Years ago, when my youngest daughter was two weeks old, my sister invited me to my first quilt guild meeting. I was entranced by the designs and how lovely the other quilters were to each other and newbies like myself. I joined the Jordan Country Quilters and remained a member until they disbanded almost 18 years later due to the older quilters dying or joining groups closer to their homes. It was a sad day for me when I heard that not one person cared enough about this founding group of the Utah Quilt Guild to keep it going. They had over 80 members at one point but as quilters age and the younger ones took over, the sense of history and continuity was lost. As a younger quilter with six children, a husband on deployment four times in 10 years, I wasn’t able to do much in the guild at the time. I had a leadership position in the Utah Quilt Guild and could not do both. I was saddened to hear that the outgoing president didn’t think it was important to keep going. Make me wonder to this day if they were as committed to their position as they should have been to accept it in the first place.

I looked around for a while for a new group to join and ended up joining two. A day time group and one that met twice on the third Friday of the month. Both are totally different in the way they operate and I enjoy them tremendously however, due to my wildlife transportation trips, I had to scale back to the one that meets twice a day on the third Friday since I could get to one of their meetings on a more regular basis. This group is extremely involved in charity projects too which is something I really love about them. We take a break in December so that we can spend time working on our own projects which is why I have time for the 2018 AQS Christmas Countdown challenge. Last night, I finished block 5!

 Today I will be working on block 6 of the 2018 and catching up on the other three years so that by December 25th, I will have 100 blocks done! Can’t wait for this one to finish because I love finished projects, don’t you!! I’m loving the glossy colors of the #Aurifil thread that I’m using for my blocks and that stiletto is a must for keeping the tiny points together as they move under the foot of my machine. Love quilting!!