While this is indeed a recap of the December 2023 meeting, it is also a recap of the entire year. There may be information that was not reviewed in the meeting so even if you attended the meeting, please read for the additional information. Grab a cup of coffee, it is long.

PDF of slides

The December 16, 2023 meeting was brought to order at 10:06 by our president, Octavia Pitts.

Octavia presented a quick review of upcoming events. 

The January program will be a presentation on Computer Engineering in Quilt Making from one of our newest (and youngest) members, Mac Barnes. Octavia also mentioned that Mac had a quilt accepted to show at the 2024 QuiltCon and will be teaching at a virtual quilting conference in January. See the post for more information. 

You can see at a quick glance all the events scheduled for 2024 by either logging into the website on a computer or downloading the free app, Wild Apricot for Members, to your phone. You will use the same user id and password for the phone app and website. The phone app makes keeping up with guild news fast and easy.

Membership Renewal - If you joined the guild prior to January 2023, it is time to renew. Just log into the website and go to your profile. There is a video that was created last year that is still available to watch. Link. Keep in mind that the dates being referred to are from last year and the treasurer’s address has been changed for the 2023 treasurer, Susan. All the other information still applies. If you don’t wish to pay online, you must start the renewal process on the website to create an invoice. The treasurer will mark paid once physical payment is received. The board is not available to do renewals for members.

Library books - Please return them to Jenn Deck (vice-president). She is reviewing and updating the library and actually needs to lay eyes on all the books.

Other Items - A survey has been sent to all members to help the board in planning for 2024 and part of 2025. This survey will close January 1.  Link to survey. Octavia assured us that it is anonymous and all responses will be taken into consideration in the planning of activities for 2024 and beyond. 

Susan Muszynski (Treasurer) gave a brief overview of the guild’s finances. The November checkbook balance is $19,677.44. She reminded everyone that even if the balance isn’t mentioned at a meeting, it will always be included in the meeting’s recap. There is also a special page of financial information on the website under Member Resources. Link to page. Because this information is for members only, you will need to log in. Currently, all of the Profit and Loss statements are included and the last few Balance statements. Susan is working on backfilling the Balance Sheets for 2023. If there is other information you would like to see, please notify Susan at treasurer@stlmqg.org or you can leave a post in the Member Forum available under the Member Resources tab. 

Octavia presented the board candidates that we will be voting on at the January meeting. Octavia is running for a two-year term as President, Gail Luther for one-year term in the new Web Director position and Abbie Stolzer for a two-year term as Secretary.

Octavia, on behalf of the rest of the guild, thanked everyone that participated in committee and leadership positions. Over 60 members volunteered on 9 committees. The guild would like to particularly thank the new House committee which has helped in setting up and running the actual meetings each month. If you had ever wondered whose hands were in the Show & Share pictures, it was someone on the House committee. We had five members step up as new committee leaders this year and Octavia named and thanked the Programming and Welcome committees. Gail Luther (Secretary) thanked and named the House, Swap & Challenge and Quiltcon Challenge Quilt committees. Susan Muszynski (Treasurer) thanked and named the Charity and Sew Me St Louis committees and Jenn Deck (Vice-President) thanked the Quilt Show and Social Committees. Thanks again everyone!

Thank you Sarah Holst of Sarah-Made who donated the fat quarters given as thank you gifts to the committee members.

Also, people asked where the quilt cookies came from and we got them from Dream Sweet Delights. Link  

We are now accepting sign-ups for 2024 committees. Please use the sign-up sheet on the Committee page on the website. Please sign up even for committees (Quilt Show) that are carrying over from 2023.

Photo is all the 2023 committee members/leaders that were at the meeting.

Octavia went over a review of 2023 and Coming Attractions in 2024 which will be presented in more detail later in this recap.

She then announced that we are now taking orders for guild t-shirts. There are two color options for short sleeve versions and one color option for a long sleeve version. Orders will be taken until January 20th and then a bulk order placed. We hope to pass out the ordered t-shirts at the March meeting, possibly the February one. You can sign up and pay for the t-shirts at the Store on the website. The Store is only available to members so you will need to log in. The Store is not available on the phone app, you will need to access it through a browser either on a computer or your phone.

