The April Meeting will be focusing on the colour Blue.  Lyndsey will lead the workshop on Blue and how it interacts with other colours causing it to advance and recede.  
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Here is the supply list so you can prepare before the meeting.
LARGER PIECES OF FABRIC in the following colours: bright red, dark blue, medium bright blue, light blue, purple, black. These can be 10"- 12" or a fat 1/4. 
5" SQUARES in the following colours: bright red, bright purple, orange, 2 lilac purple, 2 light blue.
These fabrics will be for demonstration purposes and won't be glued or sewn.  

As well, bring an assortment of blue fabrics to continue piecing your blue Improv blocks.  

Here are a few links if you wanted to further read about Blue.

FACTOTUM OF ARTS

ANTS TO SUGAR

Dinkydoo Fabrics is an online Canadian shop that specializes in modern fabrics.  They are a big supporter of the MQG and individual guilds as well.   You can click on their logo link to go directly to their website.  Please welcome Dinkydoo Fabrics!

​What an informative meeting!  How often in our study of colour do we really think about neutrals? Thanks to Jan, we can now look beyond the traditional neutrals of white, black and grey.
 
She explained how the job of the background fabric is to compliment the prints and make them stand out, while still pulling the quilt together. And even though we may not be using a traditional grid layout, we are still using some form of sashing and borders to create the negative space. 

​We experimented with placing our chosen prints on white, black or grey, and then tried Bill Kerr's suggestions of "mud" and "teal". It was really interesting to see the effect of placing the prints on these backgrounds. We should now be able to experiment with other greyed down and tonal colours as neutrals.

Lyndsey's fabrics looked best on the Mud Neutral and Liz's looked best on Navy.

Here you can see two examples of Nancy's fabrics on both the Mud and Teal- which do you prefer?  And Debbie has her 1930's triangles on the Teal, Mud and Green.

​Our goal for the year is to do a block for each month's colour, so a neutral block is this month's challenge but that doesn't mean it can't include prints.
To motivate everyone to complete last month's green block Kristyn did an improv demo on making fabric slabs from scraps. Lots of great results by the end of the day.
 
The April meeting will be brought to you by the colour blue, so start getting your blue scraps together.

​And last but definitely not least, there were three very different but amazing quilts for show and tell. A colour study in HSTs by Lyndsey, a very linear combination of neutrals and colour by Joan and a lovely monochromatic appliqué by Joyce. 

​Here is the upcoming guild business that was discussed at the March Meeting:
 
We are doing our own Riley Blake Challenge with the strip of black and white fabric that was given out.  Use this piece of fabric in your mini quilt- with any other fabric you wish to use.  Please make a mini that is no larger than 24” x 24” and have it finished for the August meeting.  We will display them at the August meeting and vote on the Viewer’s Choice.  Those of you who have the full piece of challenge fabric are still welcome to participate in the official MQG Challenge.
 
Canada 150 Challenge- Guild members will make a mini quilt in the specified colours of fabrics and these quilts will be displayed around London in 2017.  More info to come.
 
The London MQG will have an information booth at the Quilt X show in September and at the London Friendship Quilt Show in October.
The Open Thread Bar workshop is half sold out- $65 for members and $75 for non-members.  This includes lunch and kit fees.

This Saturday Jan will be presenting a workshop on Neutrals.  Here is what you need to prepare ahead of time:
Please bring:

• At least 5, possibly up to 9 pieces of print fabric that you might put together. You will need 5 but having a few more will help with your selection. Don't include any solids; prints will work best for this exercise. Also it doesn't matter too much about print scale but we will be using pieces about 5" to 8" in size, so huge print scale will be more difficult.
• Your pieces of fabric can be any size but must be at least 5" square. They don't all have to be square, rectangles and triangles are also useful. Keep them relatively small or plan to cut pieces off during the exercise
• Two different pieces of neutral fabric, about the size of a Fat 1/4, and it should be either a solid or tone-on-tone. Include a white or cream and a second neutral.
• If you have a small cutting board and ruler, bring this along with a rotary cutter.
• Sewing machine and the usual supplies. 

This should be a very eye opening workshop as most of us think Neutrals are limited to white, cream, grey and black.

As well as the Neutrals workshop, if we have time we will be catching up on Improv Piecing.  So please bring your green scraps with you too.  All kinds of shades of green and any sized pieces.  We will learn Improv piecing of your blocks. 

Bring your sewing machine and sewing kit and if you can stay into the afternoon, please bring your lunch.

See you Saturday!
East Lions Artisans Centre
1731 Churchill Ave. London

Is it too early to count the sleeps?  Is it too early to start packing?
Of course not!
One month to go until the SWO MOD Retreat.  There are still 4 spots available so if you are interested, let us know!