Our Jersey Shore community is very important to us and we love to offer support where we can. Mary’s Place by the Sea has been one of the recipients of our handmade goodness for a number of years now. Mary’s Place is a beautiful place, steps from the ocean, where women who are battling cancer have the opportunity to spend a day or a weekend being pampered both body and soul. A place to just take a break and breathe. Some of the amenities are spa treatment, message therapy, emotional and spiritual support, and a chef made plant based menu. It has all the coziness of a beach house with a warm family feel. A place to relax, reset and be taken care of and all of it is at no cost to the guest. Mary’s Place is completely funded by donations and fundraisers and volunteers from the community.

We have been bringing quilts for the guest periodically for a number of years now and just about two weeks ago myself and my co chair, MaryJane met with Clare Freda to deliver a batch of quilts for their guests to enjoy. These quilts are all handmade by our members.

In my opinion quilting and community outreach are synonymous with one another and being able to provide women who are going through treatment with something handmade from the heart, is just a beautiful thing.

Maybe you were wondering where we’ve been? Or not! Post quilt exhibit at the Belmar Arts Center we’ve been taking some time to breathe and do some selfish sewing. Some of us are participating in a round robin of sorts where the member made a block or piece to start a quilt. Every month it gets passed to someone else and they make something to add to it. It’s been super fun and at the end of it all we will each have what we need to make a complete quilt, made for the most part by friends. It’s going to be great to see everyone’s finished project and we’ve all learned a lot in the process.

One thing about being in a guild is the wealth of knowledge that we possess and get to share with one another. It has always been a traditional part of the meeting to have an instructional portion and it truly never disappoints. In the beginning of the year our Program Coordinator puts out a survey of basically two questions, what do you want to learn and what are you willing to teach? We’ve covered so many topics ranging from different types of starches to the most complicated of stitching methods and everything in between and there’s always more to learn. In the past two months alone, Brigit gave us some really good insight into ways to visibly mend quilts that have been well loved by their recipient

And Virginia educated us all on the much coveted vintage Singer machines including how to service them yourself, along with sharing some eye opening facts about these beloved machines. Never leave your bobbin case unattended!!

We’ve been sewing garments and quilts, bag making, embroidering and knitting and we love seeing everyone’s work Everyone and everything is welcomed and embraced. I’ll just leave some examples right here for you to enjoy as well!

That’s a whole lot of creativity! See you soon!

February was a whirlwind of a month for us here at the Jersey Shore MQG. Our second quilt exhibit at the Belmar Arts Center was another great success, including a well attended, wonderful Opening Reception and an entire month of visitors at the Arts Center.

We renewed our annual membership with the worldwide Modern Quilt Guild this past month. It is important to note that when the world shut down for Covid five years ago, we were a struggling guild of twelve members. When I say struggling, I mean that membership was low and so were funds. We could barely make ends meet with rent and insurance and members were leaving, not because they weren’t happy, mostly moving and we rarely got a new member. This year we renewed our membership with an astounding forty members, including the first male member of the group. We could not be happier!! This can be attributed to a number of things including lockdown accounting for a renewed interest in sewing, the generosity of Julia and Patrick of Old Spool Sewing Studio inviting us to use their space for meetings, and most importantly the welcoming spirit of the Jersey Shore Modern Quilt Guild. We take great pride in being a judgement free group of sewers and quilters of all levels where EVERYONE is welcomed and embraced. Congratulations to us!

We are; however, saying goodbye (not for good) to member Laura S who will be relocating to Italy!! to live and work for awhile. How exciting!! While we will miss her fun, upbeat presence at meetings all of us are equally as excited for her adventures. Laura had quite a few wips to complete before her departure..

And that’s it for February, it has been a fantastic month.

