Did anyone make it to the Stitches show in Pasadena at the start of the month? If you didn’t get a chance to see our booth and our quilt display, check out our guild’s Facebook page – both venues looked fabulous! Thanks to the setup crew of Terry Simon (and her Sherpa, Howard), Robin Clarke, and Marilyn Brisendine, who did a terrific job. And many thanks to all of you who volunteered to staff the booth during the show. To be honest, when we were invited on such short notice, I really didn’t think we’d fill all the slots – but you all proved me wrong! The show was mostly geared towards yarn artists (kintters/crocheters), but there are enough overlapping interests among fiber artists (I bet a lot of you knit, too) that we generated a fair amount of attention – traffic was reportedly slow on Sunday, but on Friday and Saturday we handed out about 40 copies of our newsletter and about 100 fliers about the guild. Stitches is coming back to SoCal again next year, and we’ve already been invited back – the organizers tell us that they’re interested in increasing their target market to quilters as well as knitters, so they’re planning to offer more fabric vendors and items of interest to quilt folk next year. Stay tuned for more details!
We’ve also been invited to demonstrate at the Fiber Arts Day on May 4, 2019 at the Huntington Library & Botanical Gardens. This is another event that traditionally has been geared toward other fiber artists – we are the first quilt guild ever to be invited. (In May, we’ll be sharing space with 4 spinning and weaving guilds.) The venue is outdoors (under the trees, which will be nice!) with limited-to-no access to electricity, so demonstrations will have to consist of handwork (no machine demos). It’s a full-day event, which we’ll probably break up into several shifts, and we are allowed free entry for up to 12 demonstrators from the guild. After the craziness of the December holidays is past, we’ll be offering sign-up sheets for people who are interested in participating – another great opportunity to showcase the guild to people who might not yet know they need to join us!
While volunteering at outside events like these is a great way to support the guild, we also need people to volunteer within the group as well. As you heard at the last meeting, we DO have a full slate of nominees for the elected offices who will be voted on in November and installed in December – again, many thanks to all of you who have agreed to serve! But in addition to the elected officers, there are quite a few unelected slots to fill – just take a look at the first page of your membership roster to get an idea of how many people it takes to keep the guild running smoothly! I haven’t spoken with quite everyone yet – but I already know that, while some of these Directors and Chairpersons are willing to continue, others are ready to hand their roles over to someone else. We’ll be letting you all know which positions we need to fill once we have our full list. The job descriptions for the various Directors-at-Large and Standing Committee Chairs are on pages 19-20 of the current roster – please take a look, and if you think you’d be interested in filling any of the open positions, please let me or another Board member know! Remember, it takes a village to run a quilt guild. Or something like that.
See you at the meeting.