GALA Guild Newsletter for August 2021
Hello to all in the guild – which has grown by about 6 new members in recent months!
We had a great meeting in July. We continued to work on my challenge of making placemats to donate to Meals on Wheels during our morning workshop. I have spoken to Kim Prescott who is the Director of Operations at their parent organization – Direct Service Corporation. They serve 16 counties. In Muscogee County they have 601 clients!! So that’s my challenge to see if we can make 600 placements. That would mean 30 of us would make 20 each! That’s a crazy number, I know. Just something to try for – we’ll do our best. If anyone needs help with fabric please ask me. We also have 2 boxes of scraps in the hall closet that anyone can use. Linda Jones has a supply of orphan blocks to turn into placemats. The Meals program gives about 50 clients a month a birthday card, so one way they might use the mats is to give them out on birthdays.
We had a sale at the July meeting of our recently deceased member Alana Losonsky’s supplies and items. Her husband very generously donated the proceeds to our guild, which has helped our treasury a great deal. There will more for sale from Alana’s quilter’s estate at our next meeting. You will be able to shop the middle room starting around 11:30 at our next guild meeting day which is Saturday, August 21. Linda Hayes and Frances Thomason have coordinated the sale and done all the work to sort, label, transport, price and sell the items. We, the guild, thank you!
The morning workshop on August 21 will be led by Alberta Powell. She is teaching us how to make a small design board. These are very useful for carrying around cut pieces of fabric, arranging quilt blocks, bringing to your machine, etc. Please buy a piece of coreboard at a store like Walmart or Dollar Tree and cut it to a size you like. Bring enough batting to fit a little beyond the edges and scissors. Also bring 2 ½” binding and a glue gun and glue sticks to attach it. Alberta will bring a few extra boards and glue guns if you don’t have one. Also bring something to use as a dropcloth for your gluing area such a piece of plastic to spread out. No sewing is required. The workshop starts at 10 AM, doors are open at 9:30.
Please remember to park away from the church door after you have dropped off your items. We need to leave a few spaces near the door for those who can’t walk distances. We encourage 5-8 of us to park across the corner (where 4th Ave ends in a “T” intersection with 16th St). There is a very large parking lot that belongs to a pawn shop. The owners have kindly given us parking permission..
The afternoon program will be presented by Tabby Champion on “Learning about our Singer 221-222”. Tabby is a very skilled sewer/seamstress and has a lot of experience in the quilt shop/quilt fabric industry. If you’ve never owned one of these machines I suggest you try using one. They are beautiful, lightweight, and reliable. And just fun and satisfying to sew on.
On Saturday August 14th we have a guild “Field Trip” day. We meet at Sunday Best Quiltworks in Ellerslie at 10 AM and carpool from there to Warm Springs. We plan on shopping til lunch at 12:30 at The Bulloch House, then return for group shopping at Sunday Best. Those who have signed up are Linda Walker, Alberta Powell, Sandy Wager, Carol Bradshaw, Sunny Pedigo, Jane Mills, Cathy Poyner and Frances Thomason. That makes 8 total. Up to 4 will drive to Warm Springs. We have space for 16 so please join us. Please be on time.
The guild now owns a rolling cart we will keep at the church. It is a small red metal cart that will be stored in the back room. Feel free to use it to haul supplies, sewing stuff, etc. It will useful for carrying the snacks and bottled drinks which are stored in the hall cabinet. Remember that anything stored in our areas needs to kept up off the floor if it can be water damaged. The church also has big rolling cart which I couldn’t find last meeting. The custodian, Alvin, thinks it was upstairs and will try to keep it downstairs for us to use.
I will not be at our meeting this month and I thank Alberta who will chair instead. I strongly recommend we all wear masks to the next meeting because of the spread of the Delta variant COVID, especially if we are among the older set or have health conditions. I believe most of us are vaccinated which should make us relatively safer than being out in other public spaces.
I will attach the minutes from our July meeting, and our schedule of upcoming events.
Hope to see everyone soon.
Linda Walker, President
August 4, 2021
GALA Quilt Guild 