2022 BoardAfter two years of fearless leadership during which Sue Brown steered us through the infinite pivots of pandemic life, we have a lot of new faces on the 2022 board!
Thank you to our outgoing 2021 board: President: Sue Brown VP of Communications: Taz Urnek VP of Events: Jane Baird VP of Charity: Sarah Colby Secretary: Abigail McMurray Treasurer: Rebecca Shawgo And welcome to our incoming 2022 board: Guild President: Stephanie Cave Vice President of Communications: Charlotte Howard Vice President of Events: Felicity Lufkin Secretary: Abigail McMurray Treasurer: Rebecca Shawgo Looking forward to starting off the year strong with our first meeting, and first guest speaker of the year (Carol Lyles Shaw) on Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 3pm Eastern time. Members will get a Zoom link for the meeting by email - keep an eye on your inbox! No introduction is really needed for longtime and active, guild member, Jordan. Nevertheless, it is fun to learn more. I'll think of him the next time I find myself quilting on a Monday night. Thanks Jordan for agreeing to talk about you! Why do you quilt? I love spending time with bright colors. I love the variety of the different steps in the process. I love the end result (a blanket! for keeping warm or giving as a gift!.) How/When did you start quilting? Before joining the guild, I’d made one quilt, which took about a year. (Maritza taught me how to quilt and bind it in a class at the old gather here location!) I heard about the guild starting up and thought, why not check it out? Every month the show and tells are so amazing -- they’ve encouraged me to continue learning and making. About a year ago I decided to upgrade my sewing machine, which was a wonderful way to acknowledge to myself that quilting is something I love and want to spend more time with. Since then, I’ve been devoting more time to it. What skill are you itching to master? I’ve become curious about improv quilting. My design process feels rigid -- I want to spend less energy worrying about it. I’ve been reading the book “Inspiring Improv” and hope that improv will lead me to some interesting places. What sewing skill are you most proud of? I’m proud of this bit of long arming that I did: Tell us about the quilt that means the most to you and why. This doesn’t have to be one that you made. And we’d love to see a picture! I inherited this quilt that my grandmother made. She made much more beautiful and intricate quilts -- this is just the one that family members assumed a boy would want. But, I love it anyway. It’s full of texture (corduroy, velvet), is hand tied, and has wool batting. It’s the perfect size for reading under. From designing and picking fabrics to watching a recipient’s face when they see your quilt for the first time, what is your favorite part of the whole process? I love it when, after sewing and pressing a seam, you flip it over and look at the fabrics joined together for the first time. They look so much better than when you were holding them together a few minutes before. It’s magical. Do you sew for a living? Nope. Let’s get personal! Rapid fire: What quilt camp do you belong to?
What’s your favorite podcast/music/audiobook genre to listen to when you quilt?
I like to begin the work week by sewing on Monday night while listening to the BSO broadcast on the radio. Does anyone hang out with you while you quilt? Every once in a while my husband will read or work in the room with me while I quilt. It’s cozy! What is your favorite quilting tool at the moment? My sewing machine! ❤️❤️❤️ Do you have a tip or strategy to share with your quilting friends? (ex. Accurate cutting or piecing; managing stash; managing scraps; organizing quilt space; finding quilt time) I’ve started spinning my seams -- it helps the points in 4 and 9 patch blocks look really good. What kind of other crafts are you into besides quilting? Sewing shirts. Gardening. Cooking. Baking. Is reading a craft? I used to knit a lot but haven’t been lately. Where’s your favorite spot to eat in Cambridge? It’s not fine dining, but I like Wrapro on Mass Ave (“Don’t Feel Awful, Get a Falafel”) followed by dessert at Berry Line next door. Also, Elmendorf Baking Supply in East Cambridge is amazing. If you could take a “quilt” pilgrimage to anywhere in the world to meet anyone or see any quilts, where would you go and who or what would you see? I’m interested in the tile and textile patterns in North Africa or the Middle East. I’d love to see more in person! Do you have any favorite blogs/insta accounts we should know about? And where can we find you on the internet? Although I don’t post enough, my instagram is @jambyjamby. Introducing Laura, who joined our group this year. She has jumped into our guild with two feet here to help us bring back "Meet your (quilt) maker" after a little hiatus. Thanks Laura for sharing so thoughtfully here! How/When did you start quilting? The summer after I graduated college I was unemployed, bored and broke. So I went out and bought a cheap Brother sewing machine at Walmart. One of the first things I made was a t-shirt quilt from all the free t-shirts that had collected over the years. It wasn’t great but I was pretty proud of it! Then I made a couple of baby quilts for my niece and nephew and was getting a lot better and then