Our March guild meeting was all about color.

Featured Quilter

Helen Thomas was featured as our member quilter this month.  She has been quilting since 1990.  Among the many quilts she had to show us was this colorful sunflower fabric quilt that she hand-pieced and is in the process of hand-quilting.  She’s not sure she’ll finish quilting this.

The quilt laying on top of the sunflower quilt is one she made from her winnings at one of the MPS “Strip Poker” game nights.  Helen has also participated in many of the MPS Quilt Show Challenges and had several of those quilts to show us.  So interesting!

Now Helen mainly works on baby quilts that she donates to area hospitals.  She figures she makes about ten to twelve a year like the one shown here.  Somewhere out there are many fortunate babies that have received these blankets.

Raffle Quilt

Becky Swick and George Bahrman showed us the finished top.  Several sewists have been gathering at the Bahrman residence for the last few weekends to get the top sewn together.  We got to see it, but you don’t…not yet, anyway.  Believe me when I say that it’s a stunner!  They are currently talking to quilters in the area and deciding how to go about finishing the quilt.  Stay tuned.  As soon as they’re ready to show it off to the world, it will be shown here, too.

Quarterly Winnings

Marcia Sanderman was the lucky winner of the Spider Web block.  It was kismet that she won because she had not finished her block and had turned it in with a promise of completing it.

Did you know…..

• that there will be 22 quilters attending the Spring Retreat at Alton Collins this coming weekend of April 3-6?  Have fun, sewists, and may you accomplish at least half of what you have planned!
• that we now have a nominating committee formed who will soon begin the process of finding new officers and committee chairs to serve MPS for the upcoming year of 2014-2015?  Please consider whether or not you would be willing to serve the guild in some capacity.
• that the Vicky Arnold Memorial Program Fund actually made $2010 last month through the Silent Auction and donations?  WooHoo!!

Inspirations

This month’s theme was “Best of Color” and there were many beautiful things to admire…

Jan Shipman showed her “Sample This” quilt.  She participated in The Pine Needle’s (a quilt shop in Lake Oswego, OR) Block of the Month.  Such a beautiful sampler!

Wendy Miller had several quilts to show us.  She sews quilts for children in Rawanda.  She had heard of a grandmother who is caring for three grandchildren.  Wendy thought it was high time the grandmother was given a quilt, so she stitched this yellow and blue quilt for her.  Her brightly colored quilts will be given to children and the blue quilt is intended for a young man who is currently in boarding school in Rawanda.  What a great way to share one’s abilities!  Wendy likes to make table runners just for fun, and here’s her latest creation.

 

Betty Miller (no relation to Wendy) brought a wall-hanging and jacket for us to enjoy.  Her jacket is a beauty made from batiks and anyone would be proud to wear it.  The wall-hanging, called “China Cabinet”, was made for her kitchen and features material that matches her curtains.  Really charming!

Betsy Sayre showed us her third “Tessellated Hexagons” quilt.  This quilt features Kaffe Fassett fabrics in the hexagons and then Betsy added silks around them.  This quilt was gorgeous!

The Inspirations theme for April is Show-Off Borders.

Color Theory

Quail Hollow

Helene Knott

Helene Knott was our speaker for the evening and she presented a very informative talk about color and how it relates to quilting.   We were given a lesson in Color Theory that started with the basics and continued into the more complex usage of color.  She talked about “triad” colors, “split complimentary” colors, and “bent complimentary” colors.  She also talked about how colors relate to one another, how to find the absolute value of a color, and how to find it’s “subjective” value.  In fact, she talked at length about the value of “value”, and shared this quote with us: “Value does all the work and color gets all the glory”.  If you think about that for a minute, you find that it’s true.