The meeting was then turned over to Jessica Schunke and Kristi Daum of the Swaps & Challenges committee. Everyone that brought a bag of favorite items (which was most of us) participated in two big circles passing our bags left and right according to a dice throw. There was much laughter as we tried to remember our left from our right. The bags included each member’s favorite tool and a FQ from their favorite designer and one of their favorite colors. 

After break, we then played a rousing game of Quilty Bingo and then passed out many attendance prizes. Once again, our fearless treasurer, Susan, did not win.

Then to the favorite part of every meeting, Show and Share. Please check out the photos on the website. Link to Photos. Included in the parade of quilts is our guild’s submission to the 2024 QuiltCon Charity Challenge. More information will be forthcoming and included on the challenge page.

Member Kat Scott made an announcement concerning the organization MADE on Delmar has sewing equipment and would love for our members to check it out.

That concluded this month’s meeting. Please continue reading for a more complete recap of the year and coming attractions for 2024.

2023 in Review - 

These items were summarized at the meeting, this write-up has more details.

MEMBERSHIP - Our membership numbers are currently at 217 after picking up one new member at the beginning of this month’s meeting. This time last year, it was reported that we had 207 members. In January 2023, this number dropped to 144 meaning 63 existing members did not renew. The membership database shows that we received 59 new members throughout the year though sometimes it is difficult to discern if they are rejoins or brand new members. Obviously, we have had some rejoins but not as many as we could have hoped. The challenge going forward is to keep the members we have while also continuing to add new members. The other continuing challenge, of course, is effectively managing a guild of this size.

As of this writing, the database is showing that 83 members have rejoined for 2024. Two renewal notifications have gone out in email, another one is scheduled for January 1, 2024. On January 8, 2024 a lapsed notice will go out. On January 15, 2024 memberships that haven’t been marked as renewed will be considered expired and will be archived. We usually pick up several renewals at the January meeting.

The 64 members that have a different renewal date will have similar renewal notices starting 60 days prior to their renewal date. You can see your renewal date (and process your renewal) in your profile on the website.

QUILTCON - We were very proud to be represented by five quilts at the 2023 QuiltCon in Atlanta, Georgia. You can see more information about these quilts on our website. You can also see in the group picture, just how many of us went this year. If you are planning on attending QuiltCon in 2024, watch for a signup. This is just so we know how many are going and help in wrangling everyone for a picture. If you have had a quilt accepted at QuiltCon, first off congratulations and second please notify the board at stlmqg@gmail.com or webdirector@stlmqg.org. We want to be sure to get a picture of it at the actual show. Link to QC page.

COMMUNITY OUTREACH - Our membership voted to donate $1000 to Sew Hope Community Sewing Room to help in recovery efforts after a flood. We also voted to donate $1000 to City Sewing Room to assist in their efforts to add a quilting annex. Our charity committee collected over 64 quilts from our membership for residents in three of our community’s neediest long-term care facilities; Blue Circle (St Louis City), Green Park ( St Louis county) and Frontier (St Charles county). 

CHALLENGES - Our guild loves a good challenge. Information and pictures on all these challenges can be found on the Challenges page on the website.

WORKSHOPS/TRUNK SHOWS - We had two workshop/trunk show series this year; Rebecca Bryan in April and Tia Curtis in July. There are links to galleries of pictures from their trunk shows on the Speakers/Workshops page listed under the Guild Activities tab. You can see a description of future plans for workshops in the same tab; David Owen Hastings in January, Kitty Wilkin in April, and Carolina Oneto in August. Those future events are also listed as events in the website and we are currently accepting registrations for the David Hastings lecture which is free to members but you must register.

OTHER COMING EVENTS - This is Modern quilt show in March, three Jackman sew days, more challenges and the member retreat, Sew Me St Louis in October. Keep an eye on the event calendar.

MEETING ATTENDANCE - Attendance at the December meeting was 92 members with one member joining that morning. The average attendance at meetings in 2023 was 90 as compared to 77 in 2022.

