May 2013 Meeting Information

Hello Everyone!

I just wanted to provide some information about our May meeting.

As a reminder, we are meeting a week early this month, due to the Memorial Day Holiday.

Our meeting will be Saturday, May 18, at 10:00 am at the Ransom Public Library in Plainwell.

If you participated in our block challenge, please be sure to bring your completed blocks!  We'll be holding our drawing for them.  If you won't be there, be sure to send them with someone else or mail them in so that we can make sure you are in the drawing!

We have accomplished much in the past month!  We are a legal organization within the State of Michigan.  We have our EIN and nonprofit status.  We have bylaws.  This means we could open a bank account, which we did.  This means we can now accept membership applications!  We have membership applications ready to go!  Wow!  Lots happening!

In preparation for the meeting, here are a couple of downloads for you:

Membership Application (You can print one and have it ready at the meeting, if you'd like, or we'll have hard copies at the meeting.  We will collect full dues for this year--i.e., $25--even though we are at the half-year mark.  We really need some operating money to get us started.  I hope that's okay with everyone!  If you plan to be an on-line member only--that is you won't come to in-person meetings or sew-ins--you don't have to pay membership dues.  However, we'd still love to receive a membership application from you so we can keep you on our membership roster and keep you informed of events.  We'll give more information on that later.)

We will have membership cards ready for paying, full members of the guild.  And I've spoken to at least one local quilt shop (Quilts Plus; thank you, Quilts Plus!), who will provide a 10% discount on purchase to card-carrying members of the guild!  I'll be speaking with other quilt shops about this soon!

Bylaws (People wanted these early so they could look them over before our meeting.  Please download these and review them, if you'd like.  We'll be discussing and hopefully ratifying them at our meeting.)

This will be the last "business" meeting of the guild.  From now on, our meetings will be more "program" oriented!  Yay!  So, please come and help us finalize all of our plans!

Agenda:

1. Discuss and vote on bylaws.
2. Take membership applications and pass out membership cards.
3. Draw a winner for the block challenge we did last month.
4. Discuss committees, chairs, and members.  These are some suggestions:
   Membership Committee
   Program Committee (on-site and on-line--same or different committees?
   Sew-in Organizers
5. Discuss on-line activity for June
6. Discuss ideas for supporting our local quilt shops
7. Show and Tell!

I am looking forward to seeing you all on Saturday!

Stephanie
(AKA "The Big Kahuna")

Deadline Approaching for April Challenge--Important Information

Hi Everyone!  Hope you have been surviving all this cold weather we've been having.  Hopefully we are in for a warm up soon, right?

Many people have been busy making blocks for our April on-line activity.  Remember, we are making blocks from the Converging Corners tutorial.  If you need to access the instructions for the rules of the challenge, visit our previous blog post about it.  Below are some of the blocks that have been submitted and are currently on the Flickr page for the group. 

1. Jane, 2. Carol, 3. Marlene, 4. Diana2, 5. Diana1, 6. Joanne, 7. Tina, 8. Carolyn's Converging Corners block, 9. 14Apr2013blog2, 10. CIMG1876, 11. 14Apr2014blog, 12. Converging Corners 1

There is some fun stuff going on with this challenge!  You are going to want to get in on this!  :-)

THE DEADLINE FOR PARTICIPATING IS APRIL 27.  Please have your photos uploaded to the Flickr page or our Facebook page by then to be in on the drawing.  If you need help or can't upload, you can e-mail Carolyn.  (See previous post with instructions for doing that.)

Now, a few pieces of important information for all the participants:

• We are going to draw for a winner of all the blocks at our next live meeting, which is May 18.  You do not need to be present to win.
• You get your name in the drawing each time you enter a block.  So, if you submit two blocks, your name goes in the drawing twice!
• Please bring your completed block to the May meeting so all the blocks can be delivered to the winner.  If the winner is not at the meeting, we will mail them to him/her.
• We'll post the name of the winner here on the blog.  So, if we don't have your email address, check the blog so you can see if you won and can send us your contact information.  (If you are at the meeting, you'll get your blocks on the spot!)
• If you will not be at the meeting, either
• Give the block to a friend to bring it for you, or
• Mail it to me.  E-mail us at glmodernquilter@gmail.com, and we'll send you the mailing address where you can send your blocks.

For me, this has been a really fun challenge.  I hope you have found it entertaining as well.  I'm going to be really interested to see how the winner finishes the blocks!

Thanks to everyone who has played along!  It has been fun!  Remember, there is still time!

Hugs,
Stephanie
AKA "The Big Kahuna"

Improvisational Piecing

At the sew-in last week, Jackie demonstrated her improvisational piecing technique.  Stephanie ran with it! See the beautiful results on her blog post .