February 2023 meeting - BOM intro!

 Our guild is celebrating its 10th anniversary! 

To commemorate this event, we asked Shelly Pagliai to design a BOM specifically for our guild. 

Join us this Saturday, February 25th, as Shelly unveils her design! 

Who: Shelly Pagliai will be introducing our Block of the Month project for our 2023 10th anniversary year! She will discuss fabric selection and provide our first clue.

Pdf patterns will be sent to all paid members.  If you have not yet renewed your dues you will need to do so to receive your pattern.  Others will need to become members if you want to participate in our BOM. 

Renew your membership or join by clicking the link on the sidebar.

This pattern is valued at $30 and is provided to members as a gift to celebrate our 10 year anniversary.

When: Saturday, February 25th

Where: Join us in person at the downtown Kalamazoo Public Library (VanDeusen room), or join us on Zoom (see link in email). Shelly will be joining us via Zoom on the big screen at the library. 

Time: Doors open at 10 for socializing; meeting starts at 10:30 am.

Other notes: 

*If you haven’t paid your dues, please do so! 

*Feel free to bring show and tell to share!

*Since we know some of you will be at QuiltCon, this meeting will be recorded. Watch for a link in your email this weekend.

More about Shelly: 

Pagliai is an Italian name, and is pronounced like “Polly Eye”.

She is a designer from Wien, Missouri. She has designed quilts and block-of-the-month patterns for various shops and is a talented machine quilter who has had her work shown all over the country. The Kansas City Star was fortunate to have her as the designer for its 2015 block-of-the-month feature, "Hazel’s Diary."

Shelly Pagliai is a quilt pattern designer, author, blogger, coffee lover, ranch wife, goat keeper, cat herder, and professional machine quilter. A quilter since the age of 12, she started her pattern company in 1999, while working her day job as a computer technician. She started blogging in 2009, and added a longarm machine to her business that same year. She quickly became so busy with customer quilts that she quit her day job in 2010 to begin designing and quilting full time.

Shelly’s work has been featured in numerous quilting magazines, museum exhibits, and books, and has appeared in many major quilt shows, where she has received numerous awards. She is the author of A Simple Life: Quilts Inspired by the ’50s, with C&T Publishing.

Shelly quilts on a Nolting Pro Series 24 named Ivy in the upstairs of the 1921 farmhouse she shares with her Cowboy at Prairie Moon Ranch in Missouri. Check out their antics at prairiemoonquilts.com.



2022 Holiday Party

We will gather to celebrate the December holidays on Tuesday, December 6, beginning at 6:00 pm.

University Roadhouse
1332 W Michigan Ave, Kalamazoo
https://www.universityroadhouse.com/

We'll gather in the private dining room on the lower level. Dinner and drinks can be ordered individually from the full menu. 

Activity: Pizza Box Swap!

We invite you to participate in our optional gift swap activity during the holiday party.  This is always a fun way to get to know each other and share our love of quilting with each other.  We had so much fun with the shoebox swap last year, we decided to do something similar.

Rules:

• Make whatever you want, but it must fit in a pizza box. 
• Place in an unused pizza box and wrap it for gift exchange.
• Try to use something you learned from one of our speakers or workshops this year.
• No need to sign up. If you show up with a swap item, you’ll go home with one. 

We hope to see you on December 6!

2021 Holiday Party/Swap

2021 Holiday Party/Swap

2021 Holiday Party/Swap

2021 Holiday Party/Swap

October 2022 Meeting Recap: Sharon McConnell trunkshow and workshop

 For our October meeting, we hosted the wonderful Sharon McConnell of Color Girl Quilts.  You can find Sharon's quilt patterns here and her YouTube channel here.  She is also doing some product development for Love Sew.  Check out their really wonderful stuff here.  (For you lefties out there, Sharon is a lefty, and she is developing products that are lefty friendly!)

We began on Friday night with a terrific trunk show.  Sharon showed us several of quilts made from her patterns.   Along with getting a chance to see these terrific quilts, we had a good lesson on color and value and how your decisions about placement of those makes a big difference in how the quilt looks.  We got to see multiple versions of some of Sharon's quilts to illustrate that point.

This medallion quilt was just wonderful!

This quilt is Hula Girl and was one of the quilts Sharon taught in her workshop on Saturday.

A great illustration for the difference between a scrappy quilt and one using a consistent background.

Look at how the use of color changes the look of this quilt!

Look how the black background on the quilt on the left emphasizes the circles and the white background on the quilt on the right emphasizes the "melons."

 

 

 

We all ooohed and aaahed over these dresdens and the pretty "ice cream" colors!

This quilt is called Sunbeam, and some of us made this quilt in the workshop on Saturday.  Look at the difference in how the quilt looks by changing the alternate "rays" in the suns from white to black!

Another pair of quilts that look completely different simply by changing the color of a few shapes in the quilt!

We followed the trunk show with show and tell. See below for some fun show and tells!

Sharon C. brought this beautiful quilt she made from Sharon M.'s pattern.

This was a wonderful Entangled Sky quilt, made from Krista Moser's pattern (and our workshop earlier this year).

This stunningly "hot" quilt was very fun to see!  Well done!

On Saturday, we held an all-day workshop at the Ransom Public Library in Plainwell.  It was so fun, and the space was so lovely to work in.

Here, Sharon starts teaching us her paper piecing tips.

Working hard right out of the gate!

These Christmas fabrics were so cute!

More fun colors!

Lynne successfully created some rays for her Sunbeam quilt.  Love that orange!

Cindy had never paper pieced before, and look at this beautiful job she did!

Cindy really went to town with her paper piecing and made this "hula hoop!"  Way to go, Cindy!

Here we all are with some completed blocks.  We had a blast, and if you couldn't be there, we sure missed you!  Hope you can come next time.  Sharon, thank you for a wonderful day!  We appreciated it!

A few quick business items before we close:

• If you haven't signed up for the November retreat, please do so!  We'd love to see you all there!
• The holiday party is in December 6 ant 6:00 pm at the University Roadhouse.  We hope to see you there!  We are having a swap again this year.  Your swap gift should be made with modern fabric and fit in a pizza box...any size!  Please bring your gift wrapped in a clean pizza box.  You can still come to the party even if you don't want to swap gifts.  No problem!
• All of the officer positions are up for re-election next year.  Please consider running for an office, as we could really use some help!  

 See you all soon.  We missed everyone who couldn't come to our meeting this month.  It sure was fun to be back in person and to see everyone again. 

Respectfully submitted,

Stephanie