We did introductions, and asked attendees whether they preferred to work from a pattern or make it up.
The current charity block is changing this month. The Black and White with a Pop challenge is due tonight. The scrap challenge is ongoing. We are working on the BOM Skill builder Block 7 this month.
We are looking for wide back fabric, but the fabric we planned to buy was sold out. We are looking for another source. The guild voted to increase the spending limit for officers from $75 to $100.

We went over the new addition of the community standards, which will be posted on the website.
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Challenge Reveal pictures and Sew and Tell pictures will be posted on Instagram.

We had 7 visitors tonight. We had 1 April Birthday.

We uploaded new designs and new products on the Zazzle page. Our fundraiser at BJ’s Brewhouse went well. We raised over $100. We contacted Lucky Spool about their bulk buy program, but have not heard back.

Our new charity block is a plus sign, the instructions are on the website.

A landing page has been added to the website for new members. Also, a list of member owned businesses and local quilt shops and any discounts they offer has been added. The Community Standards will be added to the website this month.

The Retreat will be September 27th - 29th. The total cost will be $210 for members and $215 for non-members. Members may register for $75, starting in May, registration will open to non-members.

The Fabric Dyeing Workshop will be June 8th from 9am - 1pm, at Katrina’s house. The cost is $50 for Members and $60 for non-members. The location will be emailed to people who sign up prior to the workshop. Attendees will dye 18 fat quarters and 1/2 yard of fabric in one of 3 color ways. All supplies are included. Sign up will close at the May 21st meeting.
The Gee’s Bend trip is still in the works, but plans have not been finalized.

There has been enough interest in rooms at Quilt Con 2020 in Austin for one room. Anyone who hasn’t taken the survey and would like to go should contact an officer.

Plans for the June Trunk Swap / Sale are in the works. We are looking for a location.

We had a discussion about Zippers and how to add them to the the Sew Together bag.

As guild income goes up, we need to consider upping the officer purchase limit. This will be brought to the guild for a vote. Mode is out of stock on the wide back fabric we planned to buy. We bought 2 yards of a blue grunge. This should be enough for 2 small quilts.
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Diane made minor corrections to the reimbursement form and added non-officer approval guidelines. Forms should be emailed to the treasurer. The money box and and envelope stamp have been purchased and are in operation. We will link the minutes for purchase approvals when needed.

We will be adding guild businesses as a tab and community guidelines under about to the website.
A new charity block will be announced at the April meeting. A door prize drawing will be done for people who turned in charity items during the first quarter.

We have refunded the buyer whose quilt was lost in the mail. The BJ Brewhouse fundraiser seems to have gone well. Multiple new designs and products have been added to the Zazzle shop. Our Zazzle rank has been increased to 6/10.

Last quarter, we made 3x what we made in previous quarters on Amazon Smile. The Lucky Spool affiliate program link did not have info about the program. Amanda emailed them, and has not gotten a response. Amanda talked to a photographer, and it is possible to do a quilt photo booth. They will talk again after April, for maybe a time later this year.

Jen is available after April, Trina has limited dates in May, so we are looking at June for the Fabric Dying workshop. Sherry is still working out the details of the swap with ECMQG. Laura is working on the Gee’s Bens trip for June. We currently have 13 signups for the the Retreat.

We are looking to display our quilt con quilt with NASA. We have a potential workshop with Sherri Lynn Woods in October, depending on her schedule.
We have developed Community Standards that will be introduced at the next meeting.
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Introductions - there were 31 people at the meeting.
Current challenge is Black and white with a pop. We are starting the scrap dash tonight. Current charity block is the square in a square. The BOM block 6 will be worked on at the next sewing Saturday.
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The taxes are complete. We will be moving to emailed receipts for all guild transactions. We are looking into using Google Pay for guild transactions. The National MQG has issued new coguidelines.
The guild took a vote and will be buying 8 yards of wideback fabric for charity quilts.

Sew and Tell - pictures and descriptions will be on Instagram.

We had 9 visitors tonight. We had two March birthdays, who got fabric cupcakes.

We have 4 new designs on the Zazzle shop on a variety of new products. Our BJs fundraiser will be next week. Bring your flier. We have an opportunity with Lucky Spool, open to the first 50 guilds to sign up.

We are still working on the square in a square block. The Quilt Con Charity quilt has been returned, and was displayed at the meeting. Scoops of Love is taking quilts for children affected by the tornados in South Alabama. Also, Hearts for Christchurch is collecting blocks for the community affected by the recent mass shooting.

A welcome page has been added to the website. The membership form has been updated to include birth month and business name. We will be adding a list of local businesses and guild member businesses.

