Wednesday, August 27, 2014

August Meeting Show & Tell

Jane has been as productive as always this summer.  Here are her Kaffe stripes quilt, a tumbler quilt, and Layer Cake Sampler.

Jody's beautiful Improv quilt

Kathleen's perfect Trees Mini

Emily's delightful Courthouse Steps quilt

Julie's adorable baby quilt

Jean made this vibrant black & white rail fence quilt and this lovely Big Easy Wedding quilt for a friend.

Courtney made this sweet little homage to her cat, finished her crossweave chevron and this precious baby quilt for a friend that incorporates pieces of the mother's baby quilt.

Courtney also finished up this great Quilts for Boston quilt that we all worked on at the Quilt-In.

Gin shared this stunning wonky star quilt that will be raffled off for the Sommerville Homeless Coalition auction.

Judy shared two amazing quilts...  I adore the quilting on both!!!

Karen's super cute patchwork bag.

Reva made this awesome bag with covered buttons and also this Convergence mini quilt

Amanda shared this charming vintage Christmas quilt.

Ginger made this exquisite Pearl Bracelet rainbow quilt for her son and also the Tova Tunic she is wearing.

Kaesmene made this knockout baby quilt and matching doll quilt.

Gwen shared this colorful quilt she made for her son to take to college.

Gwen also brought back two more incredible Quilts for Boston that she's quilted.

Rebecca and her inspired flock of geese quilt.

Alexis sent in this marvelous Quilts for Boston quilt that she made (modeled by the lovely Rebecca:-)

Sarah shared her latest bag creation and her first commission quilt.  I think they're going to love it:-)

Alice finally finished this entirely hand pieced and hand quilted Friendship Star quilt and also her patchwork Weekender bag.

Join us for our September meeting, 1-3 on Saturday, September 20th at the Fabric Place Basement and see all this fabulousness for yourself!


Friday, August 22, 2014

August Meeting Recap with the Amazing Melissa Averinos

 Is there anything Melissa Averinos can't do?    For our August meeting Melissa shared her creative journey from her early days drawing and painting to her latest adventure, longarm quilting.  Along the way she entertained us with pictures of her first quilt, an exquisite improv log cabin, her forays in to fabric design including a print used by Victoria's Secret, graphic design, cake decorating, writing DIY books, and jewelry making.

Untitled
Photo Courtesy of YummyGoods
From the beginning Melissa knew that traditional quilting had too much math for her tastes.  She vastly prefers improv quilting and has recently been working on a serious of quilted self-portraits.  Her work is currently on display at a Modern Quilt exhibit she curated for the Cotuit Center for the Arts.  If you're going to be on the Cape before September 7th you should definitely check it out!!!  As an added bonus there are quilts by Boston MQG members Alexis Deise and Caro Sheridan:-)

lady stitches
Photo Courtesy of YummyGoods

Inspired by the lovely Lisa Sipes, Melissa decided that longarm quilting was just like drawing except with thread.  Since purchasing a longarm she has started her own business doing custom quilting.  Several quilts she quilted were on display at Quilt Market this Spring not to mention the amazing quilting she did for Quilts for Boston.

There were so many take-aways from Melissa's talk but here are my favorites:

  • Why start just one project?  When you work on several at a time you increase your chances of success that one will be amazing.
  • Don't get too thinky about what you are doing.  No piece of work should be too precious.
  • It's only fabric...  whatever you're working on isn't done until you're happy with it.  If it isn't working cut it up, add something else, change it up.
  • Be kind to yourself.
It's clear to me the true secret to Melissa's success is her ability to connect with creative people.  She is wonderful at expressing her creativity and sharing her passions.  We look forward to having her visit us often:-)

A huge thank you also to fabulous gang at Franklin Mill Store for hosting us in their fabulous space and enabling our fabric habit:-)  It is always a pleasure to visit!!!





Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Quilts for Boston Quilt-In

 When we kicked off Quilts for Boston last year we never imagined we would receive over 2000 quilt blocks to make quilts for those affected by the Boston Bombings.  After our final sew-in at Gather Here all of the quilt blocks have been incorporated into quilts.  This weekend Laurena's Longarm hosted a quilt-in so we could quilt the remaining tops.  

