IMPORTANT Next meeting July 25

This information has been emailed to members already, but I wanted to post to the blog so that it's posted for easy reference.

I felt so excited and inspired after last month's meeting! For those who couldn't make it out, the guild elected a board consisting of five officers:

President- Melanie Tuazon

Vice President - Peggy Kelleher

Secretary - Ashley Hinton

Treasurer - Jessica Fabula

Program Coordinator - Beth Rowan

The new officers met for the first time as a team to plan out the next few months of guild activity and to take the steps necessary to cement our status as an official chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild.

There will be much more important information in your inbox and on the blog in the coming weeks, but I wanted to first update you all with a date change for our next meeting. Because of some conflicts, July's meeting will be on Thursday the 25th rather than the usual third Thursday of the month. Similarly, August's meeting will be August 22 for those planning ahead. Mark your calendars!

On to a financial matter. As many members know, we are coming up on our annual dues period. Once we do become an official chapter, we will have a fiscal year that starts in January. We currently have enough funds to book programs for the next several months, and so until December we are just going to ask everyone who was a paid member as of May 2013 for $8 in dues to cover our fees to the national guild. New members will pay $20 ($8 national guild fee plus $12 guild dues pro-rated for six months). These fees will be collected at the July meeting and we will keep you fully informed of our decision making process. Official 2014 dues will be determined in the fall as we assess our program costs. We want to keep dues as low as possible and still offer quality programs and activities.

We are planning some fun activities, challenges and field trips, but before that we're going to have a challenge during our July meeting! Fabric and machines will be provided to sew at the meeting. Start thinking now about a simple block that you might want to make that can be finished in 10-12 minutes. Don't be scared, we want it to be a fun challenge about negative space and improvisation. We'll also have samples to help get those design juices flowing.

See you soon!