The Everyday Crativity workshop will be March 30th, $5 for members, $10 for non-members. The Retreat will be September 27th - 29th. Total cost will be $210 for members and $215 for non-members. Registration opened at the meeting for members for a $75 deposit. It will open to non-members in May.

We will be doing a small item swap with the Emerald Coast MQG.

We will be taking a field trip to Gees Bend in June. Details are coming.

We will be doing a quilting related item trunk sale at the June meeting.

Constitution Village is having a Spring Fest and are looking for people who do crafts to do demos or hands on activities with elementary kids.
We went around the room and shared tips and tricks from Quilt Con. We also went around the room with nifty notions. After that we had a scrap dash to grab scraps for the new challenge.
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​Operations
We renewed with National MQG with 31 members. We have swag from Quilt Con that can be used in prizes. Also, Amanda purchased books for a few dollars a piece and Diane and Rachel pulled out the ones we thought would be relevant.

Finances
The Tax Form 990-N has been filed and accepted. The Purchase Request and Reimbursement form has been finalized. The form can be filled out online or a link can be sent or it can be printed and scanned and sent to the Treasurer at treasurer@rcmqg.com, A form is needed to request a purchase be made by credit card. Diane presented the February Financial report. There is a new Year to Date report to better track spending by officers. The Budget column has been moved to the far right. The principal income categories have been grouped at the top. We discussed whether to add sub-categories to better capture “Flow Through” money – this is a particular issue for workshops, kits, etc. which we round up the charge of and therefore end up with a balance after completion of the event
We decided to leave the general flow through category due to overhead of removing one time use sub-categories and reviewing at Officer Meetings whether we should have a balance floating in flow-through or if it is a good time to zero out the balance.
We also decided it is currently a good time to reallocate the flow through balance since we're in between Quilt-Con hotel deposits and Retreat deposits. We decided that to mitigate a treasurer absence and workload during the meetings, we will buy envelopes for people to put payments in and braintsormed that they should include:
Name:
Email:
Amount:
Purpose:
Date: 

Diane will investigate what she needs/prefers and get them ordered before the next meeting.  Officers will get the envelopes collected at the meeting to Diane and she will email receipts. Diane will also investigate keeping a spreadsheet record of payments and issuing digital receipts based on the spreadsheet number rather than keeping up with a receipt book. 

Membership
Amanda told us that Glenn does not currently want to be reimbursed for the fabric cupcakes she provided for February birthdays.

Charity
A new roll of batting is on order. Amanda picked up our existing batting from Diane. We decided we will plan on 8 yards of the wide backing fabric (estimated cost about 2/5 remaining charity budget) and bring proposal to guild since sale goes through March 30th and 8 yards with estimated shipping is right on the $75 line. Several quilt tops, quilt bundles, block/pillowcase kits were made at Sewing Saturday. Crystal is working on a new charity block to be announced at the April Meeting.

Fundraising
One of the auction quilts was lost in the mail. The appeal for an insurance claim from USPS was denied. We recieved a mailed letter dated 2/20 that the original decision had been upheld. We recieved an additional email notice on 2/26 that they are still looking for it, but it hasn't been found. Amanda recommended that we write it off as lost and reimburse the customer 50% as discussed previously. Amanda will PayPal the money to purchaser since that is how she originally paid and guild will reimburse Amanda for the expense.

The BJ's Brewhouse fundraiser has been set for March 28th. Fliers have been emailed out.

Amanda uploaded one new tote to Zazzle, in case anyone who took a business card at Quilt Con follows up. Amanda also just found out that Zazzle is changing some policies and will start charging a nominal fee to accounts that haven't uploaded a new design in some amount of time. She will find out the details of how often a design needs to uploaded and what the fee is. We researched raffle laws. A raffle is allowed if you are a non-profit. In additon the tickets allow purchases to take part in a contest of skill (not luck) or you allow entries without purchase. Otherwise, it's a class A misdemeanor with up to a $6,000 fine and possible jail time. 

We previously contacted St. Jude’s at Huntsville Hospital and the website pointed to national organization, Amanda called and was told to make the check out to the hospital foundation. We may need to research another charity or St. Jude's national that has some kind of auction already that would be able to get a better price for full size quilts.

Lucky Spool has a brand new program, registration opens 3/18 (the day before our meeting). If no distributor of Lucky Spool books is in the area, guilds can sign up as independent distributor and get a percentage of all books sold as well as a discount on books.  We will put this on the agenda to discuss with members at meeting.