Phew! Have we ever been busy!! Our exhibit is live at the Belmar Arts Center and it is fabulous!! Please come see us. Now that the exhibit is hung, we can get back to the business of creating new things. When the world shut down for Covid, our guild had 12 members and we were hanging on by a thread (pun intended). This January we renewed our membership in the worldwide Modern Quilt guild with 36 members. Can we get a round of applause!! And we’re not just fellow members, we are friends and we love making new friends. People come to visit us once and find a truly welcoming environment and they stay and I love that!! And…we welcomed our first male member to the group this year!! And what an addition he is, I can’t wait to show you the awesomeness he creates. So here’s to a new year of creativity, friendship and community. And here is what we were up to this January. Enjoy!

June treated us to an awesome demonstration of the things you can make with a Brother Scan and Cut. A computer of sorts that you can scan images into and create things with fabric, paper,etc. Here’s some examples of the things she’s created.

I hope you enjoy seeing our work. Feeling inspired? Our hosts and fellow guild members, Julia and Patrick of Old Spool Sewing, are now officially a Baby Lock Sewing machine dealer. They have machines at the shop to demo, and fabric and notions. Its a cozy, friendly and inviting place. Go visit them at 617 Higgins Ave in Brielle NJ.

Our exhibit is live at the Belmar Arts Center. Their hours of operation are Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays 11-3 and our exhibit will hang until March 13th. Opening Reception is Saturday, February 15th from 3-5 pm with live music and light refreshments. Everyone is welcome, come be our guest while browsing the gallery of beautiful quilts on display, with many interpretations of the theme of “journeys and destinations”. We will be there for the duration of the exhibit selling raffle tickets for this incredibly beautiful quilt. Purchase a ticket to win for $5 at the exhibit or through any Jersey Shore Modern Quilt Guild member. Good luck!! See you at the Belmar Arts Center!

Disregard the dates on the graphic and read below.

If you’ve been here with us, you might remember we had an exhibit in 2023 at the Belmar Arts Center. Well, we are back, bigger and better. Please join us for this celebration of the fiber arts from February 11th 2025 through March 13th 2025. Mark your calendars for Saturday, February 15th and join us for our OPENING RECEPTION from 3-5. Entertainment and light refreshments will be available while you stroll the gallery and our inspiring work. Once again we have a magnificent quilt for raffle and all new this time, our “Kitchen Boutique” with handmade items for your kitchen and home for sale. Check the Belmar Arts Center website https://www.belmararts.org/educators.html for days and hours of operation. When they are open, we will be there selling raffle tickets and kitchen boutique items. In addition, some items in the exhibit may be for sale. Please be our guests and feel free to share with friends and family.

For the first time in our 11 year history, we went on retreat!! We are incredibly lucky to have this lovely, talented lady, Lauren C. as a member of our guild, who orchestrated our first and hopefully annual, quilting retreat.

A wonderful weekend at Camp Johnsonburg in the picturesque highlands of New Jersey, surrounded by woods and a gorgeous lakeside view, can you honestly think of a better way to relax and sew? Morning hikes followed by catered breakfast and fun with friends made for the perfect weekend.

Plenty of room to set up for hours of sewing, games, noshing and fun with friends.

And just look at all the work we accomplished in between the quality time spent with quilting buddies.

There was even some learning! A guest, Marisa who teaches photography at a local university was schooling our retreaters on how to treat fabric and paper for printing, cyanotypes. This group loves to learn new things!

Did I mention how beautiful the grounds and lake view were?

I think it’s safe to say that our first retreat was an overwhelming success. Many thanks to Lauren for making it possible!

That’s right! We interrupted an Active Fit class this morning at the Atlantic Club…for a quilt. Imagine the surprise, and delight, when approximately 30 ladies were in the middle of a fit class and in we come with a quilt. The quilt is our annual donation for Team Shamrock’s fundraising event at Bar A in Lake Como and the class instructor is none other than Kathy Cunningham, founder of Team Shamrock. Kathy wears multiple hats, not only is she the head of Team Shamrock, she is a board member of the Tunnel to Towers Foundation and a fitness instructor at the Atlantic Club in Wall. Team Shamrock is the top fundraiser for Tunnel to Towers and this annual event at Bar A raises between $40 and $50,000 every year. The Jersey Shore Modern Quilt Guild has been donating a quilt for this event for the past several years.

