Filming!

Today was novel in several ways. :) It was the Sew&Tell group's April Sunday afternoon meeting date and we had special guests today. One of our members, Deborah Kinsey, has been administering a Maryland Arts Council grant this year to develop community quilt making in Baltimore city ... and there was a team of film makers at Barbara's house (where we meet now) to film our group _being_ a community quilting group as part of documenting Deborah's grant activities. Matt and two Brandons were adept film takers and I had no trouble ignoring their presence to carry on as usual.

I took more scraps to cut up while we chatted and visited as I had planned (but did not get to the bottom of my current pile, quite:).

We spent a considerable amount of time looking at quilts various members brought that had been made by the group to commemorate significant events - 'big' birthdays, retirement, marriages, babies, a texture quilt for a member who developed Alzheimer's, etc. Also Beth Rice, as the unofficial historian and photographer of the group brought a large album of pictures of past special meetings and quilting milestones.

On the whole, it was a sort of tear-jerking afternoon from some respects. Several long time members of the group have died (we counted five that I, personally, knew) over the years since the first group started meeting (they were all people who worked at Social Security, beginning in the mid to late 1990s). I came into the group by self-invitation (more or less:) when they started meeting at Seminole Sampler after I purchased the store in 1999. 

Here is a photo of all but one of our members (who was self-isolating from Covid exposure), taken by one of the film guys:

I am sitting at the diagonally opposite corner of the table. That woman giving me bunny ears is Kathy Fain. To her left is Amy Sheib, then Barbara Bennet (hostess), Beth Rice, Deborah Kinsey, Sandie Horst and Peggy Syzmanik. I have come to intensely value each and every one of these women and enjoy all our meetings - part of my 'keep Linda sane' plan for life! I am looking forward to seeing the resulting film sometime this summer (fingers crossed).

:) Linda