My group wants to get together to make a quilt.  How do we start?

Jewel

Cindy

The best thing to do would be to have everyone purchase the same basic quiltmaking book, and work through it collectively. Choose a book that covers applique as well as piecing, and covers modern methods, including strip-piecing. My own favorites are QUILTS! QUILTS! QUILTS! by Diana McClun and Laura Nownes (their second title, QUILTS, QUILTS and MORE QUILTS!, is good too -- but I prefer the first one); THE QUILTER'S COMPLETE GUIDE by Fons & Porter (an incredible book); and COLOR AND CLOTH by Mary Coynes Pender. The latter does not cover basic quiltmaking techniques, but is an excellent guide to learning color and design. My quilt designs were never the same after reading it. 

The first group I ever belonged to was made up of college students' wives at the University of Michigan. Each would take a turn giving everyone in the group a set amount of fabrics, plus instructions, for a certain block pattern. Each individual would then make the blocks at home on their own time. Once the blocks were done, then they were brought back to the meeting and given to the quilt's designer. She then put them together in a top and brought it back to the next meeting basted to batting and backing, and everyone worked together (using hoops) to quilt it. She would bind it when the quilting was finished. So during every meeting, we would quilt on a quilt top, talking all the while about babies and recipes and grouchy studying husbands and holidays... then start the next when the current one was finished. 

In this way, during the year I was with the group, we actually finished four quilts together, as well as pieced the top of my first full-sized quilt! (I was last on the list, and moved to Colorado before the group could do the quilting.) This arrangement worked very well, and I made several friends in the process. I got a chance to sew on color combinations and designs I would not have personally chosen, and learned methods I might not have tried so quickly. (For example, piecing a Log Cabin on a foundation) Incidentally, there were only 6 or 7 members in 'my' group.
Good luck to you, 
Cindy Brick