Things are going so well with the Los Angeles Modern Quilt Guild!

We’re two months away from our 1 year anniversary and it’s been amazing to watch the growth of The Modern Quilt Guild since we began.

The LA guild is having a ball!  Lots of wonderful activities have gone on…

Our fun meetings are filled with

…swaps:

Jamie getting Lori’s mini quilt

… and great speakers:

Kaari Meng of French General came and told us all about her love of French textiles and about her fabric line with Moda.

Of course we always have great show & tells!

And where we’re not meeting we’re…

….sewing together,

…and fabric shopping together!

A group of us who went to the Long Beach Quilt Festival on Saturday… sporting our guild pride with our shirts & totes!

We’re just generally all making lots of new friends who love quilting!

We hope that if you’re in the LA area and you haven’t checked us out yet, you’ll come to a meeting. We’d love to meet you!

From Nikol Gianopoulos  member of the Minneapolis Modern Quilt Guild.

The Minneapolis Modern Quilt Guild is less than 6 months old, but we have jumped out of the starting gates with a bang!  In May we decided to do our first swap/challenge.  We all exchanged strips of 2 ½ inch by WOF strips of polk-a-dot fabric.

Our challenge was to create something from the strips (20 total) adding only one additional fabric.  We had two months to work on the project, all the while keeping it a secret (which I think was the real challenge).  During our July meeting we revealed our creations.

It was fun to see the wide variety of projects everyone did with the strips.  Kristy bleached her strips and created a small size quilt that looked slightly subdued. We had a bargello quilt that was made for a friend who has been begging for a bargello quilt.

One member found some beautiful green silk/cotton blend fabric and made a unique looking pillow.

It seemed like everyone was willing to stretch their boundaries just a little bit, with big results.  You can check out more photo’s on our Flickr site at: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1482368@N23/pool/

During our June meeting, in which we had our first sew-in, one of our members showed up with a wonderful hexagon quilt.  It was beautiful and we all quickly nominated her to show us how it’s done during our August meeting.  As a bonus; here in Minneapolis the Walker Art Center has a big open field which groups can use for special events during the summer walkerart.org/openfield .  So, we have a request in with the Walker to use the Field during our August meeting and with any luck we’ll be learning how to piece a hexagon quilt on a field of green or at a minimum we’ll be learning at Sewtropolis (our usual meeting location).

Also for our August meeting we decided we would do some charitable sewing and sew a block or two for Anna Maria Horner’s Rainbow Around the Block project http://www.annamariahorner.com/rainbow.html .

Even though this group is less than a year old we have a creative group of women who are very motivated to make this quilting group as fun as possible, which is the lovely thing about being a new guild.

From Rachel McPhail, member of the Salt Lake City Modern Quilt Guild.

When I saw the explosion of Modern Quilt Guild chapters across the world, I was a bit jealous. I wanted to be a member. After waiting a couple of days to see a Salt Lake City chapter start, I decided to take the plunge and start a chapter. Of course the worse fear is that nobody else would join, but my fears were unfounded. By then end of the day, the group had a couple of members. By the end of the week, the group was big enough to start making plans. It has been amazing to see people who live outside of Salt Lake drive the distance just to be a part of the group.

From Laura Pierce, co-president of the Austin Modern Quilt Guild

Hi there! Our group got started in January of 2010 and has been growing and evolving ever since.  What started as a few folks meeting in a downtown eatery to visit and plan for the future of the group has grown to a loyal bunch of regulars that meet to do projects together, share our creations, and just enjoy the company of fellow quilters and artisans.



Austin has a wonderful artistic community and we have been on the receiving end of some amazing generosity.  Stitch Lab (http://www.glitzkrieg.biz/schedule/schedule.html) is an amazing local modern fabrics shop and studio full of cutting edge classes.  Leslie Bonnell, the owner and founder of the studio, has opened her doors to us for the past few months.  She has given us an amazing space to meet in and a great selection of modern fabrics to purchase as well.  Some of our members have already taken classes there and others have classes on their wish lists for the future.  While we are on the cusp of outgrowing the space available there, our group will always be grateful for the kindness shown to us by the local crafting community and Stitch Lab in particular.

Our group ranges from those with decades of sewing and quilting experience to those who have just completed their first quilt and can’t wait to get started on their next.  We also welcome those who just want to learn a bit about modern quilting and are looking for encouragement when starting their quilting journey.

At our last meeting, we took a big step forward and elected officers for our group.  We have two Presidents who work together with a Web Admin and Secretary to keep our little group growing and flourishing.  Our Presidents are myself, Laura Pearce, and Adrienne Pryor.  Our Secretary is Mitzi Muirhead.  She posts all our updates and meeting minutes onto our site and keeps everyone informed of the latest news.  Our Web Admin is Bobbi Brekke.  She has been working hard to set up a user friendly and welcoming group for us over on Facebook.  Please pop in and say hello if you are in our area or are visiting our area and want to come to a meeting.  You can find the group here: http://tinyurl.com/pieceoutatx

We also have a Flickr group page here:  http://tinyurl.com/pieceoutflickr

Our current goals, as a group, are to find a larger meeting space and continue to grow in membership.  Membership does not require any dues and we welcome newcomers.  Feel free to pop in and say hello on our site.  Thanks again for letting me share a bit about our group with you.

