ZOOOOM!
These are difficult times, unprecedented for most of us. The news is sobering. Some of us are fortunate under the circumstances. Other members may be facing challenges and even losses of family or friends, and to those members, we hope you know that our thoughts are with you.
We hope you have all been able to find pleasure and relief from the daily stress in your sewing. Thank you to all of you who have lifted our spirits with photographs of your comfort quilts, masks, works in progress and quilting stories. These photographs are fun to see and inspiring to us all. Please keep sending them in.
Our May and June meetings are cancelled. Kennedy Catholic is still closed for the time being. We are continually considering our options regarding guild activities and will be sure to keep you informed.
We are missing the opportunity to see each other in person but online we have been treated to the striking quilts in Timna Tarr’s chronicle of her quilting history and educated by Cindy Grisdela’s experiments with color choices and improvised combinations in her lecture and workshop.
Although our May meeting is cancelled, Linda Stern has pulled another rabbit out of the hat and Joe Cunningham will be giving us a tour of his San Francisco studio and his quilts via Zoom that evening. More to follow. Linda definitely deserves a standing ovation! Thanks to Anne MacDonald who has been volunteering her Zoom skills and smoothing the way for these events.
Also at the May meeting we would normally have voted on the nominations for Board officers for 2020-2021. Unfortunately, that vote will have to be postponed.
We want to thank those members who have agreed to be nominees for next year’s board: Secretary: Rona Spar; Co-Treasurers: Rebekah Glacy and Karen Martinez; Co-Vice Presidents: Communications – Daisy Dodge and Deborah Warren; Vice President: Membership – Carol Sterk: Vice President: Programs – Linda Stern; Vice Presidents: Quilt Show – Narcita Medina.
We are also grateful to Susan Fasnacht who will continue to give us the benefit of her advice as former President, to Kathy Keane and Nancy Picco who continue to chair Hospitality, to Deborah Tashjian as returning Librarian, to Dee Plouffe who will be chairing Charitable Activities, to Anne MacDonald who will be Assistant to the President and to April Russell who will be the Activities Liaison.
Who could have imagined that we would have the opportunity to put our sewing skills to use in a national emergency? Many of our members have answered the call and have been very busy sewing masks for hospitals, nursing homes, first responders and other organizations. Be sure to see Susan’s update below about the guild’s face mask production; Carol Auer has been a very busy mask maker, having sewn 650+ masks!
Jennifer Larrabee is putting together a quilt, hopefully to be hung at next year’s quilt show, collecting 6½” blocks made from scraps of fabric used for masks or other PPE. See the committee news below for details.
The Raffle continues, despite the Quilt Show cancellation, with the opportunity to win the beautiful Sunshine Star Cabins quilt organized by Pat Julian and a Bernina Sewing Machine donated by Pins and Needles. This is your opportunity to support our 2020 charity, New Dawn Family Resource Center. Please help by donating and by returning your raffle tickets, see Anne’s information below. The Raffle Drawing will take place May 19, hopefully via Zoom before Joe Cunningham’s talk.
Signs and colors of spring are all around us in the new growth pushing through the soil, the trees coming into bud, and the blossom – all harbingers of renewal and the arrival of happier times as well as sparks for our creative imaginations!
Keep on sewing and by next spring may we will all be together enjoying the wonderful quilts of our Quilt Show.
Wishing you all health.
Anne and Karen, president@northernstarquilters.com
May 2020