Improv Block for Jacquie

Many of you know our Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild President, Jacquie, and I could go on all night about what a fun, gracious, kind, inspiring, organized, giving person she is. Well, we got the news that she was moving to Chicago and leaving the Kansas prairie behind. I was shocked and sad yet so excited for her and all the possibilities waiting for her. Within moments of the news, Shea was organizing us all to quickly create blocks for a special quilt.

Jacquie loves orange and Shea asked the guild members to make blocks that had orange, grey, white and black and be made in an improv style. Lucky for me that Jacquie had made me sit up and notice that orange wasn't really so bad and I'd actually been on the look out for orange fabric that I could love for about the last six months. I was surprised that I had accumulated a nice little orange stack in my stash.

I had to laugh taking these tiny little cuts from quarter and half yards of fabric. I'd made an improv block before but I used a tutorial so the training wheels were off for this one. I loved creating it! It was so much fun to just sit down at the sewing machine and play. Shea, her mom Mary, and Angela worked together to get pull it all together beautifully.

This is Mary unveiling Windy City for the first time at our guild meeting.

And here's Jacquie all wrapped up.

We'll all miss her but we're in wonderful hands with Shea leading us and I can't wait to hear about Jacquie's adventures in Chicago.

Read more about the creation of Windy City and see some great close up photos over on Shea's blog. Thanks for the photo's Shea!

If you want to see some more awesome quilts, make sure you check out Quilts on the Quad this Saturday on the UMKC campus. It's the KCMQG's first quilt show!! Get all the details here.