NJMQG June 2024 Guild Meeting

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!

Wannetta- scraps into pillows and tote
Debby- Applique learned from JoAnn for 5 yr old grandchild

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

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.

We have some other things in the works and are looking forward to sharing more with you soon!

We kept it short this month! see you in November!

March 2023 Guild Meeting Recap

Happy Spring! We were very excited to be able to meet in person for our meeting AND open sew this month. It feels so great to be seeing each other again and be able to meet some of our newer members face to face. Don’t get us wrong, Zoom is an amazing resource to have and to use, but with such a tactile thing as quilting, being face to face with each other and the quilts is just so inspiring and invigorating. It was lovely to be able to chat and sew with and brag on our members. We had 39 members joining us. A few lovely new friends introduced themselves to us. MaryAnne, Mindy, Ginny and Cindy it was great to meet you and hear a little bit about your quilting history.

We had some guild business to go over. We are wrapping up our renewals and have all the info to be sent in to the MQG. That doesn’t mean you can’t still sign up, but more for the ‘business-y’ side of stuff. You should be able to access all the available resources on the MQG website, if not, let us know. As part of some housekeeping, we are doing a review of our bylaws. We had a change suggested on some wording for one section that was voted on and approved by all present. If anyone has any changes or anything they’d like to discuss, the board is always here.

Quiltcon was our next topic of discussion. For the members who did not go, we had a very fun Open Sew over Zoom. And while we were Zooming it up, we had a few members there representing us well! Congrats again to Jackie L, Lenny, Melanie T, Liz K, Caroline M, Miguel, and Betsy V for having quilts shown. Aleeda C, who is one of the NJMQG’s founders was inspiring to watch as she slipped easily into her role as MQG president. We had our Community quilt available to look at and we are working on the plans for what to do with it next.

The NJMQG is in the early planning stages of having a quilt show!! We are really excited to finally be able to put on a show, after talking about it since our early years, but we need your help! We are looking for as many hands as we can for help in putting on a show. Reach out to Ann if you are interested in helping.

We had a quick trivia question and Debby C was the winner! (Which company introduced the electric sewing machine in 1889?)

We couldn’t go through the day without acknowledging our fearless leader who was celebrating a birthday the next day. Happy birthday Rachel!!

As we slowly roll towards the middle of the year, we are preparing for the next Board Election. We are looking for a new president and co-program person, at least, but if you are feeling inspired to volunteer for another position, there are ways to make it work. Right now only the treasurer spot is only truly not up for election. We are asking for members to nominate themselves or suggest someone else who they think may be good at and interested being a part of the board. We are looking for some members to be part of a committee to help be a liaison and to host the election, as well. Please reach out to any board member if you have any questions or suggestions. If you’d like to sit in on a board meeting to check it out, we can do that too! You know the saying, many hands…

Another raffle prize and Mary K was the lucky winner!

Programs updates were next. We will be having Lisa Stewart Shepard of Cultured Expressions do a lecture for us at our April 20 guild meeting over Zoom. There is a half day workshop on April 23 from 1-5 with Lisa to learn a cool corded log cabin technique.

On May 20, Kelly C has once again offered to host an afternoon of tie dying!

Sam came up and showed us some examples of just a fraction of the many Schlep bags she has made before showing us how it’s done during the open sew.

The last prize for the closest answer goes to…Lenny! (Where did the thimble originate?)

Before our break, where we enjoyed tea and goodies, we had some members take part in a needle minder swap.

We ended our official meeting with show and tell and then got all set up for our open sew!

Penny- Interleave piped pillow
Jackie L- “leftover” orange peels
Lenny- first of 3 quilts finished 2 weeks with Nancy Crow
Jo Ann- Needlebook made by friend
Caroline- friend made from mom’s snowball quilt
Mary Anne- Epp

I hope everyone had as much fun as I did! Look forward to our April meeting. Thursday April 20 at 7:15 over Zoom. As always, reach out with any questions, concerns, or anything! Don’t forget, you can always let us know of any classes, shows, news you hear so we can share it with our members, too! Thanks for reading!

-A

P.S. The answers were Singer and Holland