Did you catch our November 2021 Quilted Joy Clubhouse online meeting? 2021 is our year of grid designs! This month we looked at how to machine quilt checkerboards. 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 machine quilt checkerboard designs. Watch the video below to see Angela quilt checkerboards, and so much more!

Machine Quilting Checkerboards

In our last Quilted Joy Clubhouse meeting, we learned how to quilt ghost grids. The first squiggly design we learned during that meeting is a lot like the checkerboard designs we learned in this meeting. What sets a checkerboard design apart from the ghost grids, and many of the other grid designs we've learned during our Year of the Grid, is that we're always going to start by stitching out our grid first. So go ahead and grab your favorite straight line ruler when you're quilting checkerboard designs!

During our meeting we looked at three checkerboard designs: a variation on the wiggly worm design we learned last month, the traditional basketweave, and a patchwork inspired checkerboard. With all of these designs, be mindful of where you begin and end in each square of your checkerboard grid so you can easily travel to the next space. Try out these designs on your next quilt and be sure to share pictures of them with us in the Quilted Joy Clubhouse or with #quiltedjoyfmq so we can find your pictures!

Looky Loo Tour with Chris Pigott

For our Looky Loo Tour this month we visited with Chris Pigott. She and her sister converted their oversized garage into their ultimate crafting space, decked out with two APQS longarm machines! Isn't this the perfect shared quilting space? We have major storage envy for that long wall of shelves for all their crafting needs. And we loved Chris's final words of wisdom from our tour "Find something you love to do. Study it. Learn it. And just do it and have fun at it!" It sounds like we need that quote printed and framed for the Quilted Joy studio! :)

New Arrivals - Gnome for Christmas!

Are you the type of person who starts breaking out the Christmas decor right after Halloween or do you prefer to wait until after Thanksgiving? For those of you who are ready for all the Christmas they can get, we have the perfect project for you! Take a look at this adorable Gnome for Christmas panel!

This fabric panel was design by Tara Reed for Riley Blake Designs and is a soft and cozy flannel! All of the little gnomes getting ready for Christmas are adorable with their long beards and big noses. We also have a Gnome for Christmas quilt kit featuring this panel and other flannel fabrics from the same fabric line. This quilt kit is super easy and perfect for a beginner!

How Would You Quilt It? Karen's Lattice Quilt

For this month's How Would You Quilt It? portion of our meeting, Karen's quilt was our lucky quilt submission from the Quilted Joy Clubhouse group on Facebook! Karen's quilt is a really lovely and very traditional quilt with the same block repeated throughout the quilt.

The fabrics in Karen's quilt have lots of polka dots, and busy prints like this can sometimes hide the quilting. So Angela created a design that would add structure and honor all of Karen's hard piecing work. Watch the video to see Angela's full quilting design plan!

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!

Join Us Next Month!

The Quilted Joy Clubhouse live meetings occur on the first Wednesday of each month at 1pm Eastern. Our next Clubhouse meeting will be December 1, 2021 at 1pm Eastern/Noon Central and we’ll be looking at garden grids! 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!