About MQA

MQA is one of the most well-organized state quilting associations in the country. We have 3 gatherings a year, plus an educational seminar with a nationally-known teacher. Fall and Spring gatherings include demos and programs you can take back to your guild, and in June we have day-long workshops in Pearl where our own teachers lead classes to improve our skill repertoire.

Quilted MQA Logo from Martha Ginn's album quilt, This is My Story, This is My Song, 1994, 84" x 100". Used by permission

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For more information about MQA, please contact any of the officers, who are more than willing to tell you about our great organization!

Webmaster:
Pamela McRae

Friday Night Events

Friday night was very interesting and filling! We were awed by a magnificent display of Baltimore Album quilts in the Bost Extension Center meeting room. As we admired and dreamed of documenting our own Quiltmaker Journeys we were able to shop the wonderful offerings of Gotta Have It Quilt Shop, one of two vendors for the weekend.

We enjoyed a reading of The Quiltmaker's Journey by Dr. Nancy Verhoek-Miller a Mississippi State professor of children's literature and even created some blocks with fabric paint.

 Guilds that hosted the event were the Starkville Happy Hoopers, Quilt Batts, Scrappers & Needle Chasers from Tishomingo County. The hostesses really fed us well and we had a lovely time to visit before they entertained us with a bed turning - the first ever for an MQA gathering, reportedly. We saw lovely quilts and heard their stories from Linda Duckworth, who coordinated the Fall Gathering. Most impressive was that they managed to get a BED to the Bost center and into the theater! Jackie Watkins, recent first-time Paducah AQS exhibitor, gave a great talk on submitting your quilts for competitions, as she did for the 2006 contest. Mary Sorenson, our MQA guest this summer, urged MQA to start helping the great quilters among us to start submitting our quilts for national competitions.

After the bed turning we enjoyed a special, and unexpectedly nice, treat with a bus trip to the Library that included a tour of the Margaret Bateman quilt collection in John Grisham Room of the very impressive Mississippi State University library, coordinated by Nan Harber, who works at MSU. Pictures and history antique quilt and garment collection were oooohed and aaahed by probably the most appreciative crowd they have had come through, since, as quilters, we know how important it is to have such a well-documented, and well-preserved quilt history! An extra bonus was that the exhibit was in the John Grisham room, which was full of memorabilia about the famous Mississippi author and his many books.

Also a treat was the Templeton Music Room that was upstairs from the quilt exhibit and featured historic music-making pieces from the past like Victrolas, calliopes, and what a previously ignorant person might call player pianos. They were so much more, and just fascinating to look at. Then, near the end of the tour, one of the curators of the exhibit started turning on the music machines so we could listen to them and it was such a treat! He was very accommodating to the group that enthusiastically asked for another, and another instrument to be played so we could get a taste of the past! We were sad to have to leave!

Saturday Morning

Hungry quilters overloaded the Comfort Inn Suites continental breakfast room and overflowed into the meeting room! Only to be fed yet more scrumptious food at a mid morning brunch provided by Golden Triangle Fabric Center.

During the morning program, we "journeyed" to various counties around the area to see the work of Jean Shaw, (Lafayette Co.), Brenda Nell Oliver (Choctaw Co.), Alta Morehead (Carroll Co), Julia Graber (Noxubee County) and Nancy Critz (Oktibbeha Co.). We learned about the fun of chenille that Nell Oliver has experimented with, and how Jean Shaw adds realistic touches to her quilts with simple, but outstanding paint techniques. Alta Morehead showed us samples of her quiltmaking journey, including the novel idea of not having to actually have an item quilted for it to be "finished"! Julia Graber took us into the world of the Magnolia Sewing Circle and her extensive extended family of Mennonite quilters with an impressive PowerPoint presentation, and Nancy Critz showed us wonderful miniatures and scrapbook quilts, some with her adorable Chinese-American grand-daughters that made everyone smile.

The Legacy Committee gave an informative presentation on documenting your quilts so that the information you know about them will be preserved for future generations. Every quilt needs to be labeled with complete information, and also recorded in some kind of record system, be it a scrapbook, or quilt journal. See Legacy  Committee page for more information on documenting your quilts.

Pamela McRae gave some information on promoting your guild using the MQA website, local stores and local media outlets.

Show -n-tell rounded up the weekend with lots of pretty creations from all over the state.