February Meeting Minutes

Call to Order   

Our February meeting was called to order at 6:34 by our President, Stephanie Schroer.   

Committee Reports    

Membership: 45 members present with 7 guests and 4 new members

Treasurer: We started with $9439.59; Expenses were $4491 (Sunset Retreat $3635, National Dues $850, Stitched with Love Birthday FQ $6); Deposits $930 (Dues & Retreat payments); Ended with $5878.59.

Secretary: January minutes are published to the blog.   

VP of Communications: Photographs will be taken throughout the meeting - let us know if you can’t have your show & tell posted online. Please wear your name tags so we can tag you!

Events - Community Service, Challenges, Swaps, Retreats, and Bees

- Sunday Sit & Sew - New for this spring, we will have sew-days at Not Your Mama's Quilt Store!  Alice will create a Google Form that will be sent via e-mail to sign up online.  This will be a living document so you can both sign up and last minute cancel/squeeze in!  

- Riley Blake Challenge 2017 - If you didn’t get the free fabric you can still participate.  JoEllen, Lisa, Kelleigh & Ellyn all signed up and their fabric was distributed.  

- Modern Mystery BOM Challenge: We are at the end of our Modern Mystery Block of the Month challenge, created by Alice & Catherine Dutton.  Our goal as a modern guild is to create together and continue to learn more about modern quilting techniques -- this should have helped expand your arsenal of quilting skills and modern theory!  Continue to work on your settings and finishes! Tag your creations on social media with #modernmysterybom and #mckmqg.

- Community Service: Our QuiltCon charity quilt challenge team includes Dusty, Kelleigh, Alice, Martha, Paula, & Stephanie.  The quilt is DONE!!! A crepe myrtle, the tree of McKinney, is the inspiration.  The theme for this year was scale and the colors were pre-chosen - you can see challenge details here.  BettePat Miller Graves long arm quilted this and Christina Lee bound it.  The label was sewn on at our meeting!  Our quilt will be shipped to Austin tomorrow morning.

Program

- Jessica Darling is a pattern designer with Villa Rosa and owns a quilt shop, Darling Rose Quilt Shop, in Corpus Christi.  She blogs at JessicaKDarling.com.  She told us the story of her journey into quilting (learning how to longarm before she learned how to drive) then discussed the start of Villa Rosa Design company.  The company launched during the recession to offer simple patterns at great value printed on postcards & they took off.  She displayed a trunk show and talked about the inspiration and evolution of design of her patterns.  

- At the end she challenged us to create 18” quilt blocks and while creating them, think about doing something with great love.  If you want to send Jessica the 18” heart block, then e-mail jessica at villarosadesigns dot com.  Track the journey of your heart blocks with #leaveapennytakeapenny

Events (continued)

- Pillows were swapped!!  Last month 8 of us swapped scraps and partners made a pillow!  

- Modern Fat Quarter Challenge: Swap modern FQ’s tonight and draw for an element of modern quilting to showcase in a handmade item.  Modern elements we’ll see are  High Contrast & Graphic Areas of Solid Color, Improvisational Piecing, Minimalism, Negative Space, Alternate Gridwork.  This item will be yours to keep!  Add whatever other fabrics you want to this handmade object.  Bring back your completions at the next guild meeting (March).

- Bee keeping: MCKMQG 2017 Bee Season has begun.  Christina Lee is our new QHBIC (Queen Head Bee in Charge) and Alice gave us an update tonight.  If you signed up for the social bee, assignments will go out tonight (2/7/17).  For the other bees (low key bee/extreme bee) contact Christina (you can email mckinneymqg at gmail dot com).  

End of Meeting Fun  

Show & Tell was held.  

5 birthday certificates were handed out.  

Door prizes were drawn -  2 prizes won!  

Stitched with Love revealed this month's discount (14% off precuts!).     

Next Meeting

Join us for our next meeting!  March 7 @ 6:30, 6:00 social hour.