I belong to a guild made up of 18 wonderful women who love to quilt. We meet twice a month and sometimes do projects together but mostly bring something to work on of our own. On alternate weeks a smaller group of us meet for hand applique or hand quilting or other hand work like finishing bindings and talking. We bring our lunches to both groups and meet from 10AM to 2PM.
I have learned so much from them and find them to be so positive - not catty remarks about other people. Just positive discussions about our quilting and our lives and families.
We meet in a room at our local library where we have free space with lots of tables and plugins for our machines. Once a year we provide some of our quilts for the library to display for their annual quilt show.
I do my machine quilting at home in my sewing room where I have my machine and longarm. I find that with other people talking around me, I am more likely to make mistakes as I am not paying attention to what I am doing!