The interruption was a welcome break for this class of ladies and they got to hear Kathy speak about our guild and the relationship we have with Team Shamrock. Kathy went on to tell them about how we have presented the last three local smart home recipients with quilts to welcome them into their new homes that the Tunnel to Towers Foundation has made possible. There was quite a bit of oohing and aahing when the group saw the beautiful Irish Chain quilt, crafted by our members, that will be part of the gift auction this year on October 10th at Bar A. It really turned out incredible! Needless to say everyone loved it and there were many questions about the guild and our meetings. I expect we may see some new faces at our next meeting. Interestingly enough, one woman said she was at the event last year and her partner won the quilt!! Yay! And fortunately for us I handed my phone to someone and she took pictures. Turns out she’s an actual photographer A great morning at the Atlantic Club for a great cause!

Our theme for August was portrait and landscape quilts. The process for creating this type of quilt is both intriguing and intimidating for some quilters. Fortunately for us, we have some talented artists in our midst who are willing to share their knowledge and skills. Education and knowledge sharing is an important part of our guild and every meeting has a considerable amount of time set aside for this instructional portion. This month, Adele took the lead and showed us her process of taking a photograph and turning it into a piece of fiber art. It was fascinating.

From this writer’s perspective, I find that quilters who have mastered this technique are typically pretty cavalier about how much talent goes into creating one of these pieces It’s a lengthy, multiple step process to get from photo to quilt and once that part is done, adding just the right quilting that enhances the quilt is another entire process. It involves free motion quilting and thread painting. We are in awe of Adele and her craftsmanship and grateful to her for sharing the process. Thank you!

Another equally talented member of our guild, MaryEllen, uses slightly different methods to create her one of a kind landscape quilts. She also shared her process with us in a previous meeting and gave us a trunk show of her incredible work.

It’s still very much summer here on the Jersey Shore, and we were busy creating a little sunshine of our own with these “sunshine” blocks for our monthly block lotto project.

As we prepare for our show in February 2025, we will also be debuting something new this time around. For your shopping pleasure, there will be a Kitchen Boutique, with a treasure trove of handmade kitchen items for sale. Eileen has been busy working on some samples such as these double insulated oven mitts and this charming little cozy for your pint of ice cream. And so much more! If you happen to stop by Old Spool on September 15th, you’ll be greeted with the hum of multiple machines and we will be sewing up a storm, creating one of a kind, handmade pieces for sale. Stay tuned.

And here’s what else our friends have been up to.

See you in September

Summer at the Jersey Shore is almost at the half way mark. I can’t say it’s gone quickly because July, ooh July seemed to drag on with some seriously sultry weather. With that comes all the lovely Jersey fresh produce that we are famous for like tomatoes and corn, they never disappoint. And let’s not forget the watermelon, a summertime classic. Here at the JSMQG we were busy making a watermelon themed, classic log cabin block, aren’t they just so pretty! Looking forward to seeing them in a quilt.

Behind the scenes, there’s a lot happening in our ever growing guild. We are planning our first ever retreat which will be happening in November. Spending time with our quilting buddies sewing, laughing, eating, and maybe doing some hiking sounds like the perfect way to spend a November weekend. Can’t wait!

And coming in February of 2025, our second show at the Belmar Arts Center, the theme this time around is “Journeys and Destinations”. This is gonna be so good. We will have another gorgeous quilt we will be raffling off and something new this time around will be a little shopping experience whilst you enjoy our work. The Kitchen Boutique will have handmade kitchen items for sale. Sneak peeks coming soon!

Always learning, Sherre’s little mini workshop this month taught us all the tips and tricks for quick cutting methods and strip piecing.

And an array of quilts Sherre has made utilizing these techniques.

