Wow! That was one long title! Last month, I hosted the inaugural meeting of the South Sound Modern Quilt Guild, currently meeting in Tumwater, WA at Ruby Street Quiltworks. At our first informational meeting we had over 50 people in attendance and at our second we had over 25 (great turn out for the second meeting). We decided as a guild that our first charity project would be to make quilts to donate to the Oklahoma City Modern Quilt Guild, who will be donating them to victims of the May tornadoes.
We had so many quilt blocks donated that we were able to make TWO quilts! I am so excited by this because our guild is so new that we haven’t even started collecting dues yet, that will be at our July meeting. To read about our second quilt, go check out Sew I’m Pressed – our lovely Vice President did the quilting on that one and let me tell you, she has some MAD free motion quilting skills!
This quilt was pieced by the wonderful Honnah, who is now our Fundraising Officer. She was so fast too! She got the blocks at our meeting on June 5th and had the top done on June 6th! I couldn’t believe it. Here is the top before quilting:
We had a last minute block arrive at our collection point and because we wanted to make sure every block was incorporated into the quilt, I did a pieced backing with the block as the focal point. I really love this backing.
With the exception of the center block, all the fabrics were found in my stash. I showed the top to the lovely Shanna from Fiber of All Sorts and Debbe from Pieces to Love and bounced ideas off them for the quilting. I am terrible at decisions like that! Shanna suggested using blue tape and doing straight line quilting at different angles on the quilt – it fit the back and front perfectly! Here’s a picture of the quilt all pinned and taped up. The cool thing was I was able to have it entirely quilted in just a couple hours.
When I finished quilting, I trimmed it and up and decided that I couldn’t let the cool backing go to waste, so I turned the backing to the front and it became my binding too! Let me know if you want a tutorial for how to do that, I will happily do that with my next quilt.
The quilting is easier to see on the back:
So there you have it! The first successful charity project for the South Sound Modern Quilt Guild. If you are local to the South Sound Washington area and are interested in joining, please head over to Facebook and join our online group – that is where we post all meeting information!
That turned out amazing! Great Job for a great cause!
It’s funny you ask because I was going to ask you if you could show us how to use the back to make the binding. Sounds like a genius idea to me. I was also going to ask you how you came up with the idea to do all the criss cross lines. It’s a very graphic look and I think it goes well with our guild quilt. Thank you again for all the hard work you, Honnah and the others did to get these quilts made.
What a great quilt! And I am with all those who want to know how to use a backing as a binding! Please post a tutorial for that! 🙂
Melissa, this question is going to reveal my quilt-it-at-home ignorance: after you taped the quilting lines across your quilt, did you then quilt across the tape? Otherwise, you would have laid out one line at a time, right?
Your quilt looks great! And way to use your stash for good.
It looks great. Congratulations on being a successful guild already! I guess it’s true, everything old becomes new again. For *years* I only bound by bring the back to the front! That’s just how everybody I knew did it. LOL
Nice quilting. I have the same question as Beth. And if you did quilt across the tape, was it difficult to get the tape bits out from under the thread?
Amazing quilt! They will love it. XXXXX
Glad to see that you have found a guild to join 🙂 Your quilt is striking and so modern,love the color combo. I always just use masking tape,might have to give the painters tape a try sometime.
What a great group quilt! It looks SO unified for a bee quilt, you all did a great job. Good on you for starting a guild! The one I am in started from scratch (it was definitely NOT me who did the work to get it off the ground) in Sept-October 2012 and it has been interesting to see one go from the beginning.
What a great project! Congrats on the success of starting the new guild
Oh I am so excited to see this!! This quilt is beautiful, front and back! I have very similar quilt blocks, all completed and I have yet to sash them together. I’ve been wondering how to quilt it. I’ve never done any type of free motion. Actually have never completed a quilt yet (I have two started). But I think I can straight line mine. I think I’m up to that! But like the others, do you sew right over the intersections of the tape? Also, did you drop the feed dogs or use a walking foot instead? Sorry for all the questions but as I said, I’m a newbie. And thank you for sharing 🙂
I love the colors — it really turned out nice!
You did a fabulous job completing this amazing quilt for OKC. I love the back you created and the binding too. Job well done, lady!
It looks great! The back is wonderful.
Love the quilt! That’s a lot of people for the 2nd meeting!
It looks great! Although I can never get that blinking blue tape off properly!