Best/favorite guild activities - I need ideas!

[PDQuilt]

Hi there!
I've only been a member for a year, but I would like to help out our guild who have just found out that we will not have a program director - starting in TWO weeks! I thought I'd ask for your help in giving me suggestions. We have about 35 members, we meet twice a month in the evening. I'd like ideas for short evening activities as well as some ideas that could be on-going (like last year we did a mystery quilt) . What's your best/most fun/most interesting or challenging activity? I am scouring the internet and grilling my guild friends - there are lots of ideas and activities out there but I would appreciate you telling me what has worked for you? Please help!I know I can count on my TQS sisters (and brothers!) Thanks.

[Margo]

If the group has been together for a long time, it might be fun to spend one meeting sharing a tidbit of information about your life that most of the members are not aware of! That could be interesting! :wink:

[Margo]

My small guild (about 20 members) just played "quilt bingo" last week with 25-patch blocks. I can send the instructions if you send me an e-mail. For our regular monthly meetings, different members sign up to present a program on a sewing-related subject, as we don't have much of a treasury to hire outside speakers. For on-going projects, we have our UFO challenge, which involves each person noting on an index card (one member keeps the cards to keep us honest!) what UFO's she hopes to complete during the year. At the meeting where the UFO's will be shared, a small project will win one entry and a larger one will earn two, into a drawing for some nice door prizes. We also record a personal challenge for the year, and these are shown at another meeting. (For example, my personal challenge for this year is to make a circular quilt using a 9-degree wedge ruler.) Finally, we did a "magazine page" project this year. We each brought a magazine of our choice to a meeting earlier in the year. The magazines were passed around the circle so that each had a different one than the one they had brought. Two numbers were chosen at random from a jar - the numbers "4" and "2" were picked, so we each turned to page 42 in the magazine we held. The challenge is to make a project using some inspiration from the page - it could be a color, a word, an item in a picture, etc. Mine turned out to be easy to settle on. I've been collecting Wizard of Oz fabrics for a few years. My magazine page had a picture of a woman in a green dress trying on red shoes! So I've finally made the Wizard quilt. (The poor gals whose page 42 was the black and white "words" page next to a drug ad will have a tougher time!)

[Margo]

ONE fun activity our group did was.... bring in the first quilt for show and tell... we all told stories about the quilt.... if they do not have the first quilt.... then they bring their UGLIEST quilt.... telling cautionary tales about quilting disasters. We also had a night when we brought in our favorite quilts talking about why they are favorite.

Have night where you sew for a charity.... local is best as charity begins at home.... or AMI SIMM's Art Quilt Initiatives needs quilts for their auction. We love doing different type of activities to explore. We had a fun Saturday afternoon event where we dyed fabrics, used bleach discharge, sun bleaching, etc outside on the lawn. We usually bought a book on something different to do for the guild / group library and then did techniques out of the book. Doing things together is what makes it fun.

Lady Rags aka NONNIE ..

[Margo]

How about a library evening, everyone brings a selection of books off their shelves and swaps them about for the evening, so that everyone can check out other books that they don't have.

[Reetzbobeetz]

Our group is very small - just 9 of us! But every year we have made a halloween and Christmas single bed quilt which we have raffled off at our children's school. The children love it because for just €1 they might be the lucky winner. All money raised goes either to the school itself for necessary supplies or to a charity of their choice. The junior school has just 240 pupils but even so we always manage to raise somewhere between €800 and €1000.

Our summer project this year has been to make a 15" quilt block for everybody in the group. Because there are 9 of us this means that we each make 1 block for everybody else (that's 8) and 1 for ourselves.So we each end up with a total of 9 blocks - a handy size for a small quilt. Everybody chose their theme - e.g. birds, flowers, fish, bugs etc., and our challenge was that we each had to come up with something that we think suits that person. We also agreed to do appliqué rather than piecing. As for colours, we agreed on a cream cotton background but other than that it is up to the individual how they use the space and what colours they choose. We agreed to quilt as you go so that when each of us receives the completed square we will just have to sash them together and have a small quilt. It will be like a memory quilt i guess. I can't wait to see what everybody else has done through the summer when we meet up again in September. This block was for Julie who comes from Nova Scotia and she wanted maple leaves!

[Lorchen]

Everybody brings a finished textile piece (quilt, wallhanging, postcard, place mat). It doesn't have to be made by yourself. It can be the work of somebody else. You show the piece and then tell the story behind it (why you made it, or how it was made, or where you got the inspiration from, or where you found the fabrics, or how come you own the piece - anything goes). The others then have to decide if your story is true or false.

