Merry Moment 🥳

Today's Merry Moment involves a mistake—a blooper, a blunder, a gaffe, a flaw in the finish. While working on our new Foundation Paper Piecing Course “Pumpkin Parade”, I took a few pictures along the way. Is a picture really worth a thousand words? Yes, I believe there are times when they are.

As I photographed my finished blocks, everything looked perfect. I added the block borders, and it all continued to look great. Once the sashing strips were in place, nothing seemed out of order, and when I finished sewing the quilt top together, I was on a roll! I snapped a picture of my progress, hung the quilt back on the design wall, and sent the photo to Alex for his applause and approval.

As I looked at the picture of my almost finished masterpiece, something just wasn't right...but what? And then I saw it! The last block in the second row was turned on its side. The blocks had been displayed on my design wall for days, and I never even noticed the tumble in Row 2.

So, what could possibly make this moment merry? When I turned the quilt top over to remove the stitching and turn the block, I noticed a long frayed seam that would have pulled apart during the quilting process. Not only was I able to stand my pumpkin right side up by flipping it to the left, but I also repaired the frayed seam in the process. This could have been a major fiasco—but it wasn't... and that brings me much joy!

We're rarely grateful when we need to use a seam ripper, but as I often remark, "The seam ripper is our friend." Today I was convinced! Whew! 

I’m always striving to be joyful... but I’ll always be Mary!

Patchwork Puzzlers!  🤔

Over the years, quilt blocks have been named after people, places, things, events, and more. Quilts and quilt blocks have also been created to commemorate historical events. Can you match the historical event with the quilt or quilt block in the following trivia questions. Answers to the questions are listed at the end of the newsletter! 

Question 1:
Which quilt is named in honor of the end of the American Civil War and symbolizes the reunion of the United States?
A) Union Square
B) Lincoln's Platform
C) Broken Dishes
D) Reconciliation

Question 2:
The "Kansas Troubles" quilt block commemorates which historical event?
A) The Dust Bowl
B) The Battle of Kansas
C) The pre-Civil War conflicts in Kansas over slavery
D) The Kansas-Nebraska Act

Question 3:
Which quilt block was designed to commemorate the women's suffrage movement and the passing of the 19th Amendment in 1920?
A) Suffrage Star
B) Grandmother's Choice
C) Lady of the White House
D) Women's Rights

Question 4:
The "Texas Star" quilt block commemorates which significant event in American history?
A) The Texas Revolution
B) The admission of Texas as a state
C) The Battle of the Alamo
D) The founding of the Republic of Texas

Question 5:
The "Temperance Tree" quilt block was created to support which social movement?
A) The abolition of slavery
B) The temperance movement to prohibit alcohol
C) The civil rights movement
D) The labor movement 

JOYFUL AND MERRY COMMUNITY QUILT GUILD MEMBERSHIP IS NOW OPEN WITH LIMITED SPACE AVAILABLE

We’d LOVE to welcome you to our Joyful and Merry Community Quilt Guild! Imagine joining a warm, global community of quilters who support, inspire, and learn from each other every step of the way. We’re hosted a Zoom meeting that covers everything - what you'll get, how it works, how to make the most of your membership, how to navigate the members area, and so much more! Watch the replay here:
https://www.joyfulandmerryquilting.com/guildreopenreplay

A Joyful and Merry Quilting Thank You! 🥰

Thank you to Deb Dietz and Dianne Holcombe for the $10 donations during our Night Owl Quilting! It is truly appreciated!

Quilting Secrets, Fixes, and Tips 

If you have a quilting top to share in our newsletter, please email it to [email protected].

Product Picks 👍

I love rulers and am always on the lookout for a new type of straight edge (or curved edge) to enhance my quilting experiences. I discovered a great feature on my Creative Grids rulers that I just couldn’t wait to share with each of you. Here’s the link to this week’s Quilting Tip video, “How Creative Grids Ruler QR Codes Upgrade Your Quilting Experience”:
CLICK HERE to Watch 

Merry Musings Mailbag 💌

This section of our newsletter is a comment by one of our subscribers to one of our YouTube videos.

The following is a comment to the Quilting Tips Video: “Freezer Paper Piecing Tutorial: A Better, Cheaper Alternative?” Thank you for this suggestion! 

