November 2023 Meeting Recap

Hello Quilty friends! Our November meeting was kind of a short one, but full of info! We had 37 people join in on our Zoom meeting. Special welcome and thanks to Paula, Susan and Arlene! Hope to see you again soon!

We started our meeting off with a recap of goings on that happened since our last meeting. We had a group take a field trip to Lisa Stewart Shepard’s shop, Cultured Expressions, for a little workshop.

A few of us spent some time on MQG’s Scrap Sorting Day, getting organized and talking about organizing and using our scraps.

The Clifton Quilter’s Guild had their fall retreat and quite a few of our members attended. They had a blast and we are inspired…we had our first quilt show, is it time for our first retreat? We’ll see…either way, the Clifton guilld has two on their calendar for 2024.

Annette filled us in on the treasurer’s report. Just like everything else that is going up, we at the NJMQG have to take into account the numbers. We discussed our proposed budget and including a new, higher membership fee. We talked about all the details and asked for everyone to hold their questions until the end of the meeting when we held our vote. You can always check the member’s only section for those reports.

Our guild is planning on doing more in person meetings in 2024. We are planning to do 8 in person and 4 virtual meetings. We will be getting together at a new location. We will be meeting at The First Lutheran Church in Montclair at 153 Park Street. Our official schedule will be announced in December.

The MQG Community Outreach Quilt status update! The top and back have been completed and it is being quilted by Carol M.

Our final meeting of the year, as always, is our holiday party. Saturday December 2, from 11-3 at The Community Church of Cedar Grove. This year we are swapping a scissor pouch by Sotak Handmade, info found here (and a helpful youtube video here) and the party poppers we have swapping the past few years. These will be blind swaps, meaning for every swap you make, you swap one and bring one home. Just wrap the pouch, nothing fancy, and put your name on the inside! The party popper, is a paper towel tube, stuffed with as many goodies you can fit, and covered with a fat quarter. We will have games, a craft, and lunch catered. We are asking everyone to bring a dessert to share (please include a list of ingredients for allergies)This will be our last meeting at this location.

We skipped show and tell, so we can all share in person at our meeting, so please bring all those things you’ve been working on. If you can’t bring it to the meeting, take a picture for a future virtual show and tell.

Programs and the board is in the process of planning all sorts of good things for 2024. We are starting the year off with a lecture and a workshop with Libs Elliott. The January meeting is January 18, over Zoom, and Libs will join us with a lecture. We will then have a workshop with Libs on the Bloem quilt, Saturday January 20 over Zoom. Look for sign ups soon.

February brings us a Zoom guild meeting on Thursday February 15th and Quiltcon, but for those not able to go, we will be having an open sew on Saturday February 24th.

We will continue to keep you updated!

To close things out, we had a vote, by show of hands, on the 2024 budget, which passed.

Hope to see you all at the holiday meeting!

Ciao and happy sewing!

Posted by

NJMQG Secretary

Posted on

December 5, 2023

Posted under

2023, announcements, charity, field trip, guild business, meeting recaps, MQG, Programs, quilt showcase, Uncategorized

October 2023 NJMQG Meeting Recap

Hello and welcome to the October recap. This month we met over Zoom. We had 41 people joining us, including some new friends, Cecila, Arlene and Nina. Thanks for joining us, and hope to see you soon!

This month we started our meeting off with our usual guild business. Annette gave us a treasurer’s report, which as always, can be found in the member’s only section of the website.

Last month we hosted our very first Quilt Showcase, and it was just so wonderful! We had about 200 people come to see the show and we sold our MQG charity quilt! The money from that sale will be donated to Oasis Haven and Rachel Coalition. We want to thank everyone who helped pull it together, with a special thanks to the showcase committee and and extra special shout out to our president Ann, who took the reigns and totally went for it. We are looking forward to our next one, in 2025.

Some announcements were next. We took a poll about our 2024 meeting schedule. Based off the results, we will have 8 meetings in person and 4 virtually. When meeting in person we will also be going to a new location. We will be letting everyone know all those details soon!

Mid Atlantic Mod Retreat will be April 18-21 and our 10 lucky early registrants have gotten in. Regular registration has also opened and there is a waitlist if you’d like to get on it.

We have some committee updates. Did you know we have a library? Books and rulers are available for borrowing. Caroline Hayes will be our new guild librarian. We are also looking for a new head to our charity committee. Please reach out if you are interested in helping out.

At our September meeting we started working on our MQG Community Quilt. Since then we have the top and back completed and Carol M will be quilting it. Looking forward to seeing that come together!

Programs is working hard behind the scenes to bring us some fun and exciting things in the new year. Before the new year starts, though, we had a field trip to Cultured Expressions for a workshop with Lisa Shepard Stewart.

November 4, we are celebrating International Scrap Sorting Day with the MQG. Let’s get organized!!

In November we have our meeting on the 16th , at 7, over Zoom. December we will have our holiday party on December 2 from 11-3 at the Community Church of Cedar Grove. Jeanine is leading the planning on this, but any help is welcome, reach out to her at vicepresident at njmqg dot com. For January we have a lecture and workshop scheduled with Libs Elliot. If you don’t know her, you should really check her stuff out. Libs will be joining our January 18 meeting over Zoom to give us a lecture. Then keep your calendar open for January 20, for a workshop over Zoom for the Bloem quilt.