December is the month we say good-bye to the Guild Board for 2020 and welcome in the new Board for 2021. Changes include a new president, new VP Communications, new Membership. We are grateful to those who have served us.

Our outgoing President, Gayle Bennett, has served for two years and will still continue as a Guild Committee Chairperson. She writes:

Each December as the year comes to an end I’ve always felt that, much like our birthdays, I can look ahead and give myself an opportunity for a fresh start.  On occasion I’ll set just one or two New Year’s resolutions, and many years I’ve established my “word of the year” to represent what I want to achieve or change in the coming months. It’s obvious to all of us that the year we are wrapping up didn’t turn out like anything we could have imagined.  As a guild we gave up our in-person meetings, but in their place we’ve become adept at joining in for Zoom meetings. I’ve come to look forward to and benefit from them too.
Before I was given the honor of leading the guild as your president I had a pretty specific idea of what my time in that position would look like.  As part of our group since the days of the “Friends Of The Modern Quilt Guild,” the informal organization where we got our start, the IEMQG means a great deal to me personally.  You are the first ongoing group activity that I’ve ever had the pleasure to be involved in. The friends and relationships that have come from my involvement in our guild mean more to me than I can say. 
While I looked forward to serving as your guild president at some point I was adamant that this was not a task to take on while I was still working full time.  But when I was asked to take on the president’s job, I did.  It is with more thanks than I can ever express to my board members, chairpersons, volunteers, and our guild members themselves, that I finish up my two years.  Any time I needed support, or a task picked up, there was someone to step up and bail me out.  In particular these last several months during Covid-19 when my full-time job became more demanding, our guild continued to flourish thanks to our board who have taken care of so much and put in much time and effort during these trying times.  Our little guild is coming up on five years old and during this time we’ve laid a strong foundation for moving forward. Special thanks to Laura and Elizabeth, in particular, for their above and beyond the call of duty efforts that kept us going.  
Barbara Mathews will now step in as president of our guild in 2021 and I look forward to handing over the reins to her and her board.  Barbara has a solid hard-working group to support her in her job.  If you ever want to be part of the board or a committee I strongly encourage you to do so.  There are plenty of ways to help and all jobs both large and small make a difference. 
In closing, I think that my word for 2021 will be Hope. Webster’s Dictionary defines hope as “To cherish a desire with anticipation; to want something to happen or to be true…To desire with expectation of obtainment or fulfillment.” But these definitions seem passive, so I’ll share a quote from Barack Obama that brings the idea of action to the word hope:
            “The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something.  Don’t wait for good things to happen to you.  If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope and you will fill yourself with hope.”
            As the holiday season launches please accept my sincere wishes for a Happy Hannakuah, Merry Christmas and for us to focus on a Happy New Year together.  Let’s take our hope for a better year and put it into action.  Thank you all!

We’d like to introduce our new President, Barbara Mathews, who comes with many years of experience in running Girl Scouts, as well as serving as a Committee Chairperson for Raincross Quilt Guild. We are excited to have her serve as our President.

Barbara Mathews:
First of all, I’d like to say how impressed I am with this Guild and its talented members, its exemplary leadership and organization! I’m honored to be a member and your next president.  I hope I can live up to everyone’s expectations as I was not a member for very long before Covid hit and have not had a lot of experience with this Guild. I’m fortunate, though, to have a seasoned and well-versed Board and Committee Chairs to lean on!
           A little about myself: I have been sewing since I was a young girl, starting with my mother’s scraps and clothes for my dolls.  Then on to clothes for myself and later, for my daughters and granddaughters.  I’ve been “officially” quilting for about 11 years, but you know, you don’t just wake up one day and decide to make quilts!  It’s a process – one which I am still learning.  I enjoy a variety of quilt styles – traditional, art, collage, felted wool applique, as well as modern (of which I’m kind of a newbie!)  I’ve been a widow for nine years, have two daughters and a step-daughter, five grandchildren (oldest is 30, youngest is 19), live on a mini-ranch/farm, have three cats, one dog, nine chickens and five koi, and live in Lake Mathews (yes, with one “t”). My other hobby is historical reenacting of the Revolutionary War time period.
          I look forward to this next year as your president and, hopefully, some in-person connection!  In the mean time keep sewing, creating and sharing! 

