As I swooned over all of the Quilt Market photos flooding Instagram this past weekend, I also immersed myself in a new pool of quilters. I was fortunate enough to attend my first ever Maine Modern Quilt Guild meeting! This month, the meeting took place at Alewives, an AWESOME modern fabric shop co-owned by Rhea Butler, and one of my favorite “local” (if a 1.5 hour drive each way counts as local) quilt shops. Rhea offered a Color for Quilters class, and the Maine Modern Quilters made it the feature of their meeting. I had such a fun time, both meeting the wonderful Maine MQGers, but also taking in Rhea’s color theory knowledge and insight.

I was so impressed with the Maine MQG and how friendly and welcoming they were. I immediately made new friends and felt comfortable there, admiring other works in progress, being inspired by the sample BOM blocks made by Karen, and just getting to know my fellow Maine modern quilters. I do hope to make it to another meeting of theirs, even if my attendance isn’t regular (they typically meet over 2 hours from my home, which would require over 4 hours of driving to attend a meeting). Here are some fun photos from the day:

Rhea provided a lot of insight into color and its role in planning a quilt. I learned a lot about general color terminology, such as value, shades, tints, and hue, but also confirmed that I am personally drawn to tertiary colors (fuchsia, cornflower, turquoise, lime, cheddar, tangerine) as opposed to primary (red, yellow, blue) or secondary (orange, green, purple).

I discovered that Rhea has a very different quilting style than I do; she likes her quilts to be “delightfully schizophrenic”, while I am still very focused on smooth aesthetic flow and “safe” color choices. Rhea has convinced me to be a bit more adventurous though, and try some improv or unexpected color and fabric combinations. I may even try the Denise Schmidt-inspired method of throwing scraps in a bag and randomly pulling them out and sewing them together (yikes!).

After the color class, I enjoyed browsing Alewives‘ awesome fabric selection, and taking in the eye candy that abounds. Here are a few sneak peeks at the gorgeousness that is Alewives. Stay tuned for some more tomorrow; color inspiration will come from the fabric shop this week!