Gina commented: “A tip when using sprays. Even outside or in a well ventilated space you can use a mask to decrease your chances of inhaling the spray. You can use a mask like the ones for sanding from the hardware store or a higher quality spray ventalator mask. I have a cute pink one. I use it when mixing dye powders for dyeing fabric and then thought I can use it for sprays too! Our lungs are important and worth protecting! A great investment.”

Quilting Course News

Beginning Quilting: From Novice to Confident Beginner: Open registration began on August 1st and is NOW AVAILABLE! If you are a beginning quilter or a self-taught quilter and are curious about this course, please go to joyfulandmerryquilting.com/beginner and watch the video. I would LOVE to share my quilting knowledge and expertise with you. I have been quilting for 30+ years and “trial and error” was the primary way I learned how to quilt. With this course, you can skip the “trial and error” part and join with me as we explore the world of quilting together. Click on the link above for information about the course as well as instructions on how to register!

More courses are coming, including our next round of Aim for the Stars participants and our upcoming foundation piecing course and I would love to have you join me! Keep watching the newsletter for details.

Night Owl and Daytime Quilting Hangouts Schedules with Links to Previous Hangouts

Previous Hangout Links:
Wednesday, August 7 at 11AM CDT:
Project Linus Quilt Challenge and the Exploding Pineapple Block--A New Twist

Monday, August 12 at 10PM CDT:
Project Linus Quilt Challenge Info and How to Make Jar Openers – a great little gift or favor!

Monday, August 12 at 10PM CDT:
 Phone Pillow Tutorial

YouTube Live Schedule: 

Daytime Quilting Hangouts
Wednesday, September 4 at 11am CDT
Wednesday, September 18 at 11am CDT

Night Owl Quilting Hangouts
Monday, September 9 at 10pmCDT
Monday, September 23 at 10pmCDT

Shop Hops, Quilt Shows, and More

If you have a local shop hop, quilt show, or another quilting-related event that you would like to share, please email [email protected] one month prior to the event and we will include it in this section of our newsletter.

THE MID-ATLANTIC SHOP HOP: July 1-August 31 States included: Pa, Va, WVa, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey. Click on the link for details: https://allmidatlanticshophop.com

THE GREAT WISCONSIN QUILT SHOW: September 5-7, 2024. Alliant Energy Center
Thursday and Friday, 9am-6pm; Saturday 9am-5pm
https://quiltshow.com/

SEW YOUR HEART OUT
2024 Jacksonville Florida Quiltfest
September 19-21, 2024
https://www.visitjacksonville.com/events/jacksonville-quiltfest-quiltfestjax/

STAR STRUCK QUILT SHOW presented by Keystone Quilters
NACQA Judged Show
Quilt Registration is open to the public. Deadline is September 3, 2024
Finland Mennonite Church
1750 Ziegler Rd.
Pennsburgh, PA
October 11-12, 2024
www.keystonequilters.org
or call 610-282-0651

CELEBRATING THE QUILT presented by Illini Country Stitchers
October 4-5, 2024
Friday 9am - 5pm, Saturday 9am - 3:30pm
Savoy Rec Center
402 Graham Drive
Savoy, IL
https://www.illinicountrystitchers.com

FORT DODGE, IOWA AREA QUILTERS
"Inspirations from the Heart"
Saturday, October 12, 2024 9am-5pm
Sunday, October 13, 2024 10am-4pm
Webster County Fairgrounds, Fort Dodge, IA
https://www.facebook.com/FDAQG


 

Quilting Deals, Products and Savings 💰

Some great deals to check out!

QUILT CALC: Free App suggested by Wendy H.

This is a FREE app for both Apple and Android
QuiltCalc is a collection of quilting calculators from Robert Kaufman Fabrics and Quilter's Paradise. The calculators are designed by quilters and can help with a variety of tasks, including:

• Fabric measurement: Convert between inches and yards in decimal form, and yards in fractional form.
• Fabric requirements: Calculate how much fabric is needed for backing, batting, borders, and more.

• Cutting: Determine how many rectangular pieces can be cut from a larger piece, or thenumber of fixed-size pieces that can be cut.
• Block sizes: Help determine quilt block sizes when planning a quilt top.
• Triangle calculations: Calculate square-in-a-square, set-in, and corner triangles.

QuiltCalc is available as an app on the App Store and Google Play. The calculators work with both U.S. and metric measurements. 

Joyful and Merry Community Quilt Guild Corner ✨

WELCOME to our newest guild members who joined last night! We're so happy to have you!

