Our April Challenge this year was to create a quilt using modern minimalism. Quilts had to be 12″ x 12″ or larger. Prizes were awarded for the following categories; best use minimalism, best modern design, and members’ choice.
The winners! 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.
Our popular November Challenge was to make a philanthropy quilt based on a children’s, tween, or young adult book. The quilts will be given to the Orangewood Foundation December 4th. Our members also donated and contributed: $440 in gift cards, 27 quilts in a bag with matching books (the Crazy Quilters Guild here made themed bags to match the OCMQG quilts so they were all like Gail’s), 3 sturdy backpacks, assorted toiletries and accessories, cuddly stuffed animals, empowering books for their library, and many, many earbuds!
The Orangewood Foundation and the children they service are very grateful for the OCMQG’s overwhelming response to their wish list. Thank you one and all for helping improve the lives of so many children in Orange County! And thanks to Ann Ainsworth for heading our philanthropy program.
Our “Artful August” Challenge was pushed back to September! Check out our winners below.
Kite Block Mini by Julie Mc.
We announced the challenge for the November Philanthropy Quilt at the July meeting. We received many samples of digitally printed fabric from Hawthorne Threads who kindly donated these to the guild. The challenge is to design a quilt using the digitally printed fabric as inspiration, and to also incorporate it into the quilt. We also handed out Hawthorne Threads’s social media info for members to tag them on social media.The rules for the challenge were:
-Create a quilt in a size between baby (30 x 40) up to a twin (70 x 90)
-The quilt must be complete: quilted, bound, and labelled
-Design should be inspired by a Hawthorne Threads Digitally Printed Fabric and should include the fabric in the quilt top.
-If you are sharing your progress on social media, please include #hawthornethreads and #ocmqg in your comments along with your photo.
We had 13 participants for this month’s challenge!! Our new philanthropy chairwoman, Ann A., has chosen Orangewood Foundation to receive the beautiful quilts that were made. The Orangewood Foundation provides a safe haven for the foster children of Orange County. They also have a program for emancipated minors to help them successfully achieve their independence. The larger quilts that were made will be donated to that endeavor in conjunction with the Ambassador’s program that provides the resources for this worthy cause. Thank you to all of our members who participated and thanks to Ann for working to get the quilts to this worthwhile charity.
Our winners received gift certificates to Hawthorne Threads. Winners were:
First place: Barbara Knapp
Second place: Susie Johnson
Third Place: Mary O’Bannon
If you haven’t done so, please post a pic of your finished quilt on Facebook or Instagram with the hashtag #ocmqg and #hawthornethreads.
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We had so many BEAUTIFUL entries for our July Challenge! Our winners were:
1st place: Sandy $75 gift card!
2nd place: Bunnie $50 gift card!
3rd place: Sandra J. $35 gift card!
Our prizes for this challenge were gift certificates from Superbuzzy.com in Ventura.
This was our second year of doing the storybook challenge: Choose a children’s book and make a quilt based on the book. Once again, our guild members have really pulled out the stops and created beautiful, thoughtful quilts for the Pediatric Cancer center. The quilts were made for children baby to 18 years old.
Our members made 14 quilts for this challenge, with an additional 3 made during our Christmas parties from prior years.
Here are the lovely quilts (the maker and book name are in the photo caption):
And the winners! Tied for first place: Lisha’s Nature’s Beauty coloring book and Susie’s Put Me in the Zoo. Third place: Karen’s Neverwhere.
Thank you to the guild members who donated these lovely quilts and books.
Challenge Winner
What a great turn out for our 18 x 18 mini quilt challenge! We had 11 entries.
Congratulations to our first place winner – Irene, our second place winner – Karen, and our third place winner – Dawn.
The OCMQG holds a challenge once a quarter for its members to show off their creativity and have some fun. See the Challenges Page for our current challenge and challenge details.
For the first quarter 2016, the challenge is about taking a traditional state star block or log cabin block and making it modern.
Take 30 seconds and think about / write down what “making it modern” means to you.
Below are images from Google Image searches on “California Star Quilt Blocks” and “Log Cabin Quilt Blocks” – which are showing mostly traditional ways of creating the blocks.
How can the modern aesthetic be brought to these blocks to create a modern quilt? Well, first – what the heck defines a quilt as “modern?” This question is hotly debated and is as controversial as “should you prewash your fabrics?”
Basically, modern quilting has no rules. The individual quilter decides what rules to follow or not follow. For example, in traditional quilting, there’s usually a standard sized block that is repeated in rows and columns, has one or more borders, and uses traditional fabrics.
What rules do you “break” or “bend” when translating traditional into modern?
One way to make the block modern is to use a solid “background” fabric to create negative space and to use modern patterned fabrics (right) or to use only solid fabrics (left).
Another way is to super size the block and show off one block or a part of the block. The quilt to the right is a traditional block called Ohio Star. The OCMQG member who made this blew up the block to the size of the quilt and used saturated solid fabrics.
These three example all use precise measuring and piecing, but move away from the traditional in the fabric choice and block size.
Other ways to make it modern:
Join the conversation – Tell us your favorite ways of making traditional patterns into your version of “modern.”
Follow our hash tags for this challenge on Instagram #ocmodernstar and #ocmodernlc
Quilts inspired by a children’s book. Donation includes quilt and book.
11 quilts donated!
Orange County Modern Quilt Guild 
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