Meeting Recap (March 10th, 2012)

Thanks to all of our members who helped make Saturday's meeting another success, and to our guests...we hope that you had fun and will join us again next month.  Our meeting was jam-packed with information and lots of activities so let's get right to it, now shall we.

• Lynne, our Secretary, let us know that we are at 65 due-paying members.  It's such a great feeling to know that we have so many wonderful people standing with us each and every month.
• Rene, our Treasurer, will provide us with the updated financials next month.
• We extended a Speaker invitiation to Aby Garvey, and are excited to confirm that she will be joining us at our September 8th meeting. 
• The Bits & Pieces "Fanfare of Quilts" Quilt Show is next Saturday/Sunday, March 17th-18th at Queeny Park.  We hope to see you there, as not only are several of our members showing quilts; but the STLMQG has a special exhibit too.
• Our 1st Sew-In Saturday of 2012, is March 31st and sign-ups are now open.  It looks like we have confirmed half of our seats already, if you are a due-paying member and are planning on attending, don't wait...sign-up now.
• There is a Fabric Bounce happening Thursday, March 29th-Sunday, April 1st.   There are 4 shops offering some great raffle items, sales on fabric, notions, etc.  Those shops are
• Bindings, Borders & Squares in St. Charles
• Corner Quilt Fabrics in Warrenton
• Fabric Nosherie in Webster Groves
• Patches etc in St. Charles
• Quilt Market is coming to Kansas City May 17th-20th.  The STLMQG is co-hosting a Market Meet-up with the KCMQG on Saturday May 19th.  The Meet-up is open to all MQG members and is a great opportunity to mingle, network and chat up fellow modern quilters that will be in town for Market. 
• QuiltCon is the inaugural Modern Quilting Convention, to be held in Austin, TX next February.  There are a handful of STLMQG members already planning on attending.  If you would like to learn more check out the QuiltCon site.  Also, don't forget about the QuiltCon Block Challenge, rules can be found here.
• Our "You Oughta Know" segment featured Kelly S. who showed us the Curve Master Presser Foot, followed by Mary Claire who talked about Color/Swatch cards.

We'd like to give a big round of applause and huge Thanks to our 5 Social Media Small Group Leaders.  Admist the hiccups with WiFi, they still managed to introduce our members to some of the most widely used Social Media tools.  We will be doing a presention during April's meeting showing Flickr, since it is a wonderful tool that we hope if you don't do anything else Social Media-wise, you'll try and participate here. 

• Google Reader = Cara
• Blogger = Kyndra
• Twitter = Laura
• Pinterest = Juli Ann
• Flickr & BigHugeLabs = Lynne

We would also like to Thank our Members Swap/Challenge committee, who coordinated a Pouch Swap that was soooooooo much fun.  If you'd like to see some of the pouches again, many of our members have begun posting them in our group's Flickr pool.  There were so many wonderful ideas, shapes, fabrics and little surprises that it's hard to imagine that so many of our members had never installed a zipper before.  Yay! for learning and trying new things.

We finished the meeting with a vivid and touching Story of Thanks from Hospice Compassus.  Nancy, took many of our pillowcases that you all made and donated them, clearly they were overwhelmed.  As promised, here is the card and letter that our guild received from them.  You can also read more here. 

We'll see you next month...until then, check us out on Flickr, Twitter or right here on our Blog.