If you want a little more chat, then everybody has to tell three stories about their piece and the others have to decide which one is the true one.

You can even get somebody to keep the scores and the person who guessed most correctly gets a small prize.

[rehak]

Hi -

I'm in a larger guild with getting close to 200 members now. But we still do some fun things that I think can work for guilds of any size:
- We do a mystery quilt each year, like you suggested
- We have charity sew days and also have kits available for people to work on at home for charity. There are kits for doing everything from just sewing blocks (possibly just instructions, but maybe also a piece of common fabric to use), to the finaly binding stage so that everyone can participate in whatever part of the process works for them. The blocks are kept simple so that people of all abilities can participate.
- Last year we did an "ugly fat quarter" challenge. Everyone brought in a fat quarter of "ugly" fabric from their stash. They were randomly exchanged and then you had to create something using that fabric in the piece.
- We have a schoolhouse day where we have stations where different guild members teach different small techniques that can be taught in a 20 minute time frame. This can be massaged to be, as someone suggested, a different member teaching a different technique at each meeting.
- We have UFO sew days that are separate from the guild meetings, but in a small guild could replace some meetings.
- We have outings to a local quilt museum or quilt show. Could also be a quilt shop outing.

Those are all of the things I can think of right now. I've only been a member of the guild for a year now, so don't know what other activities have occurred before that.

[rehak]

You've received some great suggestions so far, but no one mentioned a Jelly Roll Quilt Race. I've not participated in one yet, but it sure looks like a lot of fun. There could be prizes for the first, second and third ones to finish. If you are not familiar with a Jelly Roll Quilt race, there are lots of examples on the internet. Here's a link to just one of the best---> http://blog.heirloomcreations.net/?p=1897

[rehak]

that looks like a lot of fun.

for ideas, I am currently involved with a fat 8 th swap. one each yellow and purple, any shade or print as long as it read yellow or purple. Add a focal fabric and one other fabric. It can be any design and size.

[Lorchen]

This jelly roll race sounds fun, but....... A jelly roll costs close to £30 here in the UK. That would be a very expensive activity, and somemembers may not be able to participate because they simply can't afford to. I think it's always the number one priority that challenges and activities for groups or guilds are accessible for everybody.

[Lorchen]

Lorchen, you could always make strips from your stash. Make it scrappy.

[Margo]

Lorchen, you could always make strips from your stash. Make it scrappy.

Good point, Cheryl!

I wanted to try the 1600 type quilt, but didn't want to purchase a jelly roll, so I just cut strips from my stash. It worked fine, but I was just not happy with the plain strips sewn together. I cut the resulting panel into LARGE squares and made them into HSTs and created this quilt! It might be a fun activity/challenge for a guild to see what they can make out of the pieced 1600 top!

[Scoopie]

Each year, in May, we take 4 fat quarter and place them in a small paper bag, and exchange them with our sister guild. We then make "something" from those fat quaters, and present them to the fat quarter owners at our Christmas party. Other fabrics can be added. We got quilts (duh!), place mats, tablerunners, wall hangings and such.

A round robin quilt is also fun.

Each month, at our guild, we "highlight" three members. They bring in 2 or 3 pieces of work that they have done, and do a write up on themselves. It's fun to "get to know" the other members, by visiting the table where these are all layed out. (While sipping our coffee and munching on our cookies.)

Check with the local LQSs and see if someone there can come to the meeting and speak on things such as the different battings, threads, the newest notions, etc, and see if they can bring a donated door prize or two, or give a discount to their store for the attendees.

Once we brought in the lady who serviced the Vikings at the local quilt store, and she gave us pointers on how to do owners maintainance on our machines, with dos and don'ts. The best part was, she brought in this huge ball of "fuzz" that she had removed from one lady's machine. I mean it was 2' in diameter! The woman had used canned air for years, and all the fuzz had been forced down and collected in the machine. (That was a don't!)

Dawn
In beautiful Northwest Montana

[Scoopie]

Once we brought in the lady who surviced the Vikings at the local quilt store,
Dawn
In beautiful Northwest Montana

I really must be more careful when I read things, I thought that you were writing 'Survived the Vikings'! :shock: and my brain was going WHAAAT I thought that the Vikings were from 1000 years ago and had stopped those sort of activities of plunder etc. Then I wondered whether it was a local chapter of the SCA, next I wondered if Brink had turned up for a shopping spree :wink: Finally I spotted the 'c' :idea: Viking sewing machine maintenance - Duh ops: