El Camino Quilters -- Vista CA

Guild meetings are always so much fun -- all the quilters, the energy in the room and, of course, the quilts! There were 305 members at the start of the meeting, 16 visitors and 310 members by the end of the meeting -- big guild!

Next month the guild will hold their every-other-year quilt show at California State University, San Marcos campus, on Friday and Saturday, October 16th-17th. My goddaughter, Destiny, is a freshman at San Marcos this year (We miss you already, sweetie! And we are WAY happy that you are loving school there!), so I may just have to see if she's free for lunch and a quilt show -- great excuse for a road trip!

I was listening to the quilt show wrap-up part of the meeting and it sounds like there will be at least 200 quilts on display. There's a Challenge Quilt section that I previewed and is definitely worth seeing and as far as shopping opportunities -- always good!! -- there are vendors and both live and silent auctions. I saw baskets filled with wine, food goodies and other gifty type things that will be auctioned off at the show as well as boutique items made by members.

This is the guild's opportunity quilt and the hard-working ticket sellers. The drawing will be held at the guild's December meeting and the winner need not be present. Tickets sell for $1 each or 6 tickets for a $5 donation. The quilt will be on display and tickets may be purchased at the quilt show next month or you can contact Bobbie Wright at bobbiewright@cox.net.

A big table in the back was hard to miss: The philanthropic activities of this guild are legendary. Last year alone over 1000 quilts were made by guild members and donated to various charity groups, both local and distant.

The stack was growing and growing as the meeting progressed and members came in with armloads of quilts they had made for others less fortunate. As of this meeting, 728 had come in this year -- 75 just at this meeting!

El Camino Quilters does something that I haven't seen at a guild meeting before: Every few months, they draw a member's name, she chooses a block and everyone in the guild can make a friendship block for her. The log cabin houses for Gail Yakos were the only ones on display, but there was another name going up with another block pattern. Lucky, lucky!

And what meeting would be complete without a display of the Block of the Month? I think there were enough that they were divided among three winners. One of the winners was really excited -- she had made four blocks, hoping to win, and let out a yell that made us all laugh.

My lecture was the last part of the meeting -- lots of questions about machine quilting from quilters who want to learn to do their own quilting on their home machines -- then I talked to members while Linda Pupols and friends packed up all of my quilts for the drive home.

I did make a detour to Quilter's Coop in the Old Town of Temecula, which is owned by my friend Joanne Maxson. Overall, I visited four great quilt shops on this San Diego area trip and will be sharing those with you over the next few posts.....