You may find a quilt friend at events you enjoy. I recently attending a county fair and talked to a group quilting a donation raffle quilt. They said their group had two and only two rules. You must like to laugh and you must enjoy making and taking jokes. Worked for me!

Currently I am in a Tuesday afternoon (1 to about 4 or 5) quiling group with two other ladies. I met them at a Quilting store and we were taking the free motion class from Julie Lambert. We got to talking and we have been meeting at the one house since January of this year. We all work on the same project so we can help each other. I love it! I have made two wonderful friends and we have gone a a shop hop too! I hope you can fine some new friends out there this way! ALSO, I helped to start a quilting once a month on Tuesday morning group. I must say they are so nice and have wonderful ideas too. I have not been able to attend regularly as my Mother is in bad health and it never fails that I have doc. appts. and such for Mom. But I do try to get there as often as I can. I quilt at home but it is more fun when you got someone to talk to. Everyone has good advice and suggestions for helping me and I LOVE IT!!!!

I have a few friends that I meet with at my house. We don't meet all the time. But we do get together and teach each other quilting stuff the other didn't know. We don't meet 3 times a year.

Once a year, 1 of them will go with me to Houston for the Internal Quilt show.

Odessa must be in Eastern Wa. To bad we aren't closer,I live in Olympia. You can also visit your local LAQ to see if they have classes like mine does, plus she offers a week-end work shops every 3 months at her club house. Best part we all get to sleep in our own beds. but we have a blast.

I notice you are in Central Ill. I feel the same way about quilting. In fact I get my energy and enthusiasm from my friends.If I lived close to you I would sew with you and talk quilting!

I met my quilting buddy here online -- we email with pictures and ideas often and get together occasionally, like our guild meeting tonight -- maybe you can find someone near -- my qulting buddy lives just a few miles away in my area -- I really enjoy having a buddy!

me too...tried to start one at the Senior Center but there are many guilds in this area so guess no one is interested. I wanted to have us help each other or make quilts jointly for charity but the one time a few of us did meet, it turned out to be a "who knows best kinda thing"... ......completely turned me off!

I have met alot of my qulting friends through visits to the quilt shops. Talk with the gals that are shopping in the shops. Amazing how many of them need a friend to quilt with.
I live in a town where alot of the gals were born and raised and have their own little groups but more of us are moving in. I have been here 32 years now and have gotten to knwo alot of the people. I hate snobs so as I always say "I am the birtch that will make one of the snobs talk to me come hell ot high water." They find out that they aren't any better then we new comers are. Amazing how they finally decide to be friendly to the newcomers. They learn that we can have good ideas also, not just them. We have one gal in our guild who has quit because she thought I was taking over her preemee quilt project when all I did was suggest a workshop to make more preemee quilts so that she had more to send out. Well she tried to ignore me but I talked to her as if nothing had happened. Guess who is off her high horse now. I just can't stand people who are like that but I just have to talk to them to make a point.

I see you are from central Illinois. If you live close to Morton IL, the quilt shop there, Quilt Corner, used to host a retreat once a year. It's been 5 years or so since I went to one of their retreats, but if they still do them, it would be a great way to meet quilters without the pressures of a guild. It gives you an opportunity to spend 3-4 days with a large group of quilters. By the end of the retreat, you may pick up a few friends!

I got started on this whole adventure by just seeing what my senior center had, I have never felt so welcome to agroup in my life. Even though I didn't even know how to sew. Love my group.