General Meetings

The Club hosts several general meetings during the year where well over 175 members usually attend. Each meeting is held in the RH Johnson Social Hall or the Lecture Hall. The purpose of these meetings is to conduct official club business, but it is also an opportunity for members to enjoy a program. The following are descriptions of recent programs.

November 12, 2024

The program was presented by Lexi Burg, who is an accomplished quilter and snowbird to Sun City West. She has had her work juried into many shows including the Accuquilt Let’s GO traveling exhibit and also into the Fly Me to the Moon, An Art Quilt Journey to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the moon landing. In addition, a quilt she made was part of a museum display in New York showcasing a memory quilt project for families that lost loved ones in 9-11.  Lexi shared many of her pieces and discussed the techniques that she uses

April 9, 2024

At the April 9, 2024 General Meeting, member Lisa Colombe presented a fashion show of 40 jackets that she has designed and created. Lisa makes these jackets to challenge herself and test new techniques. The backs of the jackets are as exquisite as the fronts.

January 9, 2024

At the January 9th General Meeting, guest speaker Gale Carson took members on a “tour” of Thailand, Bali and other areas where she learned about the wonderful textiles. In addition to the wonderful slide show, Gale showed samples of the silk, batik, and woven textiles that she purchased to use for herself and to sell in the business she owned for over 20 years.

October 10, 2023

The guest speaker for the Members and guests attending the October 10, 2023 general meeting enjoyed a presentation by guest speaker Heidi Pridemore, owner of The Whimsical Workshop, a business that specializes in bright, fun, quilt patterns, fabric kits and books. Heidi spends much of her time designing, traveling to trade shows, giving lectures and running workshops. During her presentation, Heidi explained and demonstrated some of her favorite tools. Her tips were relevant for to every aspect of quilting, from cutting to detailed applique work. Several members won door prizes

March 11, 2023

The guest speaker at the April 11, 2023 General Meeting was Deb Deaton, an award-winning fiber and multimedia artist from Sierra Vista, AZ. She received her art degree from the Art Institute of Colorado in 1978. Since then, she has been creating art in many forms: oil, watercolor, pen and ink, charcoal, ink, mixed media, and fiber art. Trained by a top London fashion designer and seamstress, she began sewing her family’s clothing and was a consultant for Colorado’s largest couture bridal shop. She began quilting 30 years ago, and although she loves to create beautiful quilts, her love of art moved her into art quilting.

In her lecture and trunk show, it was evident that Deb enjoys sharing her knowledge. She demonstrated how she embellishes quilts with different fibers and media, such as silk, wool, paints, beads and more. Deb also shared her favorite products, tips and tricks on how she uses them, and suggested several apps that she uses when creating her art quilt.

February 14, 2023

The topic for the meeting was the PVP 2024 Quilt Show. As a special treat, Carlyn McManus created a PVP Quilt Show history slide show that ran until the meeting started. Pat Luhmann, show co-chairperson, presented general information.

Linda Gagnon, PVP Program Chair, introduced the guest speaker, Cindi Seitz-Krug, a Quilt Judge for the show. Cindi has gained personal experience about what judges look for as evidenced by the many awards she has received for her quilt. The shows have included various AQS shows, the Houston International Quilt Festival, the Pacific International Quilt Festival, Road to California, the NQA Show, the Best of the Valley Quilt Show, the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival, Quilt Odyssey, MQX East, HMQS, MQS, and of course in her home town of Bakersfield, CA at the Cotton Patch Quilter’s Quilt Show.

During her talk, Cindi put on her quilt show “judge hat.” She showed examples, provided tips, and most of all, encouraged members to enter their quilts to be judged, pointing out that the feedback from judges is an invaluable part of improving one’s quilting skills

January 10, 2023

The guest speaker for the January 10, 2023 meeting was Gina Perks, an internationally award-winning quilter. In 2015, she received the Best Longarm Machine Workmanship award at the AQS Paducah show. Her quilt Nostalgia is now part of the American Quilter’s Society collection displayed at the National Quilt Museum in Kentucky.

Gina has been quilting for nearly two decades and has developed many tools for machine quilters including ruler templates and stencils for longarm and domestic machine quilting. She has appeared on several quilting shows and is the author of: Mastering the Art of Longarm Quilting, Appliquilting, Guide to Grids, and Tips for Longarm Quilting.

Gina also quilted one side of the double sided Arizona Centennial Quilt which was displayed in the Rotunda in Washington DC, and is now housed at the Arizona History Museum in Tucson. She operates her shop, The Copper Needle, in Payson, Arizona.

November 11, 2022

For the November 11, 2022 meeting, the guest speaker was Carolyn O’Bagy Davis. Carolyn lectures extensively to quilting groups around the country, and has curated many traveling museum exhibits including: “Goldie Tracy Richmond: Quiltmaker and Indian Trader,” “Quilting from the Hopi Mesas,” “Quilted All Day: The Quilts and Prairie Journals of Ida Chambers Melugin,” and “From Clay to Cloth: Hopi Pottery and Painted Quilts.”

Carolyn was the founding president of the Tucson Quilter’s Guild (1976) and she has served on the board of the American Quilt Study Group. She has appeared on Simply Quilts, a feature program on HGTV, American Quilter on Lifetime, and assisted with a film documentary on the history of Hopi Indian quilting produced with support from PBS.

In September 2010, she was inducted into the Arizona Quilter’s Hall of Fame. She recently donated a large portion of her Hopi quilts collection to the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, NB.

At the meeting, Carolyn presented a brief history of Hopi quilting. She also shared examples of Hopi quilts that she brought for the lecture. As a special