Bloomington Quilters Guild
at a glance: March 2025

OUR Next MEETING is ON Tuesday, March 4, 2025.

Time: 6:00 PM Social Hour
6:30 pm Meeting start

PROGRAM: Tara Miller: On March 4, “Quilting With the Fire of My Foremothers.”
SHOW and TELL
Location: BETH SHALOM 3750 E 3rd St, Bloomington, IN 47401

MARCH meeting

On March 4, Tara Miller will talk in person, providing a lecture titled, “Quilting With the Fire of My Foremothers.”  She will focus on design, color, and the history of quilt making.  Tara produced numerous live stream shows in partnership with the International Quilt Museum and sponsored by Quiltfolk magazine.  Her YouTube channel is The Quilt District.  She will bring all this knowledge and skill to Indiana Heritage Quilt Show (IHQS) as a teacher. Sign up for her (or any of the other teachers) workshops here: https://www.ihqs.org/workshops-2025 Read more about Tara here: https://quiltdistrict.com/

Sew Day Saturday MARCH 15, 2025

Sew Day Saturday March 15, 9:00-4:00, St. Mark's United Methodist Church. This is your chance for a "mini retreat" with friends. Bring a guest! Come meet new people and get inspired! Bring your lunch and a $5 donation to the church. Come when you can and stay as long as you like.

April Meeting

On April 1, come to a “Display of Quilt Talent.” No fooling!  What we could not do in January, we will do in the spring. The categories are
1) applique—fabric or wool, 
2) scrappy—can include but not limited to mysteries/strings/friendship collaborations/neckties/shirts, 
3)artsy—portraits/art quilts/modern/solids/made fabric/contemporary, 
4) by hand—quilting/hexies/EPP/embroidery 
5) small etc.—bags, place mats, jackets, toaster covers, ornaments, you name it! 

There will be separate areas for each category.  A helper will stay at each station to help facilitate showing items while everyone else will rotate through.  Projects for display must be finished, bound, and labeled (permanent or temporary) to be sure they are returned to the owner.  Even if your friends have seen your project long ago, newer members will be interested to see it too.  Just bring it to share.  If your project fits into more than one category, we don’t mind.  Just bring it to share.  If you think your project isn’t “good enough” just bring it to share anyway.  We really want to see your work!  Can you imagine the wonderful variety we might view from our folks throughout the guild?  Please shine your light and share your talents at our April meeting.

May Meeting

On May 6th, our very own Lisa Dodson will present “Fiber Art Creativity.”  She will highlight her beautiful art work and tell her story.  The next day, May 7th, her workshop will teach us how to work with a variety of fabrics, colors, textures and papers to fuse them onto your chosen background for a visual composition, later finished with quilting.  Lisa was the featured artist at IHQS in the recent past.  

See her facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/LisaLovesToQuilt

Board Members for next year, July 2025-June 2026

Most of our current Board Members have served two years and are planning to retire. Our Guild needs enthusiastic leadership to maintain its strength and move ahead. Be thinking how you might step up to bring your ideas and skills to the BQG Board.

The Indiana Heritage Quilt Show (IHQS) is March 6-8, 2025 so make sure to get those dates on your calendars!

Plan to attend the Indiana Heritage Quilt Show. While not not a guild show, many of our guild members participate in this regional quilt show. There are quilts from around the country!

You can still sign up for workshops.  Space is left in most of the classes, so take a look to see if there is one you would like to take. Having nationally known teachers come to IHQS is pretty special and we hope that you all will take advantage of the opportunity....there is a wide variety and there's something for everyone! Free motion quilting, piecing, appliqué, hand work...whether a new quilter or seasoned there's something there for you!

Did you know that there are several community events, at a variety of venues, associated with IHQS? Show proof of IHQS entry to see any of the displays normally requiring an entry fee. Check out the complete list of venues at https://www.ihqs.org/community-events. BQG members have some work in two of these events. Some quilts from the Middle Way bee are on display at the Wonderlabs. Some BQG members who are also part of SAQA, participated in the “Rooted in History” project. This work is displayed at The Monroe County History Center.

See you at the show !

GUILD Volunteers needed to sell raffle tickets at IHQS

Please sign-up to sell tickets for the BQG Raffle Quilt at IHQS. We have two hour shifts available on Saturday. This volunteer opportunity does NOT come with free admission to the show, however you do not have to pay to enter the show to volunteer to sell tickets. Please sign up at: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0848A8AC22A5F58-54735022-raffle

If you have questions please contact Sandy Bonsib.

Community Quilts

WOW! What a phenomenal response to the request for community quilts! Two of the quilts were contributed immediately to the Habitat project. The remaining quilts will be delivered in March after any additional quilts are received at the guild meeting. The Middle Way and New Hope bees collected quilts this month also. The Middle Way and New Hope bees welcome new members. Please contact Sandy Bonsib for Middle Way and Karen Levay for New Hope for details.

This picture shows the 55 quilts collected at the February guild meeting, that are washed and ready for labelling and distribution.

Thank you so much to the Piecemaker’s Bee who have been collecting and distributing these quilts for the past two years. We appreciate your efforts.

The organizations who receive our quilts, often send a thank you note. Occasionally, we will receive a note from an individual recipient, such as the example below. Know that your gifts of materials and time are truly appreciated!

TREE Quilt - The 2024/2025 Guild Challenge

Every year, there is a quilt challenge, issued by the winner of the previous year’s challenge. This year Jane Pitt issues the challenge Trees!

Quilters have been representing trees in their work for centuries. 

Plain or fancy, pieced, appliquéd, or embroidered, trees are always welcomed in quilts. So grab your preferred method and let’s grow some trees! Your entry in our challenge can be any size or shape, but must be quilted and bound, and ready for our June 2025 guild meeting. For more information and to see pictures of winners of previous years see the challenge web page.

Raffle Quilt

Be sure to get tickets from Sandy Bonsib at guild meetings for this year's beautiful raffle quilt. Raffle tickets are a creative Valentine, Easter or birthday gift for family and friends!  Drawing occurs at June meeting. More information on the raffle quilt page.

Remember you can turn in your tickets at the IHQS show!

SAVE THE DATES!

fall 2025 Retreat

The Fall 2025 retreat will be at Waycross Camp and Conference Center. The dates are Monday Oct 13 -Thursday Oct 16, 2025.
We have to checkout after breakfast from our rooms, but can stay in sewing room until 3. Details will follow this summer when registration will open.

WINTER 2026 Retreat

The 2026 Winter Retreat will be at McCormick’s Creek State Park from Saturday, January 31, 2026 to Tuesday, February 3, 2026. This will provide the weekend quilters the ability to stay all day Sunday to sew and also people can go to church or the IU Women's basketball game and still be able to sew most of the day. 

The Indiana state parks run a special each winter and they plan to run it again next winter, the 2 for 1 Winter Special rate. If you stay at the Inn Sunday night Monday night is free. Saturday night would be at a discounted rate. Example this year for a double queen room the cost was $336 for 3 nights. Next year with the special the same room would cost about $224. This may change if the state parks raise the room rates. 

Looking ahead to summer!

June will be a traditional June meeting. We will award the raffle quilt, vote for the challenge winner, hold the elections and share some treats. We will meet in July and August (same time, same place) for a less structured, mainly social time together - and Show & Tell of course!