Calling for Holiday Recipes!

Share your favorite recipe, a photo if possible, and the source of your recipe by emailing it to iemodernquiltguild@gmail.com.  Send by December 15, 2020, limit one per person.  You will get a copy of all the recipes. Please include the source of your recipe, if it did not originate with you.

Meeting recap: While we didn’t have everyone there at this point, we took a snapshot of our members at our December Zoom Meeting, glad that you joined us for this last meeting of the year. We heard a poem, drew a silly drawing, looked at a great volume of beautiful Show and Share quilts, and more quilts in the slide show that Lynn put together for us. We generally had a good time with each other, fortunate that we have this ability to get together virtually in this time. We — you — are the Guild. Thanks for being a part of this, the Inland Empire Modern Quilt Guild.

Renew Your Membership to be Entered in the Raffle January 2nd

We want to remind you to fill out the form, send in your check or use Paypal, but it’s time now to renew your Membership. It’s all up there on the tab that says “How to Join our Guild.” And now you know our secret: all those who have joined/rejoined by our meeting (plan to get yours in early because of holiday mail days) will have their names entered into a raffle to win a prize, equal to their membership dues. Get yours done now!

Coming up in January: a new year (thank heavens!) and a new year of programs and quilting and getting together. We anticipate for the forseeable future we’ll be Zooming together.

Our first meeting of the year will fall early in the month, on January 2nd, so we wanted to give you a heads up. Laura Greene, our Programs Chair, has arranged for us to watch an episode of Fresh Quilting, where we explore the concept of Alternate Grids for Modern Quilting. Our Secretary, Lynn, has been teaching us about the elements of Modern Quilts, and Alternate Grids is a key component.

Please download the Alternate Grid Handout for our episode, so we’ll all be prepared.

We look forward to this to help us ring in a new year!

We also would like to announce the new Challenge for our Guild, Sounds and Voices. Start any time. The reveal date will be our March 2021 meeting. The only guideline we have is that the longest side should measure no more than 24 inches. Below is a screenshot of our announcement at our meeting, with some idea quilts surrounding the basic theme of Sounds and Voices.

Some More Good-byes

Judy Racine:
It’s been a pleasure to be your Membership Chair over the last year. Through these last nine months I’ve missed the personal interaction with you, but membership duties carried on. I hope that each of you who joined in the last year felt welcomed in spite of the circumstances.  I’ve created a Membership Duties orientation that I hope will make Kim Wingert’s transition into this role easy. She’s the perfect person for the job!  She’ll be sending “Welcome” emails to new members and mailing them an MQG pin, maintaining the IE and national MQG rosters and the email contact list. One Last Reminder: be sure and notify Kim of any address or email changes during the year so you don’t miss out on any of the great programs coming up (use iemodernquiltguild@gmail.com). It’s fresh faces coming into the Board and Chair positions that keep our guild vital and brimming with new ideas. Thank you, everyone!

Elizabeth Eastmond:
As we change over to a new Board, I will also be stepping down as your website mistress, blog editor, and general all-around human. I wore all these hats as VP of Communications, but was capably assisted in Social Media by Kelley Bachli, who knew how to work the magic of Instagram and Facebook. It’s been a challenging but rewarding year. We figured out how to Zoom, with Laura (Program Chair) leading the way. We ported over this website to a new place on the web (hopefully you didn’t notice, as it was supposed to be seamless), and we tried to up our game digitally and virtually, to be of service to you members in order to help you feel connected to the Guild.
I am turning all this over to Becky Brekke, an eminently qualified quilter, who will take up the helm. Assisting her as Social Media Chairperson will be Patti Reyes, who makes those beautiful quilts we see behind her on Zoom. Thank you for your good cheer and support.

The complete listing of our 2021 Guild Board can be found on the tab above, About –> Guild Leadership.

Happy Holidays, and Keep On Quilting!