Would you like to join a wonderful community of quilters from all over the world? We would LOVE to have you as a member of our Joyful and Merry Community Quilt Guild! Registration has officially reopened - get all the details and registration info here:
https://www.joyfulandmerryquilting.com/guildreopenreplay

The vision of our community quilt guild is: "To create a warm and inclusive virtual space where every member feels valued. We believe in fostering a positive and supportive community, free of judgment, where quilters of all levels can come together to learn, to share, and to grow.”

We have two meetings each month, special speakers, a block library, a chat forum, training videos, free patterns, sew-alongs, live Zoom quilt chats and more!
The Joyful and Merry Community Quilt Guild will open registration again on August 1st and we would LOVE to have you join our guild.
www.joyfulandmerryquilting.com/guildwaitinglist

Here's the latest guild news and reminders:

NEW GUILD NEWS

GUILD MEETING SHOW AND TELL: If you have something to “Show and/or Tell” at our Guild Meeting, please send a good quality photo(s) to [email protected] and I will add you to the schedule. It’s difficult to show our quilts at our live Guild Zoom meeting, due to lighting, space, etc., so we will screen share the photos and then call on the guild member submitting the photos to give us the details during the meeting. Don’t be shy! We would love to share in your joy as you show share your creativity with the guild! Photos must be submitted in advance just to make sure we have enough time allotted for those members who will be sharing. I’m sure we all agree that being able to show our quilts “up close and personal” via Zoom is something unique to our guild. I will look forward to receiving your entries for our next meeting!

UPCOMING SCHEDULE: Since August has 5 Thursdays, we’re scheduling the August meetings as follows. There will be no meeting the last week of August. Don’t forget to register for the Zoom, as always. Links will be available on our Guild Resource Page as soon as they are scheduled. You will also be emailed with the links as well.

September 5: Guild Meeting at 7pm CDT [A Tour of the Hamilton Quilt Museum, Pt1
September 12: Block Training Videos Released
September 19: Guild Meeting at 11am CDT [A Tour of the Hamilton Quilt Museum, Pt2
September 26: Extra Guild Meeting Sew-A-Long

Guild Membership officially re-opened last night with a limited number of slots available! Please invite your friends to join us! An email will be sent out today with replay and registration details.

SAMPLER BLOCKS OF THE MONTH CHALLENGE: 
The Sampler Block of the month - Block #8: “Big Dipper Block” has been added to our Guild Block Library, and the training videos for blocks 6 and 7 were added to the Guild Resource Page! You are welcome to make the Block 8 using the PDF, but if you would life step-by-step instruction, you will need to wait until the 2nd Thursday of next month when the training is available.

*GUILD REMINDERS*
 The following is general information that is posted in each newsletter as a helpful guide and resource for our guild members.

CALENDAR:
Just a reminder – all of the Joyful and Merry Quilting Community Guild Meeting Zoom Links are available on the Guild Resource Page of the joyfulandmerryquilting.com website. You MUST register ahead of time in order to participate in the meeting, by clicking on the link.

EXTRA GUILD MEETINGS:
Our next “EXTRA” guild meeting will be held at 7pm CDT on September 26th. Pre-Meeting Chat opens at 6:30pm CDT. Bring a project to work on! If you're working on the Outdoor Oasis Picnic and Beach Quilt, you're welcome to work on it or pick something else! It's totally up to you!

JOYFUL AND MERRY QUILTING COMMUNITY CARE CORNER: 
This will be a spot in our newsletter for members to share their needs and concerns, whether they're related to health, personal challenges, celebrations, etc. It will be a place where we can support and care for one another, share joys and struggles, and provide encouragement to each other regardless of our beliefs or backgrounds. We want it to remain a place of inclusivity while still fostering a sense of community and support within the guild. In this spirit, let’s turn our attention to those in our community in need of some extra support right now:

We don't have any submissions for our Care Corner this week. If you would like to post in our Community Care Corner, simply send your "Community Care Corner Request" (on sentence) to [email protected] and I will post it in the newsletter. You can post it anonymously or add your name - totally up to you.


RECORDED MEETINGS:
Our most recent guild meeting from last week has been added to the Guild Resource Page. Please keep in mind that our recorded meetings will only be available for 3 months or until we run out of room on our Zoom Account, whichever comes first. So, if you missed a meeting, be sure to watch the recorded version ASAP, so you don’t miss out.

