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January 2, 2023

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2022, announcements, charity, guild business, holiday party, meeting recaps, membership, swaps, Uncategorized

December 2022 Holiday Party/Meeting Recap

Hello Friends and Happy New Year!! Hope you are all happy, healthy and have enjoyed some time off with friends and family. We had our annual holiday party last month, and it was just so lovely to see everyone who could make it! We had 38 members and one little guest join us.

Because it was also our monthly meeting, we did have some guild stuff to go over before all the fun stuff. Our Community Outreach quilt “Emerald City” was quilted by Carolyn and was on display for us before moving on the the binder. Thanks to all who have taken part in making this a true community quilt.

Speaking of Quiltcon quilts, we have some member’s quilts going to Quiltcon. Congrats to Betsy V, Miguel, Carolyn, and Lenny. (Let me know if I’ve missed anyone) Congrats to everyone who got in AND entered and didn’t get accepted. Just taking that step of entering is an amazing deal!

Crista brought all of the mini’s back from our Peter’s Valley Gallery show and the catalogs were handed out to anyone who purchased one.

Guild Renewals will begin in January. We like to keep the financials separate so we can start new in January. An email with the link will go out the first week of January and we will reset the website information. Our goal is to complete sign ups by Jan 31st. The MQG roster gets reset in February. You can find all the info to renew/signup here.

Wannetta and Ellaree talking charity and making us laugh!

We gave a little preview of what was to come for 2023.

January – Heather Kojan – joining us twice in Jan!
- 19th – Thursday Zoom meeting w/ Guest Speaker
- Introduction to Interleave Piecing Zoom Workshop on Saturday, January 21, 2023 from 9:00-12:00

February – Thurs Zoom & live Sat Open Sew
- Matched swap with members to make a needle book, or roll-up
March – Live Saturday Meeting/ tea party & Open Sew on the SAME day!

April – Lisa Shepard Stewart – Thurs Zoom lecture & SUNDAY live class
May – Kelly hosting us for Tie Dye again!!

We had a fun craft station, yummy lunch and so many desserts to share!

A highlight of the party is always the swaps. Since it was so much fun last year, we did the party poppers again, as well as an iron caddy swap. I couldn’t get a picture of everyone fast enough, but I did try.

The poppers were a blind swap. It’s a paper towel tube stuffed with as many goodies as you could fit rolled in a FQ. We had a great turnout, with a few people putting together more than one.

The caddy swap was a lot of fun, too! Another blind swap. Sarah F got Pam and amazingly, Pam got Sarah F! Sam got Josie, Josie got Miguel, Miguel got Annette, Annette got Kelly, Kelly got Betsy F, Betsy F got Sam. Karen got Kathy, Kathy got Kimberli, Kimberli got Ann, Ann got Rebecca and Rebecca got Karen! Phew!

We had a few WIP’s

And of course show and tell, too!

Sam- Happy Sew Lucky mini paper pieced ornies

Casey- first in person meeting- Windows 95

Ellaree- Pennington 25th Anniversary quilt

MJ- for grandson inspired by Debby’s I spy

Thanks again to all of you joining us for the the fun and festivities! We all hope that 2023 brings plenty of joy and love and lots and lots of sewing! Hope to see you soon!

-A

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NJMQG Secretary

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December 4, 2022

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2022, guild business, meeting recaps, Programs, Uncategorized

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November 2022 Guild Meeting Recap

Hello Quilty Friends!

Time is just flying by and here we are in December almost ready for our Holiday Party and I’m just getting to the recap of our November meeting. Our fearless leader, Rachel, was unable to make the meeting, so the rest of the board took charge! A true team effort! Thanks to all 38 members who joined us on our Zoom meeting.

We jumped right in to announcements. We wanted to remind everyone about Mid-Atlantic Mod. Early admission was open on November 4 and general admission has been opened up on November 13 (and you’re in luck, there are still some tickets left!) Go to their website to find out more info and to sign up.

Our November meeting means it’s time for our vote on the next year’s budget. Annette filled us in on the overview and, as always, the information is available in the member’s only section of the website. We had our vote, and after some confusion, managed to figure out how to do it, and the proposed budget was passed! Thanks to all for taking part.

Our MQG Community Outreach Quilt is in the hands of our quilter. Thanks to Carolyn M. for volunteering! Can’t wait to see what it looks like!

We were lucky enough to be able to host Jacquie Gering for a workshop over Zoom. I heard she is a fabulous teacher and it was a wonderful class!

Our Peters Valley mini show was a resounding success! So much so, that the Cincinnati MQG has asked if they can use the idea for their own! (with credit, of course) I’m sure they’ll post at some point on their instagram. Crista has the mini’s and catalogs, for anyone who ordered one, and will distribute them at the December Holiday Party. Or reach out to her to plan another way to coordinate.

Speaking of the Holiday Party, we have some fun things planned for the meeting. On Saturday December 10, from 11-3 at the Community Church of Cedar Grove, we will be getting together to celebrate with some food, swaps and of course plenty of time to just be together! The guild is going to be getting the main food (and we are taking into account all sorts of dietary things), but are asking everyone to please bring a dessert and drink to share! We have two Blind Swaps (not Secret) swaps you can participate in if you’d like. The Iron Caddy and the Party Poppers!

Last year we mailed our swaps so we knew who the swap came from, but this year since we are in person, make sure to put your name inside the swap. We are also asking everyone to please wrap the swaps in a FQ. Can’t wait to see what everyone makes/receives! We are also going to have an activity or two to do. We will have a station to make some of those popular Swedish stars, and a little area to make some tags, too!

A few months ago, we sent out a survey to get an idea of what the guild is looking for with meetings and classes. We are thankful to everyone who answered. Here’s a little overview of what we got.

The board has been hard at work coming up with a schedule of fabulous things for 2023 AND 2024! For 2023, we will be continuing to do the majority of our meetings over Zoom, still on the third Thursday of the month. Once a quarter, we will have an in-person meeting on a Saturday and try to combine it with an open sew, so we can be together for a full day of fun! We are lining up some great lectures, workshops, challenges, swaps, etc… We are very excited to be able to share more with you real soon!

Speaking of 2023, we do have our first workshop for the year lined up. We hope you will be able to join us. Look for sign ups soon!

For 2022 we challenged you to work on some WIPs! This month there was only one entry.

Started out with 5 pillows to be made. This is the 3rd one finished

Show and Tell was light this month. Maybe everyone has started on their Holiday sewing early?

Sharing the last quilt Dawn made. Brought to England and already loved!

about 22 reusable sanitary pads and 30 extra inserts

After the official part of the meeting wrapped up we had an lovely and intriguing conversation on a topic that was floating around social media recently. What is Modern Quilting? It is an interesting topic with so many facets it’s hard to really define it. Maybe we can revisit it again sometime soon?

Thanks again to everyone for joining us. Hope to see you the the Holiday party! December 10, from 11-3. Don’t forget to bring your swaps, a drink/dessert, and show and tell!

Happy quilting!
-A

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NJMQG Secretary

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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!