Bloomington Quilters Guild
at a glance: June 2025

OUR Next MEETING is ON Tuesday, June 3, 2025.

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

PROGRAM: End Of Quilt Year Activities:
Election, Raffle Quilt, Volunteer of the Year, Challenge
SHOW and TELL
Location: BETH SHALOM 3750 E 3rd St, Bloomington, IN 47401


June Meeting

Our final meeting of the quilt year is June 3. During this meeting we’ll elect officers for the next year, draw the winning ticket for the Raffle Quilt, and celebrate the Volunteer of the Year. Entries in the annual Quilt Challenge: Trees will be displayed, and members will vote for their favorite. Please bring an appetizer/dessert/snack (primarily finger foods) to share at this meeting to enjoy some social time! With respect for Beth Shalom’s requirments please no meat (including lard) or shellfish.

JULY and August Meetings and get togethers

We will meet in July and August (same time, same place) for a less structured, mainly social time together with conversations, group projects, and Show & Tell (of course!). Leftover Treasure Shop fabric will be available to members for sale at $2/yard at both meetings.

July 1 - Celebrate summer with an Inside Potluck Picnic. Bring a dish to share. Beverages will be provided. Please respect the dietary rules at Beth Shalom and do not bring meat or shellfish. Leftover Treasure Shop fabric will be sold so bring cash or check and a shopping bag, the bigger the better! We will not be accepting credit cards at the meeting. Food and shopping with friends—what could be more fun?

August 5 - BQG member Maria Schmidt will help us create mailable postcards.  During the meeting we'll make several front sides using scraps and other provided materials. We'll take home our creations to complete with a sewing machine, possibly at a future Sew Day. (Maria displayed her large collection of postcards at the April "bed turning" meeting.)

July Sew Day

We had a very nice sew day in May! Progress on projects was made, new skills learned, and quilty fellowship was abundant. Let’s do it again on July 12 at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church from 9-4!

Board Members for next year, July 2025-June 2026

Here is the slate of officers for the next Quilt Year (July 2025-June 2026).

Executive Board

President: Legene White
Vice President: Rebecca Green
Secretary: Cathy McFarland
Treasurer: Cathy O’Bryan (Susie May to Shadow)

Standing Committee Chairs:

Programs: Annie Kelly and Diana Love
Membership: Brenda Reed and Dee Morris
Communications/WebManager: Karen Levay ( Kris Stewart to shadow)
Communty Quilts: Btown Bee (Betsy Glassey and Betsy Birch contacts)

Special Committee Chairs:

Outreach and Publicity: Open
Raffle Quilt: Sandy Bonsib
Fall Retreat: Jo Ann Sporleder
Winter Retreat: Amber Brooks-Wolfe and Elaine Lucas
Sunshine: Amber Brooks-Wolfe

The Outreach and Publicity role can be flexible. In the past it involved distributing posters/bookmarks to quilt shops, arranging for booth space at events such as the 4th Street Festival, and working to recruit a diverse membership to the guild to keep us healthy and growing.

Vote for the 2025 BQG Volunteer of the Year

PLEASE VOTE BY May 31 for the 2024-2025 BQG Volunteer of the Year. The award highlights a guild member who has had a positive impact on furthering the mission of the Guild, raised public awareness of the Guild, and has promoted the needs of its members. The winner will be announced at the June 3rd meeting, will wear a glittering tiara, and receive a $50 gift certificate. 

The link to the ballot was included in the email you received with notification about the At A Glance.

SCRAP LOVERS SEW TIME — From SHARON BEACH

Sharon Beach is offering this opportunity for those who like to work with scraps.

On Sunday, June 15, 2025
1:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Sharon Beach’s home

Sharon says,, “I have 12 bins of unsold Treasure Shop small scraps, formerly known as the Swimming Pool.  Is it junk or is it riches? Guild members are invited to my home for a 3-hour playtime of making stuff from them. I have all the free scraps you can imagine. Just bring your sewing machine, small cutting mat and cutter, and basic sewing supplies. I have tables, an iron and board. I have room for up to 8 people. Let me know in advance if you are interested. If this is successful, we will repeat it during even months during summer and early fall.” 

Sharon’s phone number and email address can be found in the AAG email notification and in your directory. My apologies for not including the phone number and email here, but as a policy BQG does not publish phone numbers and email addresses in the AAG to preserve privacy.

DUES FOR 2025-2026 Quilt year

We will begin collecting dues for the 2025-2026 Quilt Year on July 1, 2025. Our fiscal year begins July 1, so please pay on or after that date. You may pay online, or feel free to bring a check or cash to the July meeting! The dues continue to be only $30 ($15 for seniors age 80+ or juniors age 18 and under). We have been able to maintain this membership rate for several years due to the generosity of our membership donating to and buying from the treasure shop during our quilt show! Thank you!

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.
See the chart on the Fall retreat page to see the costs. Jo Ann has covered every permutation of costs for both cash/credit, number of days and the commuter options. The Register by Mail button near the bottom of the page will allow download of the PDF for registration.

Registration will begin July 1! You will be able to sign up online or save some money and register at the July meeting when you pay your dues! To make things easier on the treasurer, registration will not start until the fiscal year starts July 1.

Community Quilts

What a generous group of people our guild members are! We continue to collect and distribute quilts to a wide group of programs throughout the Bloomington community. So far we have distributed 485 quilts to various organizations in the Bloomington area. Check the Community Quilts webpage to see where all the quilts go! This page also gives some indication of the sizes that are needed for each of the organizations that have received quilts.

Of course you do not need to belong to a special group to make quilts for community quilts project. However, both the Middle Way and New Hope groups are welcoming new members! Contact Sandy Bonsib if you are interested in joining the Middle Way group and Karen Levay if you are interested in sewing for New Hope.

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

The drawing for this year’s raffle quilt will be at our June Meeting! If you have outstanding tickers and money please bring it to the meeting and give it to Sandy Bonsib. You may still purchase last minute tickets at the beginning of the meeting. You may want to bring address labels to make filling out tickets go quickly.

SAVE THE DATE!

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.