admin2

Pillowcases donated to Elizabeth Seton Childrens Center

NSQG member Lisa Mason has delivered 165 pillowcases, 86 provided by NSQG members. Her daughter, Caroline, is going to set up a shop at the hospital and give each of the kids a ticket. They can then come with their therapist to “buy” their own pillowcase. Lisa’s thanks to everyone for helping out, it means so much.

NSQG Presidents’ Message December 2019

We hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving and are now looking forward to the holiday season.

At the Guild, the season of giving has already begun!

The response to Lisa Mason’s request for pillowcases for children at the Elizabeth Seton hospital was wonderful. She received 86 pillowcases from the Guild which will add fun and color to the children’s beds.

Kathy Keane was able to deliver a carload of reusable shopping bags, donated by members, to an area Food Pantry so that, come spring, when the new state plastic bag law comes into effect the Pantry can use its resources to buying food for those families who need it.

Since June, Comfort Quilts has already donated 139 quilts to local care organizations. This might be an all-time record!

The Blocks of the Peace Quilt created by children at the New Rochelle Middle School were beautifully put together by Guild members and the completed quilt can now be hung and displayed at the school.

Thank you to all those members who donate their time and talent to help the Guild make a difference in our area.

Thanks also to all of you who supported the November boutiques.  The vendors all reported enthusiastic buyers and brisk sales and were very happy with the sales results.

If you haven’t already, we hope that you will pick up your tickets for the 2020 Quilt Show raffle at the December Guild meeting.  This will help Anne MacDonald – and save the Guild postage! The beneficiary of the proceeds of the raffle will be New Dawn Family Resource Center which provides resources to victims of domestic abuse. Dick Lyman, a Board member, spoke at our last meeting about the resources that this very worthwhile organization provides to victims of domestic violence.

Lisa at Pins and Needles has kindly agreed once again to donate a Bernina sewing machine for the 2019 raffle. Pins and Needles has recently moved to beautiful new and larger space at Radio Circle in Mount Kisco, so if you are looking to buy some fabric or notions, you will want to stop by — and also pass along all our appreciation.

Daisy Dodge has assembled the block kits for the 2021 raffle quilt and they too are available for pick up at the next Guild meeting. This quilt promises to be as beautiful as the 2020 quilt and we thank Daisy for all the creativity and hard work she is putting into it.

Hope to see you on December 17.  Until then, stay dry and warm!

Karen and Anne, president@northernstarquilters.com
December 2019

B.T.W.  Don’t forget to send your photos to Sarah for our Instagram account: social@northernstarquilters.com!

CQ Summer Project Raffle Display

We received an outpouring of email to let us know how happy you were that Kennedy Catholic has invited us to continue to have our meetings at the school.  There was definitely a collective sigh of relief!

A couple of weeks ago Althea dropped off three lovely quilts , made by Guild members, as our contribution to Kennedy Catholic’s Auction.  It is a big fundraiser for the school and is being held on Saturday, November 16, 2019, from 6:00p.m. to 10p.m. You can learn more about their ‘Winter Wonderland’ Auction here.

Being able to stay in our “home” at Kennedy also means that we are no longer distracted searching for new space and we can now focus on what we love to do!

One of the wonderful benefits of Guild membership is to be able to learn from other members and be inspired by their ideas:  Super Saturday, demos, Show and Tell and our SIGs are all opportunities to hone our skills and get the creative juices flowing.  We are now hoping to expand our Facebook and Instagram accounts to share what we are doing and working on or experimenting with.  If you have anything of interest to offer — be it a particular quilting technique that would make a good demo or simply photographs of quilt shows you have attended or quilts, finished or in progress, we hope that you will enrich the Guild by stepping forward to share your knowledge and experiences and photos.

Thank you to all of you who made our Comfort Quilt summer challenge raffle such a success!  Comfort Quilts raised $300 which will help purchase materials for the program.

Our meeting this month is Tuesday, November 19.  This month we hold the Boutique which will start at 5:30 p.m., so please come early and support our member vendors as well as pick up some great bargains from Comfort Quilts.  Our program will be given by Charlie Hietala who will be presenting on thread painting which should be a great introduction for many of us on a way to add to our quilting toolbox. There are still 4 spots available for the workshop if you would like to attend.

