August Meeting Recap

Thanks to everyone who joined us for our August meeting and sew-in. In addition to an inspiring round of show and tell, we covered a lot of business and looked ahead to our activities through the end of the year. Here's the rundown:

• Quilts for Pulse: It looks like the KMQG will have 4 finished quilts to send to the Orlando guild for distribution (that's a finished quilt top pictured above). A few of our members took the quilts in progress to work on -- if that's you, please email modknoxville@gmail.com to arrange hand-off to Melissa so that she can ship the finished quilts by Sept 10. If you're quilting but not binding, be sure to allow us time to get the binding completed.
• Next quilt for The Restoration House: It's time to work on blocks for our next donation quilt to The Restoration House. Instructions and a link to a tutorial are located here. Blocks will be due at our November meeting.
• Gracie's Gifts: We welcomed Cynthia Barreira, founder of Gracie's Gifts, a nonprofit that provides smocks and swaddling blankets to the NICU at East Tennessee Children's Hospital. Cynthia told us all about Gracie's Gifts, and we're excited to support her efforts. We're working out a plan for the best way for our members to contribute our talents and resources. We'll have more information on this soon.
• September meeting 9/17: This will be another sew-in meeting, and we hope to get a start on our project for the QuiltCon 2017 charity quilt. We'll also play Left-Right-Center, so bring 3 fat quarters in solid colors if you want to play along and maybe boost your stash of solids.
• October: No meeting as we will have our annual retreat.
• November meeting 11/19: This will be a sew-in meeting, and blocks for Restoration House will be due.
• December Holiday Party 12/17: Don't miss out on the food, fun, and games! More info to come...

The guild's contribution to the Quilts of Valor project

Taylor Opel

Sarah Elliott

Sarah Elliott

Sarah Elliott

Pat Pike

Quilts for Pulse: Charity Block Drive

The Orlando MQG has organized a quilt and block drive to benefit the survivors and victims' families following the tragic event at the Orlando nightclub Pulse. You can find more information about the heart blocks they're collecting here and here. In addition to these heart blocks, the Knoxville MQG will also collect 16.5" unfinished stacked stones blocks to turn into complete quilts. We will incorporate some similarly stacked heart blocks to continue the charity drive theme, but we are not soliciting those blocks in our drive. We plan to finish 1 or 2 quilts and send them to Orlando to ease the efforts of that guild.

For our block selection, stacked stones, you can reference the tutorial found here. But remember, the blocks need to be 16.5" unfinished, so make your blocks wider and longer than the tutorial and then trim down to 16.5". We would like the colored portion of the block to start with red or pink at one end and proceed in rainbow order (ROY G BIV), ending with purple or pink at the opposite end. Use low volume or white for the pieces on either side of the color, and feel free to mix different low volume fabrics together as shown above. This is a great block for your scraps! If you would like to donate batting or backing, please email modknoxville@gmail.com.

Both heart and stacked stone blocks are due at our July 16 meeting.