We’re incredibly proud to present our 2017 QuiltCon Charity Quilt which hung at QuiltCon East quilt show in Savannah, Georgia the last week in February.

Here’s two of our member’s who attended QuiltCon showing off our lovely quilt!

Our team had a lot of ideas for incorporating the theme of “scale” in our quilt. We quickly decided to use scale to represent a data set. We also knew that we wanted to do something that represented the high-tech industry that dominates the area where our guild is located.

Being a group of women in Silicon Valley, we discussed multiple topics around women in the high-tech industry, from representation in industry leadership and management to pay disparity. Ultimately we chose to represent the disparity of women vs men in technical roles at major Silicon Valley companies.

We were excited to incorporate a theme that reflects our concerns as women, our environment as members of the Silicon Valley community, and our passion as quilters.

A group of us met to discuss the theme and how to implement it into blocks that could be worked on individually and then assembled into a finished quilt. We chose colors from the selection provided by MQG, and decided on 10” blocks because the math for color percentage would be simpler. We distributed fabric bundles and the following rules rules for the individual quilt blocks:

• 10” finished square
• Use only right angles (rectilinear); No curved or angled piecing
• Use of color groups in the specified ratios (can be applied across multiple blocks):
  • 84%: Green, Blue, and/or Dark Blue fabric
  • 16%: Gray, Pink, and/or Yellow fabric (16 sq. inches)

Around a dozen members volunteered to make blocks, and we collected more than the 63 needed for our design. A smaller group gathered for a sew day to lay out and assemble the finished quilt top; we decided to place pieces with larger color blocks at the top and blocks with smaller pieces at the bottom, creating a feeling of weight at the bottom of the quilt. We handed off to a member for quilting and to another member for binding and attaching the label and sleeve. It was a true team effort.

Our theme is represented through the use of lighter value fabrics (yellow, pink, gray) representing the percentage of technical roles occupied by women (16% of the overall quilt top) and the darker value fabrics (blue, green, navy) representing the percentage of technical roles occupied by men (84%).*

We believe the quilt illustrates the imbalance in the percentage of women vs men in these key roles in this industry.

[SVMQG would like to thank Fat Quarter Shop and Hart’s Fabrics for providing discounted fabric for this project.]

*Data source: CNET “Women in tech: The numbers don’t add up”, May 2015

Want to know more about the challenge put on by the MQG? Check out the original challenge information here: http://www.quiltconeast.com/quilt-show/quiltcon-charity-quilt-challenge/