Styx - TMQG QuiltCon 2016 Charity Challenge Quilt

Each year as part of QuiltCon, the Modern Quilt Guild hosts a Member Charity Challenge, and my MQG, the Tasmanian Modern Quilt Guild decided to take up the challenge for the 2016 quilt show and collaborate to make a charity quilt. This challenge was open to any Modern Quilt Guild around the world who wanted to create a quilt using a restricted group of colours (primary colours paired with neutrals) and using improvisation with intent to create the quilt design.  

Our talented member and secretary (and very good friend of mine), Kat Jones, was inspired to design a quilt that would reflect a visual aspect of life in Tasmania.  Kat proposed the chosen concept based on the rear view of a logging truck, a familiar sight on Tasmanian Roads. Kat also volunteered to project manage the quilt construction. Without Kat's vision and direction this quilt would not have been born. Kat is honestly one of the most inspiring, innovative and original quilt makers I have ever met. She doesn't blog or have instagram, but you may recognise her name from the QuiltCon 2015 show - Kat took out 1st and 2nd place in the Bias Tape Challenge for her amazing quilts. The way Kat approaches quilt design is unlike anything I've encountered - I've included a few photos of part of her process in this post. 

So, back in September last year we held a guild sewing day where a group of our wonderful guild members spent the day making the logs under Kat's direction. We wanted this project to be a learning experience as well as a project to include all members. They learnt how to make bias binding and machine applique it into place.  Each person created 3 quarters of a circle, each with a number of rings to represent the log growth rings. They then improvised by slicing the quarter pieces into wedges and added alternate wedges of black background in order to form a full “log”.  To complete the block an oval of black was appliqued in the centre.

We thought improv was perfect for this project as the quilt concept is more effective if each and every block was unique, as no two "logs" are ever the same. Everyone had a fun day making the improv blocks and learning some new techniques along the way. The next challenge was working out how to piece them together; a jigsaw puzzle magnificently solved by the hand piecing talent of Shirley Jeffery (Member) and Kat Jones. Each and every block or partially completed block was included in the quilt layout.

Once Kat and Shirley had finished the monumental task of hand piecing the quilt top, Kat make the back, basted it and handed it over to me for machine quilting. I'm not going to lie - this was one of the most terrifying quilts I've ever quilted. It was an honor to be trusted to quilt it, but I was SO scared I would ruin it, and was also conscious of some very heavy time constraints (it needed to be done smack bang in the middle of what I talked about in this post) so I knew I couldn't do anything over the top complex. So it took me a little while to work out what I wanted to do with the quilting. 

When I'm planning how to quilt a quilt, I always try to choose FMQ designs that complement the quilt design or help tell the quilt's story. Since this quilt was (to me) about something I feel strongly about (logging of old growth forests) I decided to be a wee bit political with my quilting choices. Rather than continue the logs into the background (my initial thought for the quilting), I quilted wedges (aka saw blades) cutting through the logs. The centre of each log, and the areas between the wedges are concentric ovals, inspired by the concentric rings found in tree trunks. It isn't my most stellar quilting, but overall it really works - and since it's charcoal thread on black it really blends into the quilt anyway ;o). This is a glimpse of my ghetto sewing space and the quilt being wrangled in my machine - it's about 90" x 80" so there was a LOT of wrangling involved!

Once I'd finished quilting it, I handed it back to Kat so she could add some hand quilting detail in the logs. It is the perfect finishing touch, and makes me wish I had the patience to add hand quilting to some of my quilts!

To complete the concept a label was made by Jo Chandler (our Treasurer) and Kat to represent a number plate using bias binding and hand embroidery that you would see if following a log truck on our Tasmanian roads.

Our TMQG members were asked to suggest names for the quilt and the name "Styx" was settled upon as it references the old growth forest conservation area of the Styx Valley and Styx River in south west Tasmania. Our president Helen Stubbings has organized for our quilt to be auctioned at annual ball of Colony 47, a local Tasmanian charity,  to raise funds to support their work in providing housing to over 15000 children, young people and families every year.  

And this is the final, epic, amazing quilt. I really can't thank our members who participated in making this quilt enough (especially Kat, who put in countless hours of work to make this quilt possible). I am so proud that this example of our guild's work will be hanging in Pasadena at QuiltCon 2016 for the QuiltCon Charity Quilt Challenge

xx Jess

Craft and Quilt Fair Chaos

The last week has been one of the most exhausting and fulfilling weeks I've had for a long time. Earlier this year, the Tasmanian MQG was offered a booth at our Craft and Quilt Fair (which runs alongside our state quilt show, Island Quilts) - a chance we jumped at. We devised a Prism mini quilt challenge for our members to be displayed in our booth, thinking this would fill our booth space nicely. But! The booth we were offered gradually increased in size - and we found out with just a week to go that we had a huge 12m x 3m space to fill (double what we were originally offered!!). Panic ensued with the realisation that we would need a LOT more than our Prism quilts to fill the space - but thanks to some very creative thinking by one of our amazing members (Briony, left in the photo below) a plan was hatched to fill our booth with interesting, interactive and stimulating ideas to promote modern quilting in Tasmania. I am so proud of what we achieved, our booth looked amazing!! These three ladies (three of my best quilty friends) and myself were responsible for most of the panic sewing and organising involved in putting our booth together. Lots of our committee members helped set up and man the booth at the fair as well, so it was a real team effort.