From Holly Broadland, leader of the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild.

“I love the idea of a Modern Quilt Guild and would definitely join one if it existed in Vancouver, BC, Canada!”

When I wrote this comment on Alissa Carlton’s blog in November, 2009, I had no idea that I would be the one organizing the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild! When Alissa, co-founder of The Modern Quilt Guild, wrote a post entitled “How to start a guild branch in your area” in January 2010, she encouraged me to start an online group to see if there was enough interest. Sure enough, there was (as of today, we have 95 members in the online group!), and five months later, we had our first meeting.

We had 45 enthusiastic quilters at the meeting! 45! In the planning stages, I had told Lili and Henry, owners of Spool of Thread Sewing Lounge and hosts of our first meeting, that we would likely have 10-20 people at the meeting. Boy, was I wrong! We quickly used up all of Spool of Thread’s chairs and the kind restauranteur next door loaned us a dozen. We still had people sitting on the floor!

The atmosphere was welcoming and inspiring and people seemed to be bubbling over with excitement to meet other young quilters. Some had never made a quilt but wanted to learn, others had been quilting for several years, and a few people had 25 years experience. A quick survey determined that 100% of the attendees would rather buy fabric than watch a World Cup soccer game. We had found our people!

After our intros and a discussion on the definition of modern quilting, we shared our quilts. We had an amazing show and tell session and got to hear the story behind dozens of modern quilts. Tons more photos are posted in our Flickr group.

photos by Sonja Callaghan

I want to thank everyone who made this event a success; Lili and Henry from Spool of Thread for hosting us (and moving their industrial sized cutting table so we’d have more room!), Sonja for taking 150 amazing photos to document the evening, Arita for taking minutes, Paul and Lawanda for bringing refreshments, Krista, Louise and Lili for donating door prizes, and my husband, Dean, for talking modern quilting with me on many morning runs! Thanks as well to those who talked up the meeting on their blogs. And, of course, thanks to Alissa Carlton for giving me the kick in the butt to get this guild started!

The next meeting is 7pm, Thursday, July 15th, 2010 at Spool of Thread. I’ve gotta go find some chairs!

From Natalie Hardin leader of the DC Modern Quilt Guild.

Greetings from DC! I am so happy to share with you about our little chapter from the nations capital. We call our little group DC Modern.

We started up in January with our first meeting. I was interested in meeting other quilters in person and thought, “Why not start a group myself?” After contacting Alissa (LA Chapter) and Julie (Philly Chapter) I got enough courage to take it all on. We have quite a few members online (over 100 now) but it is a constant few that actively participate with our in-person events.

Because we are a small group at the moment we have made things casual and as inexpensive as possible. We have had monthly meetings at a local coffee shop. At those meetings we have one member do a small presentation of anything of their choosing. We wrap it up with a group share. Every meeting we bring fabrics we are willing to swap and this allows for a constantly rotating pile of fabric.

This past Saturday we had our first sewing lounge at a local quilt shop — The Artful Quilter (Burke, VA).

We worked on our projects, shared project ideas and good conversation. We plan on having many more meetings/sewing lounges In the future.

If you are passing by DC we would love to have you stop by and join us!

From Kit Lang, President of the Toronto Modern Quilt Guild

“Baby Go Round” by DivaQuilts

Our Chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild came into existence by accident. I was very interested in joining a modern quilt guild, but one didn’t exist. I wrote to Alissa and Latifah at different times, asking whether anyone had expressed interest in starting one in our city, and was always told – “No, only you”. Eventually, at the suggestion of Alissa, I decided to open up a web site for Toronto Modern Quilt Guild and hope that “if I built it, they would come”. Come they did, but only online, and none of them seemed interested in leading a new, real-time, guild.

“Mermaid Quilt” by Nadia

So, I decided we should have an informal meeting, and the following month we had another informal meeting, and the month after that, we had a third informal meeting, but at that one we voted ourselves into existence, and there we were – Toronto Modern Quilt Guild – with me as President! I went home and said to my spouse “How did THAT happen?”

“Hope Valley” quilt by Tong

Perhaps because of our informal beginnings, we’ve continued to be so, but our group has gotten to a size (76 members) that means we can no longer be so informal. Luckily, the guild has attracted an incredibly talented and wonderfully experienced Vice-President in the person of Jenni Wood, a textile artist, recently moved to Canada from the UK; and a very versatile and gifted Financial Officer in the person of Kristy Mohan.

“Wedding Quilt” by Kristy Mohan

With their combined expertise and experience, the Toronto Modern Quilt Guild will be a very exciting group to be part of this fall! The executive team will be meeting and planning over the summer to create a dynamic and active group in the 2010-11 season.

“Holiday Hostess” by Karen McClean
From Kit Lang, President of the Toronto Modern Quilt Guild

In the meantime, our group continues to meet at a local sewing shop NTD: (http://www.theworkroom.ca/), where we show off our projects, learn from each other, have spirited conversations and enjoy the company of other modern quilters.

“Un Poco Loco” by Kit Lang

We’re looking forward to our first official year with great anticipation. In the meantime, happy quilting to you all!