We also hope to be rolling out a brand new audio system in the cafeteria so we are looking forward to hearing how that’s working!!!

See you then.

Anne and Karen
president@northernstarquilters.com
November 2019

1984 NY Times

Happy Fall!

That buzz you hear isn’t just those busy fall bees and pesky wasps – it is the sound coming from the hive of activity at the Guild!

The September meeting was not only an opportunity for us all to get together with Guild friends and share what we have been doing over the summer months but to get back into our SIGs, to learn about all the programs that the Guild is offering and enjoy a very instructive lecture by Ann Holmes on her method of piecing and quilting a quilt in one process.

In addition to our regular SIG’s there are three new ones this year – one on basic skills that is being taught by Diane Linker, another on making a sweatshirt jacket, led by Linda Ostrander and the third on applique led by Judy Mayer.  The basic skills and applique will be of particular interest to beginners.  Our other SIG’s include Art Quilters (Joanne Lubchenko), ImProv (Meg Mooar and Jane Eyes), Landscape/Pictorial (Don Gough), Long Arm Quilters (Diane Linker) and Paper Piecing (Susan Deshensky).  Please check the website for a description of all of the SIG’s and the meeting times.

The response to the new Row by Row quilting group has been resounding: Fifty members have signed up. Patricia was hoping for five teams, she now has ten!

The raffle quilt for the 2020 Quilt Show was on display and it is stunning.  A big thank you to Pat Julian for designing, coordinating and assembling the quilt, and to Angela Vertucci for quilting it so beautifully.

Comfort Quilts reports that 72 quilts have been donated this past quarter. The Guild has every reason to be proud of its charitable work in donating quilts to hospitals and social services organizations for women and children, including Blythedale Children’s Hospital, NICU’s at Northern Westchester Hospital and Maria Ferari, Pleasantville Cottage School, Kids in Crisis and Putnam/Northern Westchester Women’s Resource Center. At our October meeting we will all have a chance to see the results of the Comfort Quilters summer project!

Sarah Schattschneider, Linda Stern’s daughter, has very kindly offered to help Daisy and Debby in their efforts to keep members in touch with what is happening in the Guild and to reach out to potential new members by handling the Guild’s Instagram account. Please send along any photos to Daisy, Debby and Sarah for them to upload to the account so that the Guild will have a lively and interesting online forum.  For those of you on Instagram, please follow our Instagram account @northernstarquilters!!

The new option to pay our membership fees by credit card online was a great success – 50 members chose to pay online.  We are now looking into the possibility of offering the same online payment option for our programs and events.

After researching a number of other potential locations for our Guild meetings, it was clear that, wherever we go, we will have to pay more for our space going forward. That prompted us to return to Kennedy to explore the possibility of continuing to hold our meetings there.  Kennedy is considering a proposal that we have made which will involve an increase in the fee we pay. We will keep you all posted!

Sheila Cuttner, the Arts Westchester Ambassador, and her friend Melinda Stein, very much enjoyed their visit and were impressed by how friendly everyone was.  Thank you for rolling out the welcome mat.  Another Arts Westchester Ambassador, Sudha Yerneni, will be attending our October meeting.  The Guild has already received a generous grant from Arts Westchester to support our lectures and workshops and Susan Fasnacht has worked hard over the last two weeks to put together and submit our application for another grant for the coming year.  Fingers crossed!

Our next meeting will be October 15 at 6:30 p.m. Please remember to bring reusable bags for Kathy to give to the local Food Pantries and beige fabric so that Daisy can start to put together the kits for in 2021 raffle quilt.

Enjoy the beautiful fall weather.  Keep quilting!

Anne and Karen
president@northernstarquilters.com

We hope you all had an enjoyable summer.

As we start the new Guild year, a warm welcome back to renewing members and greetings to new members.  We are looking forward to another year of interesting and educational programs and opportunities for socializing and learning from each other.

To start, just a couple of reminders:

The first meeting of the new Guild year will be held on September 24 (the fourth NOT the third Tuesday of the month).

