Next Stop Englehart Quilters Guild – Keeping Busy During Covid Times

Marcia Morris
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April 9, 2021
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Due to the pandemic our last regular ‘in person’ Guild meeting was held on March 11th, 2020.  The Executive offered regular ‘Block of the Month’ patterns in April and May to our 55 members as a way to keep us somewhat connected during this new-to-us Covid-19 Pandemic ‘lock-down’.  The completed March, April & May blocks were dropped off to a basket in a member’s front porch & three draws were made at our February (Zoom) meeting; three lucky members now had new projects to tackle.   As we were not able to hold our Annual General Meeting in June or our bi-yearly election of new Executive officers, our current Executive agreed to continue into the 2020-2021 year.  The Executive has offered monthly Zoom meetings to our membership since September 2020.  Instead of our regular Block-of-the-Month program (which would involve sharing) an experienced & talented quilter/ Executive member (Shirley Jobson) kindly offered a ‘Row-by-Row’ Mystery Quilt project (stash buster) to keep us interested & busy.  Everyone would pull fabrics from their own stash choosing their own colours, a great way to use up scraps – lights, mediums & darks.  This month (April) we will be getting our Part 6 instructions & this project is being enjoyed by many of our members, with the goal, hopefully, that we could have a ‘live in-person Show & Tell’ at a regular Guild meeting in September – here’s hoping!   We also continued our ‘Back to Basics Demos’ covering a multitude of quilting skills for newbies or as refreshers with members of our Guild volunteering to do presentations during our Zoom meetings.  Topics covered:  Quilting with the InternetSquaring Up BlocksOn-Point Block SettingsCorner Stones & SashingsBasting TechniquesHand Quilting.  Preparing Your Quilt Top for Long-Arm Quilting and Free Motion Quilting are the topics at our upcoming April meeting.  As well we continue with our ‘Show & Tell’ portion of our meetings which everyone loves.  Since not everyone is comfortable with the Zoom format, members are encouraged to send photos of their completed projects to our Zoom leader (President, Lori Jordan) prior to the monthly meeting so they can be enjoyed by all participating in the meeting.  We invited our Northern Canadian Quilters’ Association Representative, Lauren MacDonald, to speak as a guest at our March Zoom meeting.  Lauren is from the west end of Manitoulin Island & has been a member of CQA for a long time, although new to this position.  She provided much info about CQA & all they have to offer to quilters from all over Canada.  Our members are now more aware of how CQA can help to broaden their quilting skills & experiences while on their own individual creative journeys.  Lauren added that they need more members so that they can support Canadian quilters.  We really appreciated her taking the time to introduce herself by ‘attending’ our Zoom meeting.  As I write this we have just entered another full Province Lock-Down; we are all certainly hoping that as more arms are vaccinated we may enjoy a ‘more normal’ summer & be able to get back to a somewhat regular life by the fall.  Happy quilting everyone!