Laundry Basket Quilts (available here).

The gift exchange was such a fun activity that we’ve decided to do it again in April! If you’d like to participate, please bring a wrapped gift valued at no more than $15. It should be something you’d love to receive—think quilting items, plants, books, or chocolates.

Please note: The quilt retreat is on March 23-24, so we will not have a regular meeting. Our upcoming meeting dates are as follows: April 27, May 25, June 17 (Tuesday), July 15 (Tuesday), August 12 (Tuesday), September 28, October 26, November 16 (note: November 23 is not available), and December 14. In April, we will reveal our 10.5 inch square block loto of our improv version of a traditional block (colours black, white and another colour). Our education topic will be a group share of ideas for home machine quilting. Thanks to everyone who showed their projects today!