WEBSITE MONTHLY TABS:
Once we move into a new month, we will have a tab that will take you to the archived files from previous months…just in case there’s something you want to review. Depending on how often our members access this feature will decide the length of time the previous months will be available. We hope you enjoy this feature!

GUILD MEETING TIMES AND MISSED MEETINGS:
We want to make sure you take note of this information. We are still having members access the meetings at the wrong time, and accidentally missing out on the guild and quilting fun.

TIME ZONES: Please keep in mind that our Guild Meeting Times are listed in CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME. If you live in another time zone, make sure you double check (and triple check) the guild time and then adjust it to accommodate for your time zone. We continue to have members join our guild meetings an hour or two early or an hour or two late and in the process, miss the actual meeting. The meetings are recorded, but if you want to join the meeting LIVE, please make sure you have the guild time adjusted to YOUR particular time zone. 

CHAT SESSIONS: If you have time, please join us half an hour before our guild meetings for our Guild's Community Chat sessions: 6:30pm CDT for evenings and 10:30am CDT for daytime meetings. This is such a fun time getting to know each other and I hope you’ll join us when you can. Please note that entering before the designated time strains our recording time allotment, so we have instituted a waiting room where members will be admitted to the meeting once the host is there and the chat session opens.

JOYFUL AND MERRY COMMUNITY GUILD FOUNDING MEMBER CHAT FORUM: 

We have been enjoying our Community Chat Forum! It's a great alternative to Facebook, where all guild members are included in the chat. Here's how to get to the Chat Forum (or you can click here):

1.   Go to the joyfulandmerryquilting.comwebsite
2.   Click on your “LIBRARY”
3.   Click on the “JOYFUL AND MERRY COMMUNITY QUILT GUILD FOUNDING MEMBER”
4.   Click on “FEED” and you will be taken to the Chat.  You can post pictures, questions, comments, etc.  It’s a great place to get to know our Founding Members and share our love of quilting!

EMAIL PREFERENCES: 

Important: Guild Membership is Non-Refundable
Please do not mark any guild emails as SPAM or unsubscribe from them. Since this is a virtual group, email, Zoom, and our website are the primary ways to stay involved. Unsubscribing or marking emails as SPAM removes you from the email list, and by law, we cannot reverse this action. 

Some members who have marked our emails as SPAM or unsubscribed have requested a refund, which we cannot provide. All information sent via email is also available on our website's resource page. If you prefer not to receive emails, you can still access all guild information, links, patterns, etc., by visiting joyfulandmerryquilting.com and clicking on “Library,” then the Guild tab. 

Some members still experience issues with not receiving emails. The most common problems are unsubscribing, your email provider sending our emails to your spam folder, recipients marking emails as SPAM, or using different email addresses for the guild and newsletter subscriptions. Please email [email protected] if you continue to have issues with email and we will do our best to help you remedy the situation. 

Please be very careful with emails from joyfulandmerryquilting.com through our Kajabi email service. If you no longer wish to receive them, simply delete them. Do not unsubscribe unless you intend to. By law, we cannot re-add you to our email list, and you will no longer receive any correspondence from us. If you label our emails as SPAM, your email address will be permanently removed from our list. 

Additionally, if you forward our emails and the new recipient clicks Unsubscribe or marks them as Spam, your email address (not theirs) will be removed from our list. We understand mistakes happen, but some cannot be corrected. Please be careful. Thank you!
 

That's it for this newsletter! Have a joyful and merry week of quilting!

All of our archived Joyful and Merry Quilting Newsletters can now be found in the Blog Section of our website! Many have requested a place to access all previous newsletter releases. Head over to https://www.joyfulandmerryquilting.com/blog and you'll find them all as they're released! The weekly newsletter is released on Thursdays.

ANSWERS to this week’s PATCHWORK PUZZLERS:

1. D) Reconciliation - The "Reconciliation" quilt symbolizes the reunion of the United States after the Civil War.
2. C) The pre-Civil War conflicts in Kansas over slavery - The "Kansas Troubles" block commemorates the violent confrontations in Kansas between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions before the Civil War.
3. B) Grandmother's Choice - The "Grandmother's Choice" block was created to honor the women's suffrage movement and the passing of the 19th Amendment in 1920.
4. B) The admission of Texas as a state - The "Texas Star" quilt block commemorates the admission of Texas as the 28th state of the United States.
5. B) The temperance movement to prohibit alcohol - The "Temperance Tree" block was associated with the temperance movement, advocating for the prohibition of alcohol.