Hello all and happy Summer! Hope you are all staying cool and getting some sewing time in! We had yet another lovely meeting last month. We had 30 members joining us, including a newer member meeting with us in person for the first time. We also welcomed two guests, Joanna and Annette! Hope you join us again soon!

We want to give a special shout out thanks to Aleeda for donating a Keurig machine to the guild. As always we had our free table with a machine Karen brought, that I hope went home with someone. We received the latest copy of Quiltfolk magazine, which can be found in our library. Don’t forget, our library is chock full of books, magazines, patterns, and templates. You just need to check them out with Caroline and you could be on your way to learning something new!

Kelly is working with us on all things charity and we had made about 10 quilt tops that were available to be put together. A few members stayed after to cut batting and backing.

Programs was up next. We are hosting a shibori workshop on July 13, with Miriam Jacobs in Margy’s driveway in Clifton. Paula is coordinating our Community Outreach quilt for this year. The theme is lines and bars. If this strikes any inspiration in you, send in a design idea!! In September we are doing a blind swap for the Pockets to go organizer. If you haven’t bought the pattern, we have a few available for purchase.

The MQG started a quilt label week. The week of June 17, they encouraged everyone to take the time to do that important finishing step of labeling a quilt. If you have taken part, you can tag the MQG and use #labelmyquilts. The MQG Make-a-difference challenge was put out and you can find out more about it here. This year the theme is pollinators. Quiltcon is February 20-23, 2025 in Phoenix, AZ. Registration starts July 31. Set your schedule up now so you’re ready to go! Next years key note is Tara Faughnan. Submissions for the show are from September 1-October 31.

Programs is starting a new set of bee blocks! Keep your eye out for sign ups. It’s a lot of fun and a great way to get blocks for a quilt top. And Mary let us know that the Warwick Valley Guild show is a go in October. Submissions are due by Sept 7, and the quilts need to be dropped off in person on October 7. You can find out more and print the forms from their website!

Congrats to Debby for winning the first raffle prize! and Caroline the 2nd!

Rachel helped run our elections for this year. Ann Marston is continuing her term as president and Annette is staying on as treasurer. We elected all of our newest board members unopposed and unanimously. Let’s give a warm welcome to our new VP, Samantha. Holly is joining Margy in running programs, and Kathy is taking over the role of secretary. (I will miss being a part of the board, but I’m sure I’ll be back) Can’t wait to see what the new board has in store for us.

As tradition goes, the guild works together to make a quilt for the last outgoing president. Big thanks to Lenny who designed the quilt, the members who made blocks and to Krishma for quilting it. What a beautiful collaboration for a beautiful human who led our guild through those weird pandemic years.

Show and Tell Time!

Sam- Sally Tomato Ferris bag printed cork

“Let the Wild Rumpus Start” wall hanging

Debby- Applique learned from JoAnn for 5 yr old grandchild

Annette- from Sunday Quilts for Project Linus

Betsy V- 24″ clam from Latifah Saafir- sew along

Our next two meetings will be over Zoom. Thursday July 18 and August 15 at 7:00. Keep an eye out for the links and as always, don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions, concerns, ideas…

Well folks, that’s all for now. I’m signing off from the secretary duties. It’ll be nice to just be a regular member for a while. Like I said, I’m sure I’ll be back in some capacity, but I’m looking forward to getting back to my sewing machine! Enjoy the rest of the summer! Stay cool! Happy quilting!

-A

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NJMQG Secretary

Posted on

August 19, 2022

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2022, challenges, guild business, meeting recaps, MQG, Open Sew, Uncategorized, volunteer

August 2022 Guild Meeting Recap

Hello all! We had another great meeting last month! We had 44 people joining us. Welcome to new members Holly, Jennifer, Juanda, and Marina!

We had the pleasure of having Tighe Flanagan talk to us, but before he did, we had a little bit of guild business to go over.

As you may have heard, we are celebrating our 10 year anniversary…for a whole year! June 2012 the guild started having meetings and in 2013 we officially joined the MQG. As part of the celebration to commemorate, we had some pins made. At our June in-person meeting we were able to give a lot of them out. We had been planning on mailing out the rest, but to be honest, the postage was higher than we had expected, so we are going to hang on to them to hopefully see more of you in-person to hand out. We do have some more in-person meetings and open sews coming up, but for those of you who aren’t able to meet up, we can plan a way to pick up, drop off, or if you would like it sent, we are asking for you to pay for postage. (There are some extra ones for sale if you are interested in more, too) reach out to Ann vicepresident at njmqg dot com.

We have matched up some more members for a name tag swap. If you are new or interested in having a name tag made for you, let us know!

Approximately 35 members have signed up to take part in the I Used To Be a Shirt mini challenge to be shown at Peters Valley October-November. Crista has sent out the emails with the details, but to recap it must made from a button down shirt and white and/or cream fabric. It should be no smaller than 18″ no larger than 24″ SQUARE. If you are feeling inspired, you can make more than one. Really, you can make as many as you like! Don’t forget to add corner tabs for hanging and a label! Taking pictures beforehand isn’t necessary(if you saw that on the email form), but if you want to take process photos you can tag NJMQG and Peters Valley on instagram. The minis need to be handed over by September 27. They can be dropped of at Crista’s or we can plan other ways to get it where it needs to be. Don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions! Oh! Keep those scraps, too! We have something special planned for them.

Peters Valley is holding their craft fair on September 24 and 25 from 10-5. The guild will have a community booth so we can share more about modern quilting. If you are interested in taking a shift to work the booth and/or to lend some quilts to display, let us know!

Our MQG Community Outreach Quilt, for 2023 Quiltcon in Atlanta, is in the works. We voted on the blue/green color way with a log cabin style block idea by Aubrey. (sample above made with Aubrey’s stash) Some members will be getting together to cut the fabric for kits soon. We will be sure to let you know when they are ready to be picked up. We will be having an open sew on September 10, which will be the perfect time to pick up and/or work on the blocks. We are always looking for volunteers to help at every stage, so if you are interested in more than just making a block, please reach out. We will need help putting the blocks together, quilting, binding, even putting on the label! We would like to have all the blocks before the October meeting to stay on schedule.

A few announcements…
The deadline for the Warwick Valley Quilters Guild show is fast approaching. Check here for more info or contact Penny (email in members only section)

To try and keep things a little more easily organized, an At a Glance newsletter has been sent out and posted for everyone. It’s a nice bullet point list of upcoming dates to keep in mind. Hopefully it will help everyone!

Next up we had our guest lecturer, Tighe Flanagan. He lives in DC, has an MA in Arab studies from Georgetown and calls himself a lifelong creative. He started quilting in 2016, had his first quilt in a show in 2019, and got his first award in 2021. If you look at his work you can clearly see how he is inspired by art, architecture and math! He talked about his arsenal of tools and skills and math, lots of math! There were still a couple of spots left for his class on Saturday. Even if you can’t make it, he generously gave all members a coupon code for his site through the end of the month. The code was sent out, but if you lost track of it, someone on the board can send it to you. You can also find a free pattern of his on the MQG website. It was a pleasure to have him speak to us about his quilts and process.

For the lucky who jumped at the chance, we have a workshop with Jacquie Gering, who will be showing us how to step up our walking foot game. It was filled up in no time, but we have plenty of other good stuff coming up, too. We will be sure to update soon!

Summer is flying by and before you know it, school will be starting, days will be cooler and we will continue to have more fun things going on! Hoping we’ll see you at the open sew on September 10 or our monthly guild meeting on Thursday September 15 over Zoom. In the mean time, keep on working on the minis, WIP’s and more! Just keep on quilting!