Mt. Hood Quilt Guild

Dad with his Dad's Star quilt

In July, I joined the Mt. Hood Quilt Guild. This is a group that meets about a 15 minute drive from my house. It can take several hours for me to drive to the Clark County Quilters Guild (CCQ) meetings because the traffic traveling over the bridge from Oregon to Washington backs up easily!

I'm still an active member of CCQ. I joined the guild in 1998! The past couple of years, I've been looking at the time I spend getting to events, board meetings and general meetings.

This year, I'm taking a break for being a board member. I've assisted or led a committee six times in the last five years! (Last year, I headed two committees.)  I have helped at the Featured Artist show in October. I plan to teach a class at Saturday Workshops in February and I plan to help with the quilt show in April so I'm still a "supporting" member! From September through November, the meetings were held at a location that added about another half hour each way to my commute.

To get ahead of the traffic for a 7:00pm general meeting, I leave my house about 2:15 in the afternoon. Plus, in the winter when it is dark and rainy, traveling to the meetings is a chore. I often don't return home until 10:30pm! That is a lot of effort for a 90-120 minute activity! Granted I'm blessed that there are at least four of us that carpool together which makes the journey whiz because we engage in conversations, we shop at a local quilt shop and we have dinner before we attend the social hour that begins at 6pm.

At the Mt. Hood Quilt guild meeting, I was pleasantly surprised to see many people that I already knew! I loved arriving at the meeting and returning home from the meeting in 15 minutes! The program in July was Quilts of Valor (QOV).  The moving part of the program was when we witnessed a QOV presentation.  My dad was a veteran. He was deployed to Korea at the end of the Korean War. I'm sharing the quilt that I made him for his 80th birthday. You can read about his quilt here. I've made blocks for QOV and I've participated with a group in making several extra special quilts for servicemen. I even have a little red, white and blue in my stash to make a QOV on my own.

I missed the next couple of meetings but, next week, our book club will be the program. The plan is to feature some of our work.  I'll be sharing my Mt. Hood quilt, Rue, the hexagon wall hanging IF I can complete it and my Remember Me wall hanging if I don't finish the hexagon wall hanging. I plan to also share the first quilt I made through the book club. We read "The Davinci Code." I think there is room for two quilt guilds in my life! I guess I'd better get back to working on Rue!