If you have a suggestion for a venue that might work better for us, please email stlmqg@gmail.com or post on member forum under Member Resources. Keep in mind that we have members spread all over the St. Louis metro area including many members in Illinois. The room needs to accommodate 100 + people and have access to a well-working microphone and decent audio-visual equipment would be frosting on the cake. It also needs ample parking which on occasion, Shrewsbury falls short on.

FUNDRAISING - This year we raffled off 16 fat quarter bundles, generously donated by Cotton Cuts, raising $1495. The donated FQs were from various designer collections and the Kaffe Fassett bundle in February was the favorite bringing in $265. Our 2023 expense for monthly room rental was $1590 so you can see we came very close to covering the room rental. Thanks Cotton Cuts for the fabric and thanks everyone that bought tickets. Keep buying raffle tickets!

Quilt Show Changes - After searching for alternative venues, the Quilt Show committee suggested and we agreed, to change the venue to Greensfelder Recreation Center in Queeny Park and to move up the dates of the show to March 23-24, 2024. After a mad scramble to adjust the planning for this bigger and better show, we are quickly approaching registration dates for your quilts. This new date, hopefully, will continue into the future on alternate years from the quilt show that fellow guild, Bits n Pieces hosts. 

Workshops/Retreats - We hosted two different workshop/trunk show series. Rebecca Bryan in April and Tia Curtis in July. We had over 77 members register for the four workshops. The annual membership retreat was held in September this year and we had 94 members register for the retreat and 91 physically check in. There are special pages for these events, please check them for more information about the events; Speakers/Workshops and SewMeSTL Member Retreat.

Bylaw Changes - At the June meeting, we passed amendments to the guild’s bylaws changing the membership period from a yearly cycle ending on December 31st to a rolling year based upon the date a member joins. Now that we are on Wild Apricot, this type of membership management is automatic and we’re ready to take advantage of it. The schedule of electing board officers was also changed from December to January to remove the translation of new officers out of the busy holiday season. 

At the October meeting, we amended the bylaws again to add a new position, Web Director. This is effectively splitting the current role of Secretary, moving responsibilities with the new website to a separate role.

Website - We completed our first official year on the Wild Apricot (WA) hosted website. We joined this service in September 2022 and continue to find new ways to use it. We prepaid two years fees in 2022 in order to take advantage of a 15% discount. We will be up for renewal in September 2024 and the current plans are to renew this service. WA is set up on a tier fee basis and currently we are using the tier that covers groups of up to 250 members. We could conceivably need to upgrade our contract to a higher tier of up to 500 members. At our current tier, renewal will be at $1530 after a price increase made earlier in the year. By prepaying for two years, we delayed the increase until we renew our contract. The monthly breakdown of cost is $51 a month currently; at renewal we would jump to $63.75. If we were to increase our tier to over 250 people, then the monthly cost would be $119, a substantial increase. We would not need to pay this increase until we actually cross that threshold.

Another item that we are watching closely, is the space we are using on the website. Currently, we are sitting at 50% of the allowed space. We are a visual craft and like to make use of lots of photos, unfortunately these photos take up a lot of space. In 2024, the web director will be looking at archiving older displays of photos and taking advantage of our guild space on Google Photos. We will also keep our old space on blogspot which we are using as an archive of the guild’s business from 2010 through 2022. We don’t anticipate moving this and it is free.

The board will be seeking to find ways to effectively use the website in the future in the management of all activities of the guild; particularly hoping to find ways to ease the management of committee tasks.

Other Tools - We started using Google Workspace in 2023 and plan to continue the use. This service is free to non-profit organizations and it allows us to expand storage space for board and committee activities. Each committee has a dedicated email address and space, and it will continue to be their choice to use it. We also plan to continue the use of Zoom in committee/board meetings, virtual sew activities and other uses. We don’t plan to continue the use of Zoom in the monthly meetings, due to low virtual attendance and technical difficulties that are complicated to assess and correct at meetings.

Questions about this recap may be directed to secretary@stlmqg.org or can be written as a post on the Member Forum on the website. 

Respectfully submitted,

Gail Luther

Secretary, 2023