Expensive? Yes! My guild has a fee of $22 per year! Now, we do not bring in nationally known speakers but we are a group of 50 that spend an hour together learning new techniques once a month and have monthly give-a-ways that are nice. We are given copies of new patterns with directions, written directions for tips, cues and ideas to make our work faster and more accurate. We do a yearly quilt along, a mystery quilt, two retreats and make quilts of valor share our latest quilts as show and tell. AND we have a monthly open quilting day that is much like a one day retreat to just gather together to layer quilts, lots of room, or to get help from the pro's or to just chat and work on what ever project is at hand. I am not yearning of anything more. For $22 that is plenty!