By Helene Juul, Leader
We are a group of individual Danish MQG members who has been meeting on a regular basis for about 2 years. 3 of us went to Quiltcon 2017 in Savannah and came back with a great desire to spread the word about MQG and modern quilting in Denmark. We don’t have a MQG chapter in Denmark, but in our “nick of the woods” (which is in the area of Aarhus, Denmark’s 2rd largest city) we have a modern quilt shop, and that’s how we know each other. We now meet once a month in the shop.We have made several projects as a group; mini quilt challenges which were exhibited in august 2018 at the Danish Guild’s yearly quilt show. Most of this fall/winter were spend making the Charity quilt and now we have started a round of Queen Bee for 2019.
We are also planning to exhibit the quilts from this activity. Once every month we meet for sewing. We like to have a theme for the day. Last time it was Two-Color Quilts and next time it will be Statement/Word quilts.The making of our charity quilt was a real group effort. Once it was decided that we would like to do a charity quilt and the kona colors chosen, we also chose to do improv pieced blocks as this was a fairly new technique for most of our members. We all made a couple of blocks at home and then met on a couple of Sundays and made the layout for the quilt and pieced more blocks for the gabs until we had a top. We decided on a few areas of organic quilting and the rest of the quilt in straight lines. Then 5 of our 11 members took turns quilting on their domestic machines, another one made the hanging sleeve, one made the label, another attached the binding and others took the task of packing and sending. It has been a really joined venture and an enormous learning curve as it was our first time doing such a project together.
The quilt will be given to a local hospice once it has also been exhibited at our local show.We learned a lot from this project. One of the things we learned was actually that we need a “common language”/a vocabulary in regard to modern quilt. We all come from the more traditional kind of quilt making. Some of us have been interested in modern quilt for several years, but others are new to it. When someone says “improv” or “straight line quilting” we don’t necessarily understand the same. Since then we have had some interesting talks about “what is modern quilting” and we keep wanting to learn and grow and inspire others.
The members are Anne-Mette Driberg Niemann, Allis Friang-Tannebaek, Anne Strandhauge Henriksen, Bettina Herskind, Berit Elmkvist Kristiansen, Connie Hansen, Maria Harrits, Hanne Holmboe Vang, Helene Juul, Susanne Maaloe and Susanne Paysen Jensen. We can be found on Instagram under #OEMQG