Our raffle quilt was hanging at one end of the booth - the winner was drawn on Sunday and was absolutely thrilled (understandably, I was secretly hoping I'd win it!!)

Our Prism Challenge quilts created a rainbow of colour across half the booth and attracted a lot of positive feedback. It looked spectacular! 

The other end of the booth was divided into Rest (where we had colouring pages and seats available), and Play (where we had a design wall with lots of orphan blocks and HSTs for people to play with).

 I didn't manage to get a good photo in situ, but our TMQG banner debuted in our booth as well. Our logo was designed by Briony when we started the guild last September, and then one of our talented members, Belle (@ausbelle on Instagram) appliqued and stitched it into a fabric version. I panic-quilted it over a couple of days last week and hurriedly took a few (dodgy) photos before packing it up for the booth. It was terrifying to quilt Belle's beautiful work - but I think the simple FMQ straight lines with some ghost triangles (echoing those in our logo) works quite well.

Aside from the excitement of spreading the word of modern quilting in Tassie, it has been a phenomenal weekend in terms of meeting and talking to some seriously amazing women. On Friday night, I did my first trunk show at a Bernina event and it was a great experience. I was (more than) slightly terrified, but it went really well and the feedback I got was fantastic. It just goes to show that even if you're terrified inside, you can come across as a confident speaker (even if you forget half of what you wanted to say ;o) ). I spent most of Saturday and Sunday talking quilts with some incredibly inspiration women, and I'm still digesting most of it but I might be back with some of my thoughts at a later stage.

I hope you all had a great weekend, and I'll hopefully be back later this week with some quilty progress!

xx Jess

Tasmanian Modern Quilt Guild!

For the past month or so, a group of wonderful ladies and myself have been working behind the scenes on something I've been dreaming of for a few years - a Tasmanian chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild. As much as I love the online quilting community, I have been craving a group where we could meet face to face, share our quilts and ideas and build friendships. The online quilting community will always be a huge part of my quilting life, but it just isn't the same as a local quilt guild. When I started teaching (and now working!!) at Frangipani Fabrics earlier this year, one of the most common topics of discussion that came up was our shared desire for a modern quilt group in Tasmania. 

It was just an oftthought idea up until a few months ago when I entered my local quilt show, in which the choice of categories was Traditional or Non-Traditional. I actually entered four quilts (those scattered through this post), two of which I nominated for the Non-Traditional category (more because of how I'd quilted them than the design), but the convener chose (with my agreement) to change the category of all four to Traditional, because they were all block based quilts set in a traditional way. Now I personally don't consider myself a traditional quilter - yes I do use traditional blocks in a traditional setting most of the time. But I don't consider my fabric choices, or quilting style to be traditional at all. I understood why they were placed in the Traditional category (because they didn't fit the criteria of Non-Traditional) but I don't believe they are really traditional quilts.

I've been struggling with whether or not to write about this on my blog, but it is kind of catalytic in why we are forming a local MQG. So I'm putting on my big girl pants and talking about it. First up, I do want to be honest - I didn't enter the show expecting to win prizes. None of the quilts I entered where made to be 'show' quilts, and had various flaws - the main one being that I never tie off my quilting threads, I just do a few stitches on the same spot and snip my threads (terrible, I know ;o) ). I entered to support our local quilt show and to see my quilts hanging in a real show (which was very exciting, especially when you hear people talking about your quilts. Not that I stalked them, promise :o) ). I didn't win any prizes, and this is the part I've been struggling with whether or not to share - I was quietly told that one of my quilts was considered prize worthy, but that because I'd left some sections un-quilted, it wasn't able to win a prize. Obviously I'm a bit disappointed about this, but also thrilled that my skills are good enough to almost win a prize. And it isn't going to make me change how I quilt my quilts - I more often than not leave areas of my quilts un-quilted as a deliberate design element. Unfortunately that is all the feedback I got - they don't give out the judges comment sheets for our local show, which is disappointing as that was another reason I wanted to enter. I'd like to hear feedback on where I can improve my quilts from a judges point of view.

Probably the best thing that came out of my quilts hanging in the show was that it has kindled a lot of interest in forming a local modern quilt guild, and possibly having a modern category in our quilt show next year. I met recently with a group of wonderful local quilters to discuss starting the Tasmanian MQG, and things have started moving really quickly. Thankfully we have had the most amazing support and interest, from both the Tasmanian Quilt Guild and from local quilters. I am beyond excited that my little dream of a local MQG has actually become reality :oD

If you do live in Tasmania, we are holding our first meeting next Wednesday (3rd September). We have a Facebook page if you'd like to keep up to date with events, meetings, workshops and sewing days - and all the details of the first meeting are available there. I'm starting to put together a blog as well, so I'll share all the information about that soon :o) 

xx Jess