All Guild meetings, while we remain at Kennedy Catholic, will start at 6:30pm and we must be out of the building before 9pm.

For those attending SIG’s that take place before the Guild meeting, please check with the SIG leader for any time change.

We have been working hard over the summer to find a new home for our Guild meetings.  We have contacted a number of places and also been to see a few.  Cost is a factor, as is parking.  However, the Harvey School in Katonah is a serious contender.  It is not too far from where we meet now and has a number of other benefits. We will keep you posted over the next few weeks as we continue our search and discuss details with Harvey.

Super Saturday will be in a new place next year.  Annette Nash-Govan and Pooa Bloomberg found us space at the Ossining High School.  It will be held on February 15, 2020. Please contact Annette (supersaturday@northernstarquilters) if you would like to teach one of the classes.

Changes are definitely in the air! In addition to location changes, the Board is aiming to adopt some of the suggestions made in response to the Guild survey – including initiatives to make new members feel more at home, opportunities to socialize through quilting, and more classes which cover basic quilting techniques. Kudos to Carol Sterk and her committee for organizing the survey and proposing a number of recommendations to the Board.

Some members have already swung into action!  Over the summer, Rosemary DePaola and Diane Linker taught a basic class in quilting skills on Wednesday afternoons at Comfort Quilts and Patricia Loquet is organizing a Row by Row team program which will be a great way for people to get together and quilt during the year.

Comfort Quilts is always a wonderful place to meet and socialize with other Guild members and to learn from experienced quilters.   Join the group on Wednesdays in North Salem if you have the chance!

Thank you to all the people who have stepped forward to volunteer – to run SIGs, to work on Quilt Show committees and to support the host of other activities that are needed to keep the Guild a vibrant and educational home for us all.

Volunteers are always welcome and if you have ideas for new programs that you think will interest the membership, or would like to provide support to programs already in place, please don’t be shy! (We are still looking for a member to chair the Special Events committee.  This is a great way to get involved and does not require a substantial time commitment.)

We hope that you enjoy all the Guild has to offer and that this year is a fun and rewarding one for us all.

Anne Chehebar and Karen Carlson, Co-Presidents, president@northernstarquilters.com

Anne Chehebar and Karen Carlson, president@northernstarquilters.com

–

Help make NSQG even better-click to take our survey

What a wonderful show to celebrate “A World of Quilts” 40^th Anniversary!  I want to thank everyone who helped make it so successful – those of you who had quilts on display or donated a piece to the silent auction; members who volunteered at quilt drop off, judging or during the show itself; the quilt show committee chairs; and especially Daisy and Debby who did such a terrific job of organizing and running the event.  We could not have done it so well without all of you helping.  As an acknowledgment to how good it was, I had several attendees say that our show was better than the Mancuso show!

Although not all of the numbers are in, it looks like the show was also a financial success – between that and other  positive increases in revenues and savings in expenses throughout the year, it appears that the overall Guild will break even for 2018/2019 – again, a big improvement over our budget for this year.

I also want to thank Carol Sterk and her Member Retention and Expansion Committee for all of the work they have been doing.  We had ten new members sign up at the Quilt Show and the eleventh at our May meeting.  We are now just shy of 200 members!  To make sure we retain new members and meet the needs of our long time members, the Committee created a questionnaire to help us understand what people expect from us.  If you did not fill out a questionnaire either at the May meeting or online, please do so.  The link to the online questionnaire is https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/GQQB736.  Or if you prefer, you can complete one at the June Salad Supper.  The committee will be evaluating the answers over the next few weeks so that next year’s Board can address any issues that were raised and take action.

Finally, I want to thank this year’s Board for all of their help and work throughout the year.  Without their hard work we would not have had such a great year.  I also want to thank all of the guild members for their support and understanding of the changes we have made to improve the finances of the Guild.  It appears to have worked.  I know the new Board will continue to look for ways to improve how we operate and I wish them lots of success.

I hope to see many of you at the Salad Supper on June 18 – remember the meeting starts at 6:00 that night.

Susan Fasnacht, Acting President, president@northernstarquilters.com