December Mod Meeting

Yesterday I trekked into the city for the December Metro Mod Guild meeting.  It was the first time in our new location and while we will definitely miss the huge artistic inspiration that comes from BEING in Victoria's loft, I must say that having TABLES was pretty cool. 

Christa and I worked on some EPP, I got to meet and chat with members I hadn't really talked to before, and I won the raffle prize, V's book!

Nice big space!

Here are some of the quilts I could get photos of..

Made by Bernadette

By Helen, from her bee blocks at Two's Company

A bee quilt by Margaret

An awesome scrap quilt by Tina

The one cool thing about the new space is that it has a balcony area, so I climbed up and asked Christa to take a picture of my SV quilt (top done!).  The lighting was off (must play around with this some more), but the space sure does have lots of potential.

White

Of all the modern quilting trends, the concept of needing to use more white in quilts was one I hadn't grasped whole heartedly yet.  Sure, I've used white in quilts, but I think I'm still at that "learning about color and balance" stage in my quilting.  I go back and forth between wanting to do color studies and wanting to just dive in and create with whatever fabric is in my hand.  Let's just say I'm not always so confident in the "planning" stage-- I'm much more of a "Let's wing it and see what happens next" type quilter.  (Incidentially, I'd like to know, which one are you?)

So as my SV quilt progressed, I naturally started thinking I needed a bold or dark border to "tone it down" a bit.  But I don't have a big stash of solids and every dark print I held up just added more to the chaos.  And I began to wonder if I could make the whites in the centers of the A block pop a bit more if I used a "white" border.. This off white mushroom print that I brought back from Japan in '07 (yes, I still have most of that fabric horded..) went perfectly with the blues in the A block, so I decided to go for it.

Once the borders were on, I had a breakthrough-- the white border actually made the entire quilt look brighter.  And I couldn't believe I almost darkened the whole thing with a colored border.  Who would have guessed?  I always opt for a dark border.  I think this may be a breakthrough..
I'm still going to put a pieced outer border on to make it twin size, but I am very happy with it so far.

A little SV?

This quilt has a terrible name, but it's growing on me.

I started last week, before Superstorm Sandy, and made 4 blocks.  I didn't like them.

I hemmed and hawed, thinking I could change the block somehow and have it turn into something I did like.  I played.  I cut more scraps, you know how it goes.

Then I started making several blocks at once (instead of: cut 49 squares, sew 49 squares, feel meh), and by the time I had 10, the pattern appeared!  And my scraps looked good and scrappy!

I've had thoughts of stopping at 12 blocks and adding a thick border, but then I look at my scrap bins (I found another accidentally today, completely jam packed with pieces perfect for this project), and realize I should probably keep going.  I have no idea where this quilt will end up (can't imagine it on my bed), but if I can clear through one bin of scraps at least, I'll love the quilt for it..

The name's gotta go though.. thinking about calling it "hurricane sandy"... for the chaos.  Or for the calm it gave me during the chaos...

Have you made one of these yet?  What were your feelings?  Motivation?  And how did it end up?