Milwaukee-Madison Modern Quilt Guild Meeting 2

The second meeting (4/25/10) of the Milwaukee-Madison Modern Quilt Guild was at the Ben Franklin in Oconomowoc, and was a workday for us. It was nice to be able to sit with such a diverse group of women and work on our various projects. There's a good variety of skill levels and experience in this group.

A lot of things were discussed, from developing a logo for our branch of the Guild, to sharing our skills with each other, schoolhouse style, to developing a site away from the Ning network, which has hosted most of the sites for the different MQG branches across the county. Our problem with Ning is that it's simply not user friendly and pretty clunky, and now there's talk of Ning no longer being free. In my opinion, it's simply not worth the monetary investment for the very basic options offered.

I've volunteered to help develop a logo for the branch, along with Sandi. I just have to sit down and brainstorm some ideas. Ideally, the logo will have a couple of different iterations: black and white, or grayscale, for basic (i.e., cheaper) printing purposes, and a full color design for web display and nicer print projects. I can also foresee a need to have a 'shortened' logo - one using simply the initials of the guild name, as well as one that encompasses the full guild name. So, okay, more than a couple of iterations! Really, I'll end up with between six and eight working logos, developed based on potential need.

I'm not particularly wowed by the logo created for the Modern Quilt Guild as a whole... It's geared solely toward web display, and would be very print unfriendly in a gray-scale.  The challenge here will be to transmit the idea of this being a quilt guild in a visual format that renders down to something smaller than the size of a standard American business card, while still retaining the idea of 'modern'. I mean, we are talking about quilting here!

I didn't get much done, but I did get something done! I finished my tote bag... sort of. Getting home, I realized that I should have put the straps on differently, for easier carrying. Then, when I was photographing it tonight, I discovered that I'd sewn a pin into one of the straps. Ah, well. Lessons for another bag! Sometime this week, I'll fix those two small things. I also got the pieces cut for a basket block.

Speaking of the Basket Blocks, Sandi has gotten Block 11 done. Yay! But 'boo' as well, as I'm no further along than I was, which is Block 5. I'm woefully behind in making blocks, as well as posting them. My apologies, dear readers.

And for any of you that might go by the Ben Franklin in Oconomowoc and not pass through its doors, I urge you to stop and visit! The fabric section is just lovely, with quite a nice selection of quality fabrics of the bright and modern variety and a good variety of batiks. The management was kind enough to give us all 10% off coupons good for the day, which I used with shameless abandon.

Eclipse, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways! I am just totally in love with this fabric line, and bought quite a bit of it. That in itself is a statement, as I just don't normally buy whole fabric lines. I just can't get enough of this pure, mood-lifting yellow combined with black and gray. It's pretty without being too girly.

I also picked up a yard of Essentials II by StudioeFabrics. If you haven't taken a look at StudioeFabrics, go. Look. I'll wait.

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Nice stuff, right? Okay, better than nice, gorgeous! They're a 'newer' fabric manufacturer, only a few years old, if I remember correctly.  And it's totally a sign of how much a logo geek I can be that I adore that lower-case, red 'e'!



I also picked up Elegance by Rosemary Lavin for Windham fabrics. Pretty, and motivated entirely by my ongoing obsession with black and white fabrics. I don't know why, but I'm totally enraptured by black and white fabrics at the moment. The difficulty is in finding quilting cottons in these two 'colors' that are unique.

This coming Saturday is Sandi's Family and Friends monthly quilting day. I'm scheduled to bring the main dish, which I'm looking forward to, because I might try something new. If I'm on the ball Saturday morning, I'll actually remember my camera and get some photos.