The Modern Quilt Guild announced its 2021 Community Outreach Quilt Challenge! This is one of the MQG’s largest scale charity projects, formerly known as the QuiltCon Charity Quilt Challenge. It’s an opportunity for guilds or teams of MQG members to create a quilt to be donated to a charity.
Theme: Curves
The design focus for this challenge is on curved piecing.
Create a quilt themed around a book. Bring both your quilt and book to the November meeting. The quilts and books will be donated to The Orangewood Foundation.
THE ENTRIES
OUR WINNERS
Congrats to our winners, Julie M for Members Choice, Barbara K for the Best Modern Design and Jeri P for Best Use of Book Theme!
Throughout 2018 OCMQG made multiple quilts and quilt tops for the Ventura Modern Quilt Guild’s Thomas Fire Project.
2019 Quilt Con Charity Quilt
We started on our 2019 Quilt Con Charity Quilt, using the selected color range and minature piecing.
Annual Book Challenge
Our November Challenge was our third annual Book Challenge. All of the quilts were based on books and will be donated with the books they are based on to the Orangewood Foundation.
Our holiday party was held at Julie’s home. Attendees worked together to make two beautiful quilts which will be donated to Orangewood Foundation. This event was a potluck and everyone brought a dish to share. We also had a fat quarter Yankee Swap where people brought 5 coordinating fat quarters in modern fabrics. There were lots of steals and surprises! Our annual holiday party is a great way to get to know each other better and celebrate the joy of the season.
Our last meeting of the year! Thank you to this year’s officers and chairwomen who contributed their time and dedication to OCMQG!
2018 OCMQG Officers and Chairwomen!
Storybook Challenge
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.
The Challenge Quilts
This Year’s Inspiring Books
Block Lotto Challenge
We also had a challenge to our previous Block Lotto winners to bring in a finished quilt using their Block Lotto blocks. Here are the quilts that were brought with some being contributed to the Storybook Challenge!
Once again, OC Modern Quilt Guild is participating in the Modern Quilt Guild’s charity quilt challenge to be showcased at QuiltCon 2019 in Nashville, TN. Color palette and small piecing theme of the challenge are described in more detail here.
PHASE 1. We met at the Batty Lady in Orange to work on this year’s QuiltCon Charity Quilt. Once we had our design concept of trees, our members got kits to sew and turn in. Each kit made into a block of small piecing in all the challenge fabric colors except blue. Now the magic begins. PHASE 2. We originally envisioned drawing an outline of the trees and fitting the blocks into the composition. We struggled with how to fit in all the different sizes, shapes, and colors of blocks into cohesive trees. After much discussion we quickly adapted our design approach to ‘build trees’ from the blocks first, then create the composition. It continued to evolve through many, many changes as you can see from the progression of photos below.
Plans went from straight trees to curved-pieced trees, from 3 trees, to an addition of a stubby tree with a broken branch. The next day the plan changed again. Now five trees, do we have one going off the left side? Or not? How many branches should we have? Could some go down rather than all going up? Everyone had their input and it was a sight to see this beautiful quilt take shape.
Thanks to our great volunteers who put the quilt top together: Trudy, Helene, Julie and Mary Anne both days and Susie and Gail on Sunday.
A huge thank you to Alicia Campbell of Batty Lady who generously allowed us use of her studio space for several days. Kudos to all the Guild members who contributed to this project!
PHASE 3: Great brainstorming session at the last Guild meeting. We generated lots of creative ideas on quilting design and use of embellishments.
Our 2017 Holiday Party was a hit! Julie hosted the party at her home and members brought potluck dishes to share. Each year at the holiday party, we take time to sew a quilt together which will be donated to charity. We also had a Yankee Swap of 5 fat quarters with a theme of modern, quilting weight fabrics that coordinate together. Our holiday parties are always fun opportunities to get to know fellow guild members better while celebrating the joy of the season. Here are pics from this year’s amazing party!
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.
It’s that time of year again – planning and piecing our entry for the QuiltCon Charity Quilt Challenge – 2017. Susan Manson is our fearless leader for this project (thank you, Susan!).
We’d like the quilt to go to an Orange County female veteran – Please contact Susan if you know a woman who is an US Veteran and is from the area.
Google Image Search on Modern Word Quilt
The challenge is playing with scale. We’ll be doing a word quilt in Kona Silver, Kona Yarrow, and Kona Ultra Marine. Our members voted and this is the quote that will be pieced into the quilt:
Be bold. Be brave. Listen to your heart.
Live the life you’ve always imagined.
– Thoreau
Google Search on Word Quilt
Important Dates:
July 10, Monthly Sew: If you’ve signed up to make a word and haven’t started, why not come to the sew to work on it and see what others are doing?
July 28, Guild Meeting: Finished Words are due. Completed words can be turned in any time before this meeting.
August 14, Monthly Sew: Quilt Assembly begins. If you were not able to make a block, but would like to help with assembly, please join us!
Making words:
Volunteers signed up to take specific words in the quote at the May meeting. If you want to be an Angel (someone who can make a word if one of the volunteers cannot), please let Susan know. Because life happens (quilting injuries, family is always fun, work gets in the way) and someone may not be able to make their word.
Needle in a Fabric Stash pull of blenders to work with our colors
Our colors are Kona Yarrow, Silver and Ultramarine. Only closely coordinating solids are permitted.
Letters in the word(s) can be pieced or appliquéd. Thread play is welcome, but please no embellishments such as beads, since the quilt will be long arm quilted. Words can be between 3” to 24” long. Please use your judgement on height, keeping in mind that the quilt is a twin.
Words can use any 2 colors or any 3 colors. Matching fabrics may be used as long as they read as a solid of Silver, Yarrow, or Ultra Marine. Mix it up! There’s no guideline on which of the three color(s) should be the background or make up the letter.
Designed and pieced by Kathy Schwager, OCMQG Member
Please save your scraps (solids and coordinating fabrics) and bring to the August sew. We may want to make “filler blocks” using the same fabrics used to make the words.
Share your progress on Facebook / Instagram: hashtags: #ocmqg #quiltconcharity2017
HAPPY SEWING!
PS: Life happens!If you find you are unable to complete your word, please contact Susan as soon as possible so we can get fabrics to another member to make the block.
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):
Bunnie: Bear Story
Trudy: The Quiltmaker’s Gift
Lisha: Nature’s Beauty Coloring Book
Karen: Neverwhere
Sandy: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
Gail: Put Me in the Zoo
Diane: Trucks
Maryanne: The Little Pea
Janet: Avengers
Janet: Guess How Much I Love You
Susie: Put Me in the Zoo
Mary: Harold and the Purple Crayon
Karen: Ada Twist, Scientist
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.
Lisha: Nature’s Beauty Coloring Book
Susie: Put Me in the Zoo
Karen: Neverwhere
Thank you to the guild members who donated these lovely quilts and books.
PHASE 2. We originally envisioned drawing an outline of the trees and fitting the blocks into the composition. We struggled with how to fit in all the different sizes, shapes, and colors of blocks into cohesive trees. After much discussion we quickly adapted our design approach to ‘build trees’ from the blocks first, then create the composition. It continued to evolve through many, many changes as you can see from the progression of photos below.
Orange County Modern Quilt Guild 
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