Programming
Rachel will be presenting an Everyday Creativity demo for members on 3/30 from 1:00pm to 3:00pm. The location has been rented from 12:00pm - 4:00pm to allow for setup and clean up. Attendees may bring a lunch at noon for social time. The demo will be held at the clubhouse in the neighborhood that Kris lives in. Sherry will buy the supplies for the demo after the meeting. Sherry will buy the supplies after meeting. Participants should bring sewing machine, cutting implements and small cutting mats, black thread (or other color if desired). We will need a few irons and ironing boards. The cost will be $5.00 for members and $10.00 for non-members.

The Fabric Dying workshop will be held after April. Sherry to check with Trina to see if her house is still available and set a date. The colorways will be primary, garden, and autumn. Jen will demo ice dyeing and marbling. It takes too long to do during the workshop. Participants will dye 18 fq and play with ½ yard. We need to purchase good quality ziploc bags for this class quart and gallon (name brand NO generic). The cost will be $50.00 for members and $60.00 for non-members. Canopies and fans would be nice to have outside along with a cooler of water. We'll wait to see what date it works out to be scheduled on and whether it will be as hot as last year.

ECMQG has responded about the small item swap. Sherry is working out details with them. Laura will poll guild members during the meeting to determine interest in the Gee's Bend trip. Amanda and Rachel will bring tables to the meeting for the Scrap Dash Challenge. We plan to set up 5 equalish piles. Members will grab scraps from the pile in front of them for a short time limit, then they will rotate to a new pile.


We will start collecting Retreat deposits at the March meeting. It will be open to members only until day after May meeting. The final balance will be due at August meeting. We will discuss Nifty Notions and Quilt Con quick tips.

The National Guild has released new Community Standards. We will mention them to the guild and make a point that we will be following them. We plan to add a link to them from our website.

Quilt Con DeBrief
Amanda and Rachel attended the Leadership Breakfast. New Community Guidelines are coming out shortly, we will review and adopt these. These were a recommendation from the new Inclusion and Diversity committee. There is a new 60+ page document for guild leadership to help stand up guilds. Including programming ideas. Coming this spring.

Ideas from Quilt Con
Have a Quilt Photography Booth - hire a professional photographer, people bring quilts, pay $5 or $10 per quilt, get a couple of pictures, maybe invite other guilds. This would be a good way to get better photos, it might be fast for the photographer to reuse the set up. We thought this sounded like a good idea. Amanda will investigate cost & feasability.


Amy Friend (During Quiet Time) offers workshops. We will email for pricing and info. The Stitch TV Show based in Atlanta, offers 1 hour lectures ($400) and all day workshops ($600). For both of these we will put together a list of topics and ask members what they are interested in. We may possibly pursue splitting the cost with the Athens guild.

We also collected challenge ideas from Quilt Con. We will add a section with the current challenge and coming up deadlines to the Meeting Agenda.

This was our first meeting at Huntsville Sew Creative. We had several new members. At the Officers meeting, we went over the Annual Budget. Diane set up a new ledger system for better trace-ability of the accounting. We have renewed with National.
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We had Sew and Tell. Pictures will be posted on Instagram.

We will be doing a dine in fundraiser at BJ’s Brewery. We will get 20% of non-alcohol sales. Amanda put it to the group to pick a date. Peggy recommended a Thursday. It was also recommended to avoid Spring Break.

The retreat will be September 27-29th. Registration will open in March for members, April for non-members. Final payment will be due in August. No refunds after August. March will have a nifty notions program. Emerald Coast MQG has asked if we would like to have a small item swap.

Glenn introduced visitors and asked them to tell a bit about themselves. Peggy got a Fat Quarter cupcake for her birthday.

The current charity block is a square in a square. The quilt con quilt has made it to National. There will be a Charity Assembly Day on March 2nd at Sewing Saturday. We have round robins if anyone would like to work on one. We added a Sewing Day Packing List to the website under Resources. We are working on a new member landing page.

We went over stuff going on at Quilt Con for members attending.

Diane had a trunk show to display the memory quilts she made in honor of her father.
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Amanda will handle the Quilt Con rooms and contacting members for payment. Dues renewal, Glenn has been adding people to National. We will need to ask National to reissue the bill, because we should be in a different rate category. Rachel will start emailing Diane when she receives a check via the PO Box. We will do a beginning of the month report to get everyone who joins at the meeting added to the appropriate platforms. We will tell people it will take 2-3 weeks to get added.

We now have a debit card. Diane has come up with a new reimbursement system. It can take a purchase request or a reimbursement. Diane started a new spreadsheet for 2019, and has improved the accounting ledger. She has also revised the monthly report, and has a new way to generate a categorized report. Redstone has a new third party payment and invoicing system that we can investigate for the auction.

