I always hesitated in joining a quild - always pictured a room filled with older people sitting around a wooden frame with a quilt in place being hand sewn on until about 5 years ago. A new friend I made at a local craft show talked me into attending one of their meetings where they were learning how to do miniature landscape quilts and it's been a real joy to be a part of this band of merry people since. I've learned so much from all the talents within this group of people of about 100 or so quilters ranging in age from 9 to 80+. Mostly women, a few children and two or three men pop in off and on. And their backgroups are so diverse - teachers, lawyers, accountants, nurses, doctors, office managers, park rangers, full time moms, students, geologists, retired business owners and the list goes on.
We meet Jan thru Oct once a month on the 4th Thursday evening at a local church. We do share upcoming events, guild business, a trade table, another table that has adoptable kits to make community service projects from, show n tell and other things that come up. During the year we have a number of things going on with the Guild - hand sewing classes, workshops where we learn new techniques, trunkshows, well known quilt lecturers and open sewing days held on other days of the week at another local church and our only quilt shop. All of our community service projects are donated yearly to different organizations, this year the quilts, receiving blankets, pillowcases, walker pouches and backpacks went to one of our local Adult assisted environment, a service that houses special needs adults get back out in the working world, veterans at a local VA hospital and our pediatric ward at our local hospital.
We also have two retreats every year for the members, no planned projects just a great time to get away, spend time with a special friend and make new ones, sleeping in cabins located in a local forest, where we have someone else do all the cooking and sew as long as you want.
We also help in the organizing, displaying and answering of questions at our local county fair every year. Some of us also do demonstrations during the fair to get people interested and possibly joining us.
And then every other year our guild puts on a Quilt show in our local library and what a display that is.
As you can see there are many different quilds out there, you just need to attend one or two to see if it fits your needs.
I could go on and on but I did want to add one more little thing - I'm the current president of our Guild and if you do chose to join one I can't encourage you enough - get involved so you can help them grow and have a say on things that can be done to help your community through all of them and their endeavors and in what they can learn from each other.