Early in the year we had an excellent Free Motion Quilting Workshop with Nicholas Turcan and an inspiring trunk show given by Wendy Margerm, a local long arm quilter. Two of our members submitted entries to TrendTex, Tri-a-Triad, and CQA Guild Challenges, we had members working their way through the 52 blocks, and now members are joining the Row of the Month Quilt Along.
As we adjusted to COVID we set up ways for our members to have contact with and support for each other.
We created SOSAH Days – Sew Our Stash At Home Days – full day sewing days on what would have been our meeting days. The Program Committee put up suggestions on our website for sewing from scraps and we met on the day via Zoom at lunchtime and again in the afternoon.
Our newsletter editor added articles sent in by members to our newsletter. Our web administrator made a blog post for each Friday called Staying Connected where she put up photos and notes sent in by members on what they were quilting. These posts are like having a weekly Show and Tell, something we all find interesting and inspiring.
We did a couple of exchanges. In September we met in a parking lot to exchange self-addressed envelopes then we made and sent mug rugs to each other. For the Winter Holidays we exchanged names by registering with the Program Committee and made a Christmas block to mail to each other in Christmas cards. At our December Zoom meeting we had a slideshow and shared the blocks and what some members had already done with theirs.
In the Fall we had a successful experiment with a Zoom workshop, with Krista Hennebury and her Speed Date with Improv. We are now having regular meetings on Zoom and have had Peter Byrne speaking on his quilt journey and a local physio giving hints on quilting safely.
Happy Quilting and Be Safe,