The guild kicked off 2018 with our monthly meeting last week. We welcomed many new members and said hello to the familiar faces that made 2017 such a great year.

This year, the guild will be focusing on “design” and education, working to grow our design skills through lectures, discussions, activities, and classes.

We started our discussion by watching excerpts from the MQG webinar “Modern Quilting: Know It When You See It” with Jacquie Gehring. In the webinar, Jacquie talks about the concept of modern quilting as a spectrum, including many elements of traditional and varying elements of new/modern design. She also shows and discusses this concept with regard to specific quilts.

Some of characteristics of modern quilting noted by The MQG are:

• Use of bold colors and prints
• High contrast and graphic areas of solid color
• Improvisational piecing
• Minimalism
• Expansive negative space
• Alternate grid work
• Updating of classic quilt designs

After the webinar, members placed themselves on this spectrum and we discussed our thoughts about the definition of modern quilting and how we saw ourselves within it. Many of us were surprised with where we placed ourselves on the spectrum.

We plan to have the spectrum at future meetings and to revisit this exercise at the end of the year to see if our self-placement has moved.

Next month, we will continue our design focus with a member-led lecture about basic design elements. We’ll be exploring these concepts further in future demos, activities, and challenges.