Each year, The Modern Quilt Guild selects a theme and a color palette, and issues a Challenge to its local guilds to create quilts for their charitable projects. These quilts are displayed at the MQG annual convention QuiltCon and then donated to charities by each guild.
We always try to tie our annual charity quilt to our local area; something that reflects or refers to Silicon Valley, where we live and work. Below are the SVMQG QuiltCon Charity Quilts…
QuiltCon Community Outreach Quilt – 2022
This year’s theme was “ANGLES”. After many discussions, we chose to work on something that grows in California, a slight change from our recent Silicon Valley-themed quilts. Member volunteers made citrus slice blocks in the citrus color palette provided by the MQG. The quilt is finished off with an off-grid layout.
QuiltCon Charity Quilt Challenge – 2021
In response to the 2021 theme, “CURVES,” the guild chose to create curve-based graphs or charts as quilt blocks. Members chose a data set to represent, reflecting our local area or state.
Each member chose data that they wanted to show in their block. Some of the data is about the people who live in Santa Clara County, the San Francisco Bay Area, or California. Other blocks cover a wide range of data, like the growth of our guild, the rise of vote-by-mail over a number of elections, damage caused by the recent wild-fires, homelessness, and California water use. We were so impressed with the variety of both the data represented and the method of representing it.
QuiltCon Charity Quilt Challenge – 2020
For the 2020 theme “TEXT,” the guild once again chose a design that is relevant to our Silicon Valley roots by writing a message in binary code, which represents text using a two-symbol system of “0s” and “1s” in sets of 8 numbers.
Members made numbers in the simple black & white palette, which were then pieced into code to write the message “Hello, World!” referring to the test message used by programmers to show understanding of a computer language or functionality of a computer. (For example, the “H” is coded as “01001000.”)
To make the message clear, “HELLO WORLD” was also written in the negative space of the quilting.
QuiltCon Charity Quilt Challenge – 2019
The guild’s 2019 QC Charity Quilt utilized the theme of “Small Piecing” in executing a quilt that represented a quilt-sized smart phone.
Each block in the quilt represented a common app that could be found on any of our phones, as interpreted by our members. These blocks were reverse appliquéd onto the background which was meant to appear like the wallpaper on a phone, sitting behind the app blocks. And, what better background could we have chosen for our phone than a quilt top?
We named our quilt “Home” as it represents both the home screen of a smartphone and the place where we live.
QuiltCon Charity Quilt Challenge – 2018
Our 2018 QC Charity Quilt Challenge quilt, Orchard Through Time, represents the theme of “Modern Traditionalism” by taking a traditional block and representing it through traditional prints, modern prints, and in free-form solids. We always consider our local area and so chose the “Orchard” block for our quilt as the Silicon Valley was once primarily orchards, and is now a modern technology center. You can read more about the detailed design process here.
The finished quilt transitions from traditional to modern, through fabric, tone, and movement within the overall quilt. Our members enjoyed seeing it hanging in Pasadena will all of the other MQG Charity Quilts celebrating this iconic modern quilting theme.
QuiltCon Charity Quilt Challenge – 2017
We were excited to participate again this year in the QuiltCon Member Charity Quilt Challenge. This year’s challenge inspiration prompt was “scale”. Along with a predetermined color palette, our guild set out to form a QuiltCon Charity Quilt committee whom would be responsible for conceptualizing, planning, designing, and making our charity quilt.
As in the past, our finished quilt hung at the QuiltCon East in Savannah, GA the last weekend in February. We are particularly proud of the message our quilt represented this year. You can read more about the significance of the design and message here.
For more information on the QuiltCon Member Charity Quilt Challenge visit the QuiltCon website here: http://www.quiltconeast.com/quilt-show/quiltcon-charity-quilt-challenge/
QuiltCon Member Charity Quilt Challenge – 2016
For the second year in a row, we participated in the QuiltCon Member Charity Quilt Challenge. This year’s challenge inspiration was “Improv with Intent” and another predetermined set of challenge colors. After the quilt was hung at this year’s 2016 QuiltCon Quilt Show it has come home to the Silicon Valley and donated as a contribution to Quilts for Kids. For more information on the QuiltCon Member Charity Quilt Challenge visit the QuiltCon website here: http://quiltconwest.com/get-involved/member-charity-challenge/