I would like to thank all of our members who came to the AGM on Tuesday February 25th. The rain came in the nick of time and got rid of that snow. It is a meeting we must have and I was pleased by the participation we had. One member was brave enough to hold her hand up in disagreement with a motion and so then we had a bit of discussion and then an amendment to the motion. It really did help to clarify the motion so thank you Barbara.

I am pleased to welcome the following people to the Executive: Debbie Barrett as Vice President; Suzanne Patchell as Treasurer; Laurel Hickey as Newsletter Editor; Joan Herrin as Membership(one year); Sonia Milanez and Joan Gold as Librarians and Norine McCaffrey as one of our Members-at-Large. They have all agreed to serve for two years with Joan taking over from Kate Burzuk for one year. The rest of the Executive who are in their second year of a two year term are: myself (Betty Clarke) as your President; Paulette Morton as Secretary; Anne Pelton as Workshops Coordinator and Joan Elliott as one of our Members-at-Large. Programs Coordinator has not been filled as yet.

The Walk to Brock Challenge has been extended to mid June 2014. So, we shall continue to measure those quilts that are shown at guild meetings and Dorothy Porter is going to make sure we submit the circumference measurements of all of our Show Quilts. Boy, we are going to have many, many inches of quilting to be proud of. Dorothy submitted a total of 3,032 inches to CQA for the month of February. That brings our grand total to 29,008 inches or roughly 734.38 metres of quilt circumferences. This is kind of fun. Perhaps someone in the guild would volunteer to make some kind of graph showing our progress. I shall leave that with you.

The past weekend was our Community Quilts weekend. I had a wonderful sewing experience. The coffee and tea were always ready along with super goodies and I ordered a fabulous sandwich for lunch. It felt like being on a Retreat. On Friday night we were even allowed to leave our sewing machines set up ready to start again the next day. The Community Quilts committee must be congratulated on doing such a fine job. It is a great deal of work to set the hall up, organize furniture and people to work on a variety of tasks, and keep us all happy with caffeine and sugar. Community Quilts will have kits available at our next guild meeting for anyone interested in helping out and contributing to this worthwhile guild endeavour. In May, part of our Program will be to celebrate the fruits of our labour and enjoy the wonderful feelings of accomplishment. Our guild efforts give comfort and enjoyment to so many people. We should be very proud of ourselves. Even if you make just one quilt it may make a difference in someone’s life.

Our next guild meeting is on Tuesday, March 25th. Don’t forget the usual items: your name tag; mug; money or cheques for library book fines, raffle quilt tickets, 50/50 tickets, workshop registration; library books; your Show and Tell; Quilt Show registrations forms; and your smiley faces. I shall see you all soon. (We need 2 extra bodies in the kitchen at 7:00, please help).

Happy Quilting,
Betty