The Langley Quilters Guild has, after an 18-month hiatus, resumed our in-person meetings, to the joy of all. Numbers had to be restricted (63 in person, 15 more on Zoom, down from our usual 120), seating plans rearranged to allow for a better flow…sign-in…vaccine passports…but in the words of our president, “when the doors opened and familiar faces started coming thru, it was all worth it”.
Through the past year we’ve managed to have a successful time regardless and after the first few months of scarce group activity, we started making steps with Zoom, first with program presentations, then social sewing days, allowing for some good interaction on projects members were working on, and finally executive and monthly meetings. A lot of the membership has expressed enthusiasm for keeping Zoom programs available on an ongoing basis. One of the “highlights” of the Covid year was our newsletter editor April, who, in addition to keeping up our monthly newsletter, in March 2020 also started a weekly “Bulletin from the Isolation Bunker” where members shared pictures of projects, what they’d been doing, recipes, etc. It became a Friday morning “kaffeeklatsch” for many and April never missed a week, sending out well over 70 Bunker reports by the time restrictions were being lifted.
Our Community Quilts committee has remained busy throughout the past year and a half, despite not meeting, and as restrictions eased in our province we were able to have outdoor meetings and drop-off days where the many quilt donations our members made were handed in. By the end of our fiscal year we’d collected and distributed over 250 quilts, in addition to placemats, preemie and fidget quilts, to various agencies in the Langley/Surrey areas.
Sadly, after the beginning months of prep and hard work, and as many of our sister guilds also experienced, our 2020 guild show had to be cancelled. At this time, 2022 isn’t looking so good either as who knows where Covid will take us in the near future in terms of public gatherings, but ideas are still being brought forward as to an alternate plan or scaled down version. We remain hopeful despite it all!
Our membership remains strong and committed and we go into this new post-Covid era with hope and a renewed enthusiasm for what lies ahead for the Langley Quilters Guild.