Sara is a natural!  She had never longarmed before yet cranked out 2 beautiful quilts!

 We had a fun day of quilting...  I think everyone took a turn quilting a block on this quilt:-)  At the end of the day our final 5 quilts have been quilted and are ready to be bound.

A huge thank you to Laurena for hosting our final Quilts for Boston quilt-in this weekend.  Thanks also to the fabulous Gwen for organizing everything for our quilt-in.  We could never have made it this far without all of our awesome volunteers who have contributed their time, supplies, and enthusiasm:-)

If you still have a Quilt for Boston that you are finishing up please bring it to the September meeting so we can schedule our final distribution.


Friday, August 8, 2014

August Meeting: Yummy Goods

Photo courtesy of Yummy Goods
Please join us for our August meeting where longarmer extroidinaire, quilter, fabric designer, author, illustrator, and all-around amazing artist Melissa Averinos will be sharing her quilting journey.  You might not recognize her (though this self-portrait is dead on!) but you're sure to recognize some of the amazing quilts she's quilted and if you're lucky you've got some of her fabric in your stash.

The meeting will be held Saturday, August 16th from 1-3 at the Franklin Mill Store. As always we'll have show and tell so don't forget to bring your latest finish, WiP, or anything else you'd like to share.  We LOVE to see what you've been up to:-)  Snacks and guests are always welcome!

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Quilts for Boston Quilt-In at Laurena's Longarm


Please join us Sunday, August 10th from 1:00-5:00 for a quilt-in at Laurena's Longarm to finish our remaining Quilts for Boston tops.  We have quite a stack ready to be quilted thanks to all your efforts at our May sew-in at Gather Here.  All are welcome, no experience necessary!  Please RSVP for this event to bostonmqg@gmail.com.

If you have a completed top that you don't plan to quilt yourself please contact alice@alidiza.com to make arrangements to return it by Thursday, August 7th.  We need to make sure we have backs and battings for all our quilts and we want to attach zippers to as many as possible so we can just keep loading them on the machines on Sunday.

We are also in need of bindings, a minimum of 350" cut at 2 1/2" wide.  Scrappy bindings are fine!

Laurena's Longarm Quilting is located at 264 Cambridge Street, Burlington MA.  The studio is on the lower level.

Friday, August 1, 2014

July Meeting: Show & Tell

Gretchen's fabulous Michael Miller MQG Fabric Challenge entry.

And Zuzka's amazing challenge entry.

Lia shared these lovely baby quilts she was working on at retreat.

Allyson brought her beautiful Metro Rings quilt from a class she took at Quilter's Way.

Ginger is finishing up her awesome stars quilt and is also working on this sweet brick quilt.

Judy shared this amazing spool quilt.  I adore the line of stitching down the side!

Stephanie showed her Michael Miller challenge and this beautiful block.

Roberta put together another wonderful Quilts for Boston quilt to help empty our box of blocks.

 Courtney showed off this incredible rainbow chevron made entirely from Kaffe crossweaves.

 Jeri created these marvelous jelly roll race quilts.

Maureen has been busy finishing her super cute Weekender bag and also a quilt using Jen's Enchanted Evergreens pattern plus another quilt of her own design.

 Karen has also been busy taking the same Metro Rings class as Allyson, completing her gorgeous Michael Miller challenge quilt, AND making this shadow box quilt for a friend.

Trish is finishing up this stunning scrap quilt for her daughter.  The pictures don't do it justice, the quilting is unbelievable!

Allison made this marvelous tote bag for her Michael Miller challenge entry and is just getting started on a Single Girl quilt.

Kaesmene shared this exquisite linen quilt she's hand quilting.

I don't know where Natalie finds the time to make so much awesomeness:-)

Aimee is finally finishing up this precious embroidery sampler she's been working on for quite some time.

Alexis awed us with here interpretation of traditional Irish Chain and 4 Patch quilts.

Alice embodied true prep with these Preppy the Whale quilts she made pattern testing for Elizabeth Hartman.
A HUGE thank you to our new home Fabric Place Basement for keeping us cool and comfortable while we talked quilting!!!