Greetings members!

On March 11th, we met for our general meeting.

We began the meeting with a few announcements.  These included:

• The Southern Branch Exhibition, “Community” is running at the Sirius Arts centre in Cobh until the 26th of March.  Hours of the Sirius are Tuesday through Friday, 11 – 5; Saturday and Sunday 13 – 5; Closed Mondays.
• Deadline for Hands Across the Border is the 31^st of March.  Theme is “Aurora”.  The exhibition opening takes place on Tuesday 16th May and our guest speaker is Leo Enright.  Location is the IFSC Custom House Quay, Dublin
• EQA Challenge, “Inspired by New York Beauty” is due the 30^th to Paula Rafferty.
• EQA Diversity quilt due on the 30^th of April.
• All entry forms are available under the downloads tab on the website.
• OEQC, theme is “Illuminate.”  Deadline is 31^st of May.  Information and entry form is in the Newsletter.
• Next newsletter deadline is the 20^th of April.

Next, we announced the swap for the month of April:  Needle Booklets!

You can find a great tutorial here for making one.

Then, we debuted the next Block of the Month, the Medallion Centre:

Next, our guest speaker, Ruth Bourke spoke about the trends in online quilting.

Highlights of her talk included hearing about the different swaps she has participated in, including the Economy block swap where she made this cushion cover from the blocks received.

And this Big Bad Wolf Binding kit:  (You can find the free pattern here)

And the large quilt she made from her mini quilt she designed for the Modern Quilt Guild Mini swap.

Some quilts she has received by participating in these swaps include this mini, inspired by her dogs:

and the mini received in the MQG Min quilt swap:

Quilty highlights of the rest of the meeting:

Our next meeting is April 8th and will be our Annual General Meeting (AGM).  More information about that upcoming!