couldn’t stop! What skill are you itching to master? I feel like I use quilting to satisfy that super detail oriented, precise, perfectionist side of myself. Like planning out a quilt in excruciating detail. So I’m really curious about the flip side of that. When I see those beautiful improv style quilts, it makes me want to try that out and approach quilting from the other side of my brain. Tell us about the quilt that means the most to you and why. This doesn’t have to be one that you made. And we’d love to see a picture! I guess quilting is a little in the blood. My grandma and great grandma were quilters, making things out of old cut up clothes especially. My grandma makes a quilt for every new baby, HS graduation, and wedding, which is impressive considering how many kids and grandkids there are is AND that she was running a farm on top of that. (Hand quilted too! Lordy) But I’ve had the pink and green tulip quilt with me since I was 18 and keep it on my bed! J Other than that one, I think I’m most proud of the quilt I made for a couple of my friends’ wedding. I just had so much fun designing it, and it was the biggest quilt I had made. I nailed the color scheme to fit their style too! My idea was to have this big graphic looking design with bold shapes. But then to have the words “Alice Nikolai 2017” slowly come forward. Working in that large scale definitely helped. From designing and picking fabrics to watching a recipient’s face when they see your quilt for the first time, what is your favorite part of the whole process? Getting to see someone’s reaction to a quilt I’ve made them is pretty special. Like I had a quilt for a friend last year, and my other friend and I had a lot of fun imitating what we thought her reaction would be to it, and we were spot on! But other than that, it’s really the design process that I love the most. I have a backlog of ideas of quilts to make, but there’s just not enough time! I like to sketch on graph paper and then once I have an ok idea, I’ll translate that into Illustrator to fine tune it and play around with color schemes and scale. What do you do get over a hump when you get stuck on a quilt? I switch a lot between sewing quilts and sewing clothes. They’re just different enough I usually have one project of each going on at the same time. When I get tired of working on one, I’ll switch over to give my brain some space for a little bit. I’ve realized that when I get really frustrated with a project and nothing’s going right, it’s usually because I got carried away and forgot to eat or something! Maybe I should start keeping snacks by my sewing table… Let’s get personal! Rapid fire: What quilt camp do you belong to?
What’s your favorite podcast/music/audiobook genre to listen to when you quilt? I’ve gotten really into the Love to Sew podcast to get me in the sewing mood, but it’s pretty much just about clothes sewing. I’ll binge just about any podcast series though, especially anything about investigating cults! Otherwise my tried and true is putting on old 30 Rock episodes. Does anyone hang out with you while you quilt? Absolutely not! LOL! My BFF/ roommate has an intense hobby of making incredibly beautiful and delicious cakes. Like she’ll spend all weekend building a 2-tier wedding cake in our kitchen while I’m quilting in my bedroom. We both know to stay out of each other’s way when we’re concentrating! We call it the dueling artisans! What is your favorite quilting tool at the moment? Maybe controversial, but Elmer’s Glue!? Is that cheating? After I saw something online about using it to get the curves and fiddly bits to stay in place, it was a total game changer. Also I upgraded my sewing machine last year, and got one with a knee lift. At first I was like, yeah right, like I’ll ever use that! But holy cow, I don’t know how I went so long without one! Do you have a tip or strategy to share with your quilting friends?
I try so hard to keep my stash in check, just because I don’t have a ton of space to keep it in my apartment. I sew in my bedroom, and I doubt my roommates want my fabric overflow taking over the rest of our place. I’m working on practicing mindfulness with consumption all around. I just read Overdressed by Elizabeth L. Cline, which focuses mostly on fast fashion production, but touches on the economic and environmental impact of the textile industry in general. It really reinforces that idea to only use what I have and reuse textiles as much as possible. Does crushing environmental guilt count as a fun tip for stash management??? What kind of other crafts are you into besides quilting? Definitely way into sewing clothes. I’m obsessing right now with pattern drafting and how to do alterations. I just finished making my first pair of jeans! Where’s your favorite spot to eat in Cambridge? Hmmm maybe Gourmet Dumpling House? I just love those soup dumplings! Anything else you want us to know about you? I’m so excited to be a part of this quilting community and getting to see all the creativity everyone brings to the group! I’ve just been sewing on my own for so many years, it’s really exciting to get to share ideas and enthusiasm! |
Guild HappeningsMeeting summaries, member profiles, challenge details, quilt inspiration, etc.! Archives
January 2022
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