The Dutch MQG was founded 5-years ago and I’ve been a member for 4 of those. It has been a lot of fun. I’ve met like-minded people and made new friends. During the pandemic we started to do quilting bees via Zoom since it was so difficult to meet up in person and this has been a great way to connect while sewing. I’ve also been challenged a couple of times to try some new techniques in our quarterly themes. For example, I never thought I’d like hand quilting and I’ve now completed several pieces… 

Wonky Cake pattern

This month we’re celebrating the 5-year anniversary with all kinds of activities. In April the board asked the members to design a festive foundation paper piecing block.  My entry was picked to be put on a greeting card that was sent out to all the members to announce the start of the festivities! I designed a 5-tiered wonky cake and members of our guild can download the pattern for free on the for members part of the guild’s website. Several people have already made the pattern and it is so much fun to see which fabrics and colour schemes they picked. In my mock up on the pattern cover I used the Dutch MQG logo colours and for the fabric version I went for a rainbow theme.

Quilt lottery

For the past 4 years we’ve participated as a guild in the Community Outreach Challenge organized by Quiltcon. For each challenge they set a quilt size, colour scheme and theme that you need to adhere to for the quilt you’re making. We’ve made 4 beautiful quilts (I’ve contributed to 1, 3 and 4), but donating them to a charity in The Netherlands has been a bit of a challenge. Quilts are not so much part of our culture and most charities prefer smaller quilts as they’re usually intended for young children. So, instead of giving away the quilts, our board has now decided to do something else to benefit a charity.

For 5 euro you can buy a ticket to participate in a lottery for the quilt of your choice (you can buy as many tickets as you want and you don’t need to be a member to participate). The money that is raised will be donated to Stichting Vluchtelingenwerk Nederland, a non-profit organization that helps refugees with many different aspects of their stay in The Netherlands. Since there are currently so many refugees coming to The Netherlands that they can sometimes not even be offered a place to sleep when they first arrive (extremely shameful in my opinion) I think this is a worthy cause.

If you are interested in participating in the lottery to win one of these quilts you can visit this page on the DutchMQG website to see how you can enter. The text is in Dutch, but if that is a problem for you and you’d like to participate, feel free to contact me via my contact page. If you’re abroad and you end up winning a quilt, we may need to figure out something about shipping though. You can buy tickets until the end of June and the winners are drawn on July 1st.

Now I just need to decide if I’m going to put all my bets on one of the quilts or spread them over all 4…