April 2025 - FPP and Lettering

Our April meeting had more than 30 people in attendance. We’ve been gaining new members each month. We’re almost at 70 members!

Q1 Challenge - Alternate Grids

The first quarter challenge for Alternate Grids was due. We saw some great entries with a variety of alternate layouts.

There are many potential Sewcial events in the works. Contact Rose at the programs email if you’re interested in any of these activities: Quilt Book and Notion Lending Library; Quilt Buddies member partnerships; a trip to the Sue Spargo workshop in Ohio; overnight trip to Washington, DC to see the quilt exhibition at the Renwick gallery. Check the meeting slides for more details.

Kona Color of the Year Cards

Service Project

We will be doing a service project at the retreat. If you want to contribute to the project outside of the retreat, you can donate materials or finished pillowcases.
We will be using the Burrito Pillowcase Pattern to sew standard size pillowcases to be donated to patients at Children’s Hospital.

Video Tutorial and Printable Pattern:
https://hellosewing.com/how-to-make-a-pillowcase-burrito/

Participation is voluntary*
Contribute by donating fabric and/or by sewing a pillowcase

Fabric requirements
27” X WOF
11” X WOF
2” X WOF

Show and Tell

FPP and Lettering with Becky

Custom Pattern Design

Becky walks us through a hands-on demonstration of turning letters into FPP patterns.

April programming was all about foundation paper piecing design with our own member Becky. She’s been doing FPP for a year, and designed her first pattern after she decided to alter a commercial FPP pattern she was sewing. She stepped us through the basics of how to sew an FPP block. Teen she walked us through how to use software to design a block based off a picture. We finished up with members taking a stab at designing FPP letter blocks in the software.

The presentation was informative and you can check out the details in the slides - available in the members only section.

2025 Q2 Challenge- Foundation Paper Piecing

Create a quilted item using Foundation Paper Piecing.   This can be a bag, quilt, or other item.  Completed (quilted and bound) quilts due at the July 13th Meeting.

April 2023 Meeting Recap

It was a full house for the April meeting, with lots of new and old faces!  We had lots to cover, so let's dive right in!

Membership: 

Gail is still taking orders for the Hobbs batting samplers. Payment is due by May 8th, so contact her at pghmqg.membership@gmail.com if you are interested.

Presidency/Treasurer: 

Mary shared that we had a number of ribbon winners at the Three Rivers Quilt Show, and we're proud of all of the entrants from our guild!  Congrats to: Tamara Howard, Pam Bice, Pam Valone, Luiza Skylar, Tracey Zigo and Zsofia Molgaard!  We had a really nice Sew Day in March, too, with a good turnout.  

The retreat is coming in early May, with money due April 21st.  If you're reading this now, you should have already contacted Jen to make last minute arrangements.  The facility, Camp Crestfield in Slippery Rock, is where we had the retreat last year.  See this post for more information.  Emails will be going out to registrants.

We're still collecting totes for Judy, and will be collecting them at the retreat.  The final collection through the guild will be at the June meeting.  After that, please contact Judy directly to make arrangements.  See this post for more information.

We still don't have a home for the QuiltCon charity quilt.  It will be entered into the Quilt Company East show and offered for sale with the money to be donated to charity.

A $5 increase to the dues was put forth and voted on by the attending members.  Dues will now be $55 starting in July 2023.  Renewals will be due by June 30, 2023.

Social Media:

(Full disclosure, Cheralee didn't make it to the meeting because of downed trees by her house.)  The first slide was to share Textile Talks, a series of lectures, panels, etc hosted by 6 different organizations, including the Modern Quilt Guild.  Here is the link to sign up for the newsletter to stay informed of upcoming streaming content.

April being Earth month, sustainability was also a focus.  Determining what sustainability looks like for you would have been discussed.  Zak Foster, Heidi Parkes, Chris English and the Create & Sustain page on Instagram were featured.

The National Quilt Museum BOM starts in May: https://quiltmuseum.org/blockofthemonth/

The MQG is having it's first sewalong: https://www.themodernquiltguild.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/CrissCrossChain_Chow_final-2.pdf <--- This is the pattern.

Programs: 

The focus of the meeting was pre-cuts: fat quarters, layer cakes, jelly rolls, charms and mini charms.  then there are ones called honey buns, bars, hexagons... Pre-cuts are the focus of our next quarterly challenge and Erin had the attendees break up into groups to create quilt designs based on pre-cuts anyone had brought to share with the meeting.

Q1 Challenges "Sew Small" were turned in.  See this post.

Quarterly Challenges are as follows: Q2 Pre-Cuts, Q3 Limited Color Palette, Q4 Block exchange/MQG Block, Q1 2024 Temperature Quilts

Vivian Benton will be teaching a Kawandi class June 25th.  See this post for details.

Announcements:

QCE show is July 13-15, 2023.  Entries due by 05/19/23

QuiltCon 2024 Raleigh, NC

QuiltCon 2025 Phoenix, AZ

North Pittsburgh Quilters has a May 2nd lecture and a September 5th lecture.  Contact Sandra Schott for more details. schottsandra8235@gmail.com

Sept 9, 2023 Sew Day

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We had a sweet family attend as guests!  Here are their Show & Tell photos.