I have a few guild related projects that I want to share with you. For those of you of are new around here, lets first start by mentioning that I’m member of the Montreal MQG. It is great to be part of a group of enthusiastic people sharing a common passion for quilting. I think most of you who are member of a guild will agree with me. I co-founded the Montreal branch of the Modern Quilt Guild with my friend Cinzia from Deux Petites Souris (our current president).

It’s been a while since I’ve shown guild projects on the blog. I thought I would show you a few done in the past months and also for our upcoming meeting next week.

First, this year we have decided to make a quilt banner to represent our guild. We started by gathering some inspiration (see Pinterest board). I really like the Portland MQG banner and the guild decided to make something along those line. That is to have a section of the banner for our logo and blocks from our members around it. I proposed a few layout to our executive members and we agreed on this one. The grey squares represent the member’s block.

All blocks had to be in the colors of the logo. Members were invited to use fabrics from their stash in coordinating colors. Here are the two blocks I made.

At our February sew-in, we worked on the logo section of the banner. It was great team work. I invite you to read Cinzia’s post to know a bit more about it. At our March meeting, we gathered our member’s block. Here is what we had at that point.

The bottom row are signature blocks that will be on the back of the banner. We took this idea from here. Agnes went back home with blocks for the front and the pieced logo to assemble the top. I went back home with the signature blocks to piece the backing. Here it is ready for next week. I can’t wait to see the front!

Next project was a thread catcher I made for a swap at our March meeting. This is something I wanted to make for my-self for a while. So I was quite happy with the swap choice. It was a great opportunity to finally tackle this project. And it was fun to come home with a special one from someone else. I really love the one I picked. This is the one I made. The cushion was inspired by those bookends.

For the actual thread catcher, I applied fusible fleece to a yarn-dyed Essex linen blend fabric for the outside and did some free-motion quilting on it. For the lining, I used some ticking fabric.

Yesterday, I prepared a block for our next meeting. We will be doing a block lottery. So, much fun! Isabelle chose the Dancing Queen block by Elizabeth Hartman from Oh Fransson! Great choice for a block lottery or bee quilts. It was calling for a grey border. I went with my favorite color for the main color: green! I really love this combination. The grey makes the green look more saturated, like green grass on a rainy day.

Finally, I recently received the fabrics from Michael Miller for the next fabric challenge organized by the MQG. Yesterdy, I cut the fabrics and prepared fat-eight bundles to distribute next week to our participating members.

I can’t wait to see what people will do with those fabrics. I’ve started thinking about it my-self. I would like to explore texture quilts. I really like the portholes by Lucie Summers and the windmill cathedral window block. I just realized that Lucie Summers wrote a tutorial for her porthole technique. So, no more reason not to try it out. I’ll probably do only a pillow for the challenge.

Those guild projects keep me busy, but I love them. They are a great way to connect and share with other members of the guild. What about you, are you part of a guild? What activities do you prefer?