We are currently at 28 members. Glenn has asked her committee members for suggestion and ideas. We added the sew day supply list to the website. We need a new member page on the website, we also need to list discounts for members. Crystal got 7 new sign ups to for the charity committee. National contacted us to tell us that they can’t find our quilt. We have sent them our tracking info to see if they can find it, but have not heard back.

One of the auction items appears to have been lost by USPS, however USPS has denied the insurance claim. We are going to appeal the decision.
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Amanda will be working on new designs to refresh the Zazzle shop. Sherry has contacted people on her committee. She will check with people after quilt con to see who got into what classes. ECMQG has proposed a small item swap between the guilds. In March, we will talk about Nifty Notions.
We discussed the 2019 budget and the feedback survey results.
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Amanda discussed renewing with National in February. She discussed the feedback survey and that we had set the calendar for this year.

We donated 33 quilts to St Jude as well as monetary donations for St Jude and the Library.

Quilt Con hotel room balances are due at the February meeting.

Sew and Tell

Sherry discussed programming. The calendar has been set for this year. Diane and Elain will be hosting trunk shows. We will have 5 challenges this year as well as trips and programs for each menu. We have a new sewing bee on the third Sunday from 1 - 6 starting in February. There will be a BOM catch-up day at the February sewing Saturday.

The fundraising auction was a huge success. We will get a payout from Zazzle this month.

There is a new charity block for this quarter. It is a square in a square that makes two blocks.

We will be changing the dues structure so that it is full price before June 30th and half price the rest of the year.

Each committee described their committee and what we do and what we need help with.

We are introduced the first challenge - Black and White with a Pop! - you can only use black, white, and one other color. The reveal will be at our April meeting.
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Our program was Sewing Spaces and Organization, presented by Sherry. There are free printables for quilting planning on Patchwork Posse. We discussed goal setting. They need to be realistic and measurable. Make small achievable goals. Everyone shared their own tips. A few members shared photos and descriptions of heir sewing spaces.
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Diane has been added to the bank account and we have requested a debit card. Jen has the quilt con quilt and has finished quilting. She will pass to Sandy to for binding.

Zazzle has added a feature to allow users to move designs to other products. Amanda added some luggage tags to the store.

We will check in after quilt con on guild sponsored workshops.

Add sewing bee near Providence on the third Sunday starting in February 1pm - 6pm.

We discussed changing the dues to prorate mid year instead of monthly.

We plan on renewing membership through national by early February. The meeting will be the cutoff for counting new members. We planned a schedule for the elections and surveys later in the year.

We looked over the responses to the planning survey.
Issue Challenges every 2 months, 3 month turn around. We started signing challenges to the calendar.  We laid out the schedule for the quilt con quilt.

We decided to have purchase authorization forms for all purchases, including estimated for budgeted.

​All officers and committee chairs were in attendance. We went over new committee and officer training materials. We went over the feedback and planning surveys and made adjustments as necessary before sending out. We need a sign-in sheet for membership and for sew and tell for the meetings. Glenn would like to add birthday month to the New Member form. We discussed changing the dues structure. Rather than pro-rating on a monthly basis, we would like to specify that the full amount be due for members joining from January through June and members joining July through December would pay half. This will be brought to the January meeting for a vote.

 Hook and Bobbin is going to start offering time on their Tin Lizzy quilting machine.

The financial audit review is done. There are some dues missing. We are tracking them down. Everything in the ledger is categorized. There is an Excel template we can buy to help with rolling up categories. 

Rachel Reimers and Amanda Conger will go with Diane Lyles to remove Saleemah Ahamed and add Diane Lyles to the bank account. Review budget at January officers meeting. We need to get a debit card, at least for the google domain.
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Membership was handed off to Glenn for 2019. Charity has been handed off to Crystal, and Programming was handed off to Sherry.

The auction is over, we brought in above our goal. We need to re-sign up for the library window for 2019. The silent auction will be used to cover the 2018 Quilt Con quilt materials. The Brews to Benefits event intake will be used for the 2019 quilt materials. 

We used Planoly to post on Instagram, and had issues. Next year, we need to do smaller groupings or different software. We need to have less close up pictures for the first image. Saleemah donated her light box to the guild.

Mixed results with Google Pay. We had fewer fees, but people had a hard time finding the invoices. 
We passed the next threshold on Zazzle, so we should be getting a check soon. 

We will be doing two surveys - one for feedback and one for programming. 
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We will be doing a large raffle prize for everyone who donated items to the auction.