April Meeting Highlights and New Meeting Space

Did you know that 8750 tons of textiles go into our local landfill every year? That's a lot of fabric! Our April program focused on upcycling fabric items for quilters. Upcycling means taking an an item that has fulfilled it's useful life and processing it to make something better than the original. Some reasons for doing this would be to keep unwanted items out of a landfill, to express creativity or to make a special memorial keepsake. 

To explore this topic further, we had four demonstration tables set up.

Marsha Conley showed us quick ways to deconstruct shirts to make usable pieces of fabric. Isn't her quilt made from men's striped shirts wonderful?

Roxanne O'Hare had all kinds of different clothing items including pants and linen dresses that she cut up and made into quilt blocks. After cutting up the various textiles, she sorts them into categories by weight so they work well together when she wants to use them.

 Suzanne Rose had many fun creations made from selvages! She showed several ways that selvages can be sewed together to make a made fabric.

Carolyn Garner talked about using t-shirts to make memory quilts. Here she is showing the interfacing she uses to prepare the t-shirt fabric.

We had a great time going around to each demo and learning useful information about upcycling from these ladies!

Our guild has grown rapidly in the last few months! We are now up to 50 members and are bursting at the seams in our current meeting location. We are so thankful to Derek Geise and the staff at the Bernina Sewing Studio for providing the space for us to have our meetings and for hosting our first modern guild quilt show. 

And so, as we have outgrown our original meeting space, we are pleased to announce our new meeting location. The board of directors has accepted a proposal from the International Quilt Study Center and Museum to hold our monthly meetings in their first floor seminar room from 5:30-7:30 on the last Tuesday of each month, beginning in May and continuing through October. This is very exciting for our guild and we are thrilled to be invited to meet in that space! 

May Program:

"Exercise In Design" 

Want to branch out and learn how to design your own modern quilt? Sheila Green, Kristie Jarchow and Jen Van Dyke will help us put the modern aesthetic into practice as we work in teams, creating designs using the quarter square triangle and it's four variations. All supplies will be provided. 

This exercise is an educational offering from Jean Larsen and Pam McCallie of the Chattanooga Modern Quilt Guild.

For more information on upcoming challenges, click on the meeting minutes tab above, links are there in the April minutes.

Visit our Facebook page for the April Show and Tell photos!

April Meeting & Spring Retreat Reminder

Don't forget about our upcoming meeting, Tuesday, April 26th from 5:30-7:00pm at the Bernina Sewing Studio located at 1265 S. Cotner Blvd. #27, Lincoln NE in the Piedmont Shopping Center. We'll be talking about upcycling for quilts, with four fun demonstrations.

Bring your quilts & projects utilizing upcycled/recycled materials for Show & Tell as well:) Hope to see everyone soon!
We have a few spots still available for our Spring Retreat, and would love to have them filled with some quilters ready to sew and have fun!  It will be at the Yellow Barne at 1445 W Burnham, Lincoln, NE the evening of Friday April 29th and all day Saturday, April 30th.  We will be doing a Round Robin for anyone who is interested, and working on personal projects.  A $5 per day donation is appreciated:)

The deadline to sign up is Sunday, April 24th, so email >>> info.lincolnmqg@gmail.com <<< asap!

April Sew Day with Shizuko Kuroha

With National Quilting Day, our regular monthly meeting and a sew day at the  IQSCM all within a few weeks time, the Lincoln Modern Quilt Guild has been a busy bunch! We have welcomed some new members into the guild which is very exciting for our growing modern quilt community. Saturday was our highest attended sew day yet!

The IQSCM is a beautiful space to be in and sometimes, we get even more lucky and are able to enjoy the wonderful programs going on at the museum. Our sew day happened to coincide with a visit from Japanese quilt artist, Shizuko Kuroha, who's collection of quilts, "Blue Echoes," is being featured at the museum, now through May 25th, 2016.

We were able to watch her demonstrate her sewing tools and techniques. 

She showed several different thimbles.

She and her friends showed how they baste a quilt. First, they basted the batting and backing together and then they added the quilt top and basted some more. They used spoons to help the process along!

Everyone gathered close to watch her stitch. We were surprised to find out that she doesn't knot her thread, instead she backstitches a little bit, tracing through the last stitches and then cuts the thread.

Kuroha is an expert on vintage Japanese indigo fabrics and is one of the people credited with popularizing quilting in Japan. She has been collecting antique indigo textiles for a lifetime and now makes reproductions of these fabrics. 

Her quilts have complex patterning and very small, intricate piecing. Look at this tiny block!

She designs her quilts by making a detailed drawing.

It was a very interesting demonstration! Wonder what she thinks about our carefree, anything goes, scrappy improv blocks?!

For more photos of what happened after the presentation, head over to Facebook and Instagram.