As always, show and tell is a fan favorite. Here’s what we were delighted with this month.

That’s a wrap for July.

Every year in June, the members of the JSMQG have a fun get together, either at our meeting space or a members home. This year we did just that at Old Spool where we meet and a great time was had by everyone. There was no shortage of food, sweets, and a fantastic scrap bag swap!! Since June also happens to be Pride month, our monthly block lotto, designed by the talented Lauren C, was a Pride themed star block. This might’ve been my personal favorite thus far, I just loved the colors!

We love the new seating arrangements our hosts Julia and Patrick came up with for us! A quick business meeting and then all about swapping, eating and tons of show and tell.

No pictures of the amazing spread of food and treats we had. The rest of the evening was spent with good friends, chatting, eating and shopping for more fabric!

When you have a notion, a sewing notion that is, your sewing skills get taken up a notch (pun intended) or two!! We had the notion to show ours off this month at our meeting. Just when you think you’ve seen them all, you have not. Our members show off their favorite tools and notions from their studios and it was kind of crazy the things we didn’t know were out there. Julia was just itching to introduce us to her favorite sewing notion, the buttonhole spacing tool and the corresponding cutting tool that eliminates the need for using a seam ripper and risking cutting a little too far into your buttonhole.

There were so many new and useful little tools and notions, they may deserve their own blog post.

Let’s talk about April showers.

As usual the show and tell is a fan favorite and never disappoints in this guild. There is a lot of talent among us.

So that about sums up April for us! Thanks for reading and following along on our quilting journey.

The Irish Chain quilt is a traditional block made using squares of fabric that form a secondary “chain” across the quilt top.

I started doing a little research about this traditional quilt and learned that here in American quilt historians believe it was invented here in the 1800s contrary to the belief it originated in Ireland. Funny story, in Ireland there is a quilt pattern that looks just like this and appears earlier than the 1800s and over there it is called, are you ready for it, the American Chain! Interesting! Anyhoo, our quilter, Brooke, who gives us our block lotto assignment every month chose an Irish Chain for March, in green and white. Appropriate! And we decided to get a head start on our annual donation quilt for Team Shamrock’s summer fundraiser at Bar A, as well as, selecting a winner from the group. Here’s a peek at some of the blocks! I am super excited to see this come together.

Speaking of history, Camille gave us all a great presentation about the history of sewing and quilting right here in New Jersey.

Our quilt entry for the Modern Quilt Guilds Community Outreach Challenge is home from QuiltCon in Raleigh NC. “Motion of the Ocean” is what we call her and her next journey will be to a local charitable organization for a fundraiser. We’re in the process of finding one right now.

WE ARE HITTING THE BOARDS THIS SATURDAY, March 23rd at 10am Inspired by the Lake Superior Modern Quilt Guild, we will be donning our favorite quilt and parading the boardwalk in Ocean Grove. Come on down and see us or grab your favorite quilt and join us! 10am at the Beach Office, Ocean and Embury Aves.

Our once little guild continues to grow, we welcomed four new members last month which means there’s never a shortage of show and tell.

No shortage of talent either.

Happy first day of Spring?

Oh February you just flew past, all those windy, rainy days and poof gone! There was no shortage of hearts at the JSMQG, matter of fact we made some hombre hearts for our February block. Since love is always in season these will make a fantastic quilt to leave out all year !

MaryJane gave us all a lesson in graphing out quilt blocks and the ways to resize and incorporate them into your work. So informative. She’s putting her skills to work and creating an improvisational block for a raffle quilt for our next quilt exhibit at the Belmar Arts Council. Yes, you heard that correctly, February 2025 we will be displaying our work at our second exhibit, “Journeys and Destinations” at the BAC. We’ll be sharing, or over sharing, in the months to come.

Anyone who has ever been in a quilt group or guild knows that the best part of every gathering is the show and tell. We love seeing and being inspired by each others work and here is some of the work that was shared last month.