Friday 24 July 2020

Annual General Meeting 2020 + President's Report + Show and tell + New Committee

Hello everyone,
Tonight was the July meeting of the club, followed by the AGM. It was a cold night, with many of our members unable to attend as they were promised to other activities. With the efficient heating at the Letchworth Community Centre, we were a cosy group and it didn't take long to get through the business so that we could have a long socially distanced chat afterwards. New habits, new times we live in.

There was some show and tell to enjoy. Some people have started to bring in their Stay At Home blocks. Each time I lay them out they have multiplied and we get a different effect. Block number 9 was released tonight, brought to you by Judith (and one made by me). I hope you will enjoy making it.
 
Blocks so far.
Liz has been busy
Recently finished gift quilt
Gift quilt returned from Braidwood.
Here are two of our #bushfireblocks - Quilts for Australia, made for the Wollongong Modern Quilt Guild. They will be distributing hundreds of such quilts over the next few months. The tree blocks were made by our members and Sandra assembled them ready for Monika to quilt and now they will go back to Sandra for binding.

Once the General Meeting concluded, the Annual General Meeting was opened and matters discussed. Members will get their minutes in due course. 

President's Report for the year 2019/2020
At last year’s July AGM, Queanbeyan Quilters fully expected to mount our biennial exhibition in April 2020. We carried on preparing in earnest, making sure the completed raffle quilts were valued and photographed and then we designed publicity bookmarks and had them and the raffle tickets printed.

Meanwhile in August we enjoyed a visit to the Canberra Quilters Quilt Exhibition at EPIC, admiring the quilts and visiting the stalls.

In September our featured speaker was Bronwyn Hill, a talented textile artist who now owns the Braidwood Quilt Store. She showed us her incredible work, richly coloured and detailed and was happy to answer all our questions about her construction methods. In October Jenny Bowker AO, quiltmaker extraordinaire, brought many of her beautifully crafted quilts in to show us and told us lots of stories that went with them.

On the first Friday of the month we have tried to run technique nights put on by our members. In October, Julie ran a really interesting one on how to make accordion triangles. This allows you to make half square triangles without repeating colour combinations. In November, I demonstrated how to add a facing to a quilt while our space was shared with a huge influx of wildlife pouch-making individuals who joined us for a few sessions. The pouches and mitts were needed for the rescued and burnt animals as most of the East coast was ablaze. In February Kath Hunt showed us how to make Christmas baubles, some of which are going on the sales table.

At the end of October fourteen of us went up to Lake Crackenback Resort & Spa for a weekend retreat. On arrival the weather was wild but subsequent days were lovely. We worked very hard, ate lots of food, talked a lot and had a great time trying to take the group photograph. It is such a great place to be and daily walks really help to clear the mind and provide relief from all the sitting around.

In November we supplied a steward for the Queanbeyan Show and several members put in quilts then later in the month we discovered that our two steel library cupboards in the office had been vandalised. It was decided they were a write-off and in January two replacement cupboards were bought, assembled and filled and the two old and battered ones were sold for scrap.

In late November Braidwood Quilters hung our gift quilts from buildings in the main street at the 25th Airing of the Quilts in Braidwood. Our members had entered a number of quilts in the indoor exhibitions as well and won some prizes. We also began selling the raffle tickets to an eager audience. No sooner was that over than on Tuesday 26th November the North Black Range fire began, threatening the Kings Highway and Braidwood. Our Braidwood members were cut off and under threat for weeks afterwards. It was not until the 28th January this year that the fire was declared extinguished. Meanwhile the Currowan fire had taken hold: it burnt for 74 days and only finally ended on 9th February. During this time everyone in the local area was affected by smoke and by the extensive road closures and by the high level of stress the fires created. Then came the Beard fire on the 22nd January which was far too close to home. The ACT threw fire units at it and did aerial work and it was all over by the 30th January, although cleanup of dead trees is still visible near the airport.

At our February meeting Christine Payne from Braidwood Heritage Crafts was our special guest. She brought along a good sampling from her shop and lots of us were tempted to take things home. Members also brought along their Bushfire blocks, later made into quilts for the Wollongong Modern Quilt Guild by Sandra Still and quilted by Make IT Quilted Monika. The quilts will be distributed up and down the coast to those affected by the fires.

Just as we were recovering our equilibrium after the fires and getting our own show entries organised, with raffle tickets selling at two venues, the spread of the Covid-19 virus was gaining hold. On the 17th March we cancelled the Exhibition and then face-to-face sessions at Letchworth. Riverside had kindly let us mount a display of quilts in their street window, now just helping to promote sales of raffle tickets, which would still be drawn as advertised. We live-streamed the drawing of the raffle on the 19th April. This included my husband drawing of course my own ticket to win the quilt I had made! It was then redrawn and two of our members ended up winning the first and second prizes and a happy third prize winner was informed of her win.

Once we were all set to stay at home for a while, the club began to have fortnightly on-line social sessions and meetings, with updates and financial reports as usual. On the 27th March the first Stay At Home block was released and since then there have been many more. Show and tell has been a big feature of our sessions, with pictures and notes distributed to all members soon after.

Thank you all for the many, many, lovely gift quilts made by you this year. You have made quilts in such a wide variety of sizes, patterns and colours. Thank you also to the hard-working long arm quilters who have made it possible to finish off these tops and to those who take the time to hand stitch the bindings. We were able to distribute two lots of quilts, each one over a dozen, to Louisa Domestic Violence Service, one lot of quilts to the Ladies From The Land and one lot to Cobargo’s Yuin Folk Club. We distributed over twenty toilet bags full of useful articles to Louisa before Christmas and are already starting preparations for the next lot in December. Some individual quilt presentations were made over the year; to Walk4Babies, to the Pink Party, to Home in Queanbeyan, to an individual in Mogo who had lost property in the fires. Certificates of Appreciation were received from the Salvation Army (Paula organised members to bring in food staples and a Christmas hanging for them in December), Walk4Babies (Sandra made a beautiful quilt that was displayed in the Riverside window) and Barnardos (we gave them some quilts for their young people leaving care).

Moving forward, we have resumed face-to-face sessions (with conditions), we were successful in getting a grant towards the next year’s rent and are now looking forward to preparing for an Exhibition in April 2021.

To conclude I would like to thank the whole Committee for their support over the year and their willingness to attend urgent meetings based on rather unusual circumstances. In particular I would like to thank Bryony for her financial acumen and regular reporting, for unlocking and relocking the centres for both day and evening meetings and a host of other work behind the scenes. Thank you to Narell for organising the library cupboards, the retreat, exhibition sponsorship and guest speakers. Thank you also to Dacia for managing the raffle and our library, to Liz for organising the sales table and the toilet bags, to Sandra for assembling the Bushfire quilts and to all those who made tree blocks for them, to Paula for the idea of the Stay At Home block, to all the block contributors and finally thank you to all the members who joined us online or came along on Thursdays and Fridays to enjoy our hobby together in a spirit of friendship and creativity. I hope you will continue to give your valuable support to our club.

Cassandra Philpot
President 2019 - 2020


There were nominations for every position in the club and they were accepted and confirmed as follows:
President - Cassandra Philpot
Vice-President - Narell Smit
Treasurer - Bryony De La Motte
Secretary - Maryanne Haslam
Committee Members - Dacia Wells, Liz Hendrickson and Lyn Alder 

Congratulations to them all and thank you to the outgoing committee for your commitment over the year.

Thursday 9 July 2020

Presentation in Mogo

Three members of our group availed themselves of a few free days to go down the coast and make a personal presentation to Janine who runs Hidden Treasures in Mogo. For her it has been a year of loss, in personal ways and in the physical loss of property in the terrible fires which swept through Mogo in January. It was our great pleasure to make her a quilt, in blue, so her connection in the group requested for her. Then to be able to personally give it to her was just great, job done!
 
Here is the handover of the freshly-made quilt "Coastal Blues". Note the burnt out trees behind us which are struggling to recover.

Driving up the Clyde mountain, the extent of destruction is obvious.

We took advantage of the rest of the time at the coast to walk the gorgeous beaches, visit the lookouts, hope to see whales on their travels (we didn't see any), visit not one but four different patchwork shops and relax in a lovely house in Broulee. The shops were Steph's Fabrics in Broulee, Rosemont the Patchwork shop in Mogo, Bay Discount Fabrics/Patchwork on the Bay in Batemans Bay and on the way home we visited The Braidwood Quilt Store. Needless to say, there was a fair bit of washing and ironing involved when I returned with more than I had taken. I even managed to finish the hand binding on a quilt as I was not the driver.
New bridge being built over the Clyde