Did you catch our January 2021 Quilted Joy Clubhouse online meeting? 2021 is going to be our year of the grid designs! We kicked it off with some beginner friendly grid-based filler designs, and lots more! If you missed the livestream it’s available to watch (or re-watch!) whenever you’d like. Find it on the Quilted Joy Youtube channel or on the Quilted Joy Clubhouse page on our website!

Our main program for this month’s meeting was how to quilt two simple grid-based filler designs. Watch the video below to see Angela quilt continuous curves, a simple loops design, and so much more!

What's Happening at Quilted Joy!

We've got a lot of fun things happening here at Quilted Joy! We're all looking forward to having students in our shop for classes again, but until we can do that safely we'll continue to offer our classes online. Coming up in February, Angela will be teaching two beginner longarm quilting classes online.

On February 12 Angela will be teaching the APQS Beginning Longarm Class. This is a comprehensive class for new longarm machine owners. We'll talk about machine maintenance, how to load a quilt, how to quilt with paper pantographs, and so much more. This class is free to folks who purchased a new or factory-certified used machine in the last year and it's also open to those who own a different brand machine too.

Angela always follows that class with her Introduction to Custom Quilting Class on February 13. This class will give you a bird's eye view of custom quilting. You'll finish the class with dozens of free motion quilting designs you can take to your next quilt! Both the APQS Beginning Longarm class and the Introduction to Custom Quilting class will be taught online via Zoom video conference. We also record these classes so you can rewatch them later!

If you live near our Louisville, KY store, we do have an in-person APQS Road Show event coming up on Saturday February 6 at 12:30pm Eastern. This is a FREE event for folks interested in purchasing a longarm machine. You'll learn about all our different APQS longarm quilting machines and we'll have fabric loaded on each machine so you can test drive the machines.

Continuous Curves and Squeezy Daisies

The first step for grid filler designs will of course be to mark your grid! Depending on the size grid you want to quilt within, you could use a grid stencil and mark it with a chalk pencil or quilt pounce chalk. Or if you could use a regular ruler with that chalk pencil to mark your grid lines.

During this QJ Clubhouse meeting, we looked at two simple designs that will allow us to practice the path for grid fillers. First we looked at a super traditional design you've probably seen over and over again: continuous curves. You might have also heard it called cathedral windows or orange peels. Watch the video above to hear my tricks for remembering the path for this design!

If the continuous curves are too traditional for you, you might like the squeezy daisies better! This design follows the same path as the continuous curves but instead of hopping from point to point, we're quilting lower case e's. Try them both out on your next quilt and let us know which design you like best!

New Arrivals at Quilted Joy

It's a new year, so we've got lots of new 108" wide back fabrics arriving at the Quilted Joy store! At the start of the meeting Angela talked about how much she's missed traveling and especially cruising to warm, tropical places. The Tahiti Dreams 108" Quilt Backs are a nice substitute for sandy beaches until she can start traveling again. These fabrics are available in 4 different colors - pink, blue, light grey, and neutral. Which color is your favorite of the bunch?

We've also added a great fabric for a patriotic quilt or quilt of valor called Antique Constitution. This fabric has the Constitution printed across the fabric. It has an antiqued look and in some areas it's clear while others it looks more faded. And everyone at the shop was so excited for the Dragonfly 108" fabric to arrive. The colors are so playful and bright!

How Would you Quilt It? Darcene's Starburst Quilt

Each month in the Quilted Joy Clubhouse, Angela asks members to submit photos of an unquilted quilt top for quilting suggestions. Darcene's Starburst quilt was the perfect quilt to show how you can use a grid based design, even in a diamond shape!

Watch the video above to see how Angela adjusted her squeezy daisies design from earlier in the Clubhouse meeting to fit within Darcene's diamond pieces. Watch the video to see Angela's full quilting plan for Darcene's fabulous quilt!

Show and Tell

We love to wrap up the QJ Clubhouse meetings with a little show and tell. There are so many talented quilters in the Quilted Joy Clubhouse on Facebook and they share lots of amazing quilts. It’s fun to put a spotlight on their hard work!

The Quilted Joy Clubhouse live meetings occur on the first Wednesday of each month at 1pm Eastern. Our next Clubhouse meeting will be February 3, 2021 at 1pm Eastern/Noon Central and we’ll be looking at curvy designs on a straight grid. If you’d like to watch live, you can find us on Facebook in the Quilted Joy Clubhouse or subscribe to the Quilted Joy Youtube channel to be notified about our videos. Don’t worry if you can’t join us live. The video will remain available on both Facebook and Youtube afterwards so you can watch whenever you want!

Hope to “see” you at the next live meeting!