A2MQG Meeting Minutes, March 2022

The March meeting was held via Zoom with 25 members, two guests and our guest speaker in attendance.

Guest Speaker:

Our guest presenter was Audrey Esarey, Cotton and Bourbon Quilts, "Finding My Voice in Modern Quilting" 

Audrey gave a very inspiring talk about her quilt journey which started in 2005 with a very traditional hunter's star quilt but segued into explorations of color and unique design choices.  Her "most famous" quilts are using a radial design created using curved and paper-piecing. She loves bringing in splashes of color, especially in her thread choices and has recently gotten into hand dyed fabrics.  She noted that neon threads are her favorite with a predominance of Glide Citron Yellow. She has shown and won awards for many of her quilts and one of them, Angular #2, was featured in the National Quilt Museum's Block-of-the-Month program in 2021. Her quilt is the one for April and is a free pdf pattern download >

  Angular, #2 

 

Charity Quilts:

• VA - Brenda reported she gave 7 quilts to the Veteran's Hospital on our behalf and they noted that they really love it when we provide red-white-blue quilts.  
• Motts - She also noted that Mott's Children's Hospital is no longer handing out quilts.  They did mention that their Office of Decendent Affairs might be interested in giving quilts to their clients.  Brenda will check and see if this is something they are interested in and what the requirements might be.   
• Other options - Brenda also gave some of her personal charity quilts to the Jewish Family Services who provide quilts for refugees settling in their new homes. Up to now they have been getting bed quilts from The Quilting Season but indicated they might be interested in the smaller couch or lap quilts.  

The members were asked if they had any strong feelings about who we donate our quilts to and the consensus was that as long as they are going to someone in need, it is fine.  Brenda will follow up on the Jewish Family Services connection and we welcome input from any members on other sources.  One comment that was made was that it is nice if we could find places that like the smaller (baby, lap, couch) sized quilts as it can be hard to put together the twin- or larger-size quilts like we do for Ozone House and Food Gatherers (we will continue to give quilts to these organizations).

Sew-Ins:

• We will be having two in-person Charity Sew-Ins, Sunday, April 24th and May 15th from 10:00am - 4:00pm.  These will be at N.E.W.  At the April sew-in it was suggested that we work on string quilts.  A recommendation was made for Timna Tarr's string quilt class that is available virtually until April 29th.  Members were sent a link and more details.
• Members were also reminded that we continue to have Zoom sew-ins every Tuesday from 7-9pm.

Swaps/Challenges:

• This quarter's challenge was a UFO challenge.  There were 8 participants.  Here are some of the quilts that members pulled out from the deeps and completed:

          

   

    The winners of the challenge were:  Nico Laudenberg for "Most UFOs Completed" (she finished 4, or at least that what she showed, I have a feeling there were more); Ida Copeland for her quilt started in the 1990's (!); and the random drawing went to Amy Stevenson.  Tara will be sending a charm pack to each recipient.

• The next quarter's challenge will be a "You-nique" challenge.  Participants are to create a mini-quilt (18"x18" or less) which is representative of themselves.  This can be anything from a self-portrait, to something abstract/improvisational, a favorite technique, representing a hobby or lifestyle, or just about anything that represents the quilter.  The only requirements are the size and it should be a quilt.  We hope to have a small quilt show of the finished quilts at our next in-person meeting - hopefully the June meeting - where we can have fun trying to figure out "who's who" for the quilts.

Other:  Patti Towers introduced herself and let us know that she is from Traverse City and they are in the process of setting up a modern quilt guild there.  So far they have about 20 people interested and are hoping to have meetings starting in May or June.

Next meeting: Wednesday April 27th, via Zoom.