Zooming with the Guild

I'm happy to report we've had three sucessful Zoom meetings for guild members. The first took place on June 11 and featured Kathy McNeil as our featured speaker. You might recall she was our scheduled speaker for May and cancelled when Covid-19 hit. I emailed her to see if she might be interested in doing a live video using Zoom. She told me she wasn't real familiar with Zoom, but her granddaughters were using it for classes and she would ask her 11 year old to give her a tutorial. A week later, we talked on the phone and she said she was game to try it. First we did a test run about a week before the meeting date to make sure she could show her slides and everything appeared to be a go.

Kathy was wonderful and we had 98 people join us for her talk. We had a few glitches when her modem went down a couple of times, during which I filled in with announcements or called on people who had announcements. A video is available to watch on our website if you look under "Members" and go to Forum. Then look for Zoom videos and find the meeting video. I didn't get the entire lecture but I got most of it and it runs about an hour.

The response from those who viewed it was very favorable. I think everyone is hungry for quiltiy things to watch these days. So with that sucess, we scheduled two more meetings for the month of June.

On June 25th we had a QGIS Zoom meeting in which we replayed the Kathy McNeil video. Not as many people this time, but I think it was appreciated by all who attended and they got to see their friends before and after the video.

The next day, QGIN had their meeting, which was a panel discussion with Connie Lancaster, Stephanie Brokaw and Jennifer Fulton. Judy Barmann and Anita Harden did a great job creating interesting questions for the panelists and it generated enough interest that they are going to follow up with an in-depth webinar with the panelists about how to start a quilting business. We had 68 people join this meeting and the video is also out on the website for viewing.

I want to thank Leigh Layton and Diane Burgen for all they did to get us going on Zoom and for helping create the videos on the website. I'd be lost without them and their guidance! We plan to continue Zoom meetings until we can safely meet again. Already we have plans underway for more lectures and workshops and I am quite excited by the prospects. Covid--19 will not defeat us or diminish our strength as a guild.

Please keep an eye out for Jenny Quilter announcements and check Facebook as well. We will try to keep the meetings to our regular meeting times as much as possible so you know the second Thursday evening each month will be QGI, QGIN meets the first Friday of the month and QGIS meets the fourth Thursday of each month.

Quilt On!

Mary Ellen Straughn

2020 QGI President