Submitted by Paula M., Secretary

The November meeting was called to order by president, Lisa B. at 6 PM.  The meeting was held in Christ Lutheran Church in Normal and via Zoom, with 61 members and 2 guests present.  The next 3 meetings will be available only by Zoom.

Refreshments were provided by Maria C., Kathy C., and Barb B.

Yvonne Fuchs, coming via Zoom from Hawaii, was our presenter.  She focused on transparency quilts and how to choose colors and fabrics for a transparency quilt.  She showed many transparency quilt examples and talked about how she did better on some color combinations than on others. She uses each quilt as an opportunity to learn something – it could be about color or a sewing technique. To check value in her fabric choices, she takes photos with her phone and then turns them into grayscale to check contrast, to ensure that her values will contrast enough, but will not be too similar.

Yvonne also uses online tools from the play-crafts website, including the Palette Builder. Palette Builder allows you to upload a photo – could be of a fabric patterned fabric or any photo you took that you enjoy. The tool automatically pulls the main colors of the photo and they can be matched to solid fabric lines (Kona or Moda), Aurifil thread colors or hex values (useful for web page design). This tool also allows you to choose which spots on the photo are used to create the palette. It is a very fun tool.

The sew day we had on November 6^th was great and many strip sets were sewn, pressed and cut into blocks. We also had many completed Neck Wallets – thanks Nancy P. for that fun project. Leslie S. was also available for help on the paper pieced Block Lotto blocks that were due at the November meeting. Thanks everyone for coming out and supporting our guild’s community outreach projects. Kits will be available in April, please consider picking one up.

Thanks to all who have already joined the Community Outreach leadership team for 2021-2022!  If you still want to be a part of this team, please contact Pat S. Contact information is on our website on the Members page – it is password protected and the new 21-22 password was emailed out to all members on November 1st. 

Block Lotto was explained by Marilyn B. in person and Leslie S. was with us via Zoom  Since we are having our holiday party via zoom in December, the block demonstrated, ModSquared, is named the January block. Due to meeting via zoom until March, we will be bringing the blocks for the January, February and March Block Lottos all to the March in person meeting. We will draw the winners of the blocks for each of the 3 months at the March meeting. You will have lots of time to work your blocks, so hoping for lots of participation – they are all fun blocks!

Betty W. was the winner of this month’s Block Lotto blocks.

2 Yazzii bags were given to the guild to be raffled off by the owner of the company, who will talk to us via Zoom in February.  This will be a member only raffle, no outside sales. The winners of the bags will be drawn in February.  Tickets can be purchased via cash or Pay Pal and are $3 per ticket of $15 for 6 tickets.  The link to the PayPal button is on the member’s only page.

There is to be a Zoom meeting Friday night to announce the swap partners for the pot holder exchange in December at our Zoom meeting.  We are to get together with our swap partner before the meeting and exchange our wrapped gifts.  The night of our December meeting, December 28th, we will take turns unwrapping our gifts with our partners as a small part of our December Holiday party.

Nancy P. further explained our Modern Mystery Quilt challenge.  There are prizes each month as well as weekly Zoom meetings. More than half of the guild has signed up for this exciting challenge! The packets were emailed out to all members who have signed up. Many, many helpful resources are already available, with many more to come! Come to the Holiday party December 28th for the first Modern Mystery prize drawing – must be enrolled in the Modern Mystery and present at the meeting to be eligible for the prize.

Our Survey Question was in 2 parts – Have you made a transparency quilt? and If not, what is holding you back? The winner of the survey question about transparency quilts was Betty W.

Fabric Raffle Winner was Barb S.

Our Modern Quilt Showcase was displayed at the Hands All Around Quilt Guild’s Quilt Spectrum on October 29th and 30th and looked fantastic. The guild appreciates everyone’s contributions to the Showcase – helping setup, take down, manning the display or providing a quilt for the display. Special thanks to Kathy C. and Nancy P. for all of their work on this – coordination, layout, etc.

Nancy P., Vice President, presented her VP corner which also focused on color. This is a hard thing to do for many quilters and Nancy shared some examples of how the play-crafts website tools such as Palette Builder and Color Play work. The both can take the stress out of building a palette for your next quilt or even for decorating.

There are at least 6 members, shown by raising hands, who submitted quilt entries to the Quilt Con in February in Phoenix.  They should hear soon as to whether they have been accepted. 

There was a discussion on the by law changes. Any further questions should be directed to the board members before January.  We will be voting on the by law changes in January. 

We had Show and Tell. We love to see what everyone has been working on. Please remember to have show and tell handy for the January meeting.

December’s meeting will be a holiday party, as well as our pot holder swap and will be held on December 28^th, instead of our regular 4th Tuesday, due to the holidays.

January and February’s meetings will be via Zoom. We plan to resume in person meetings in March, but will do dual meetings again at that point.

Happy Holidays everyone! Hope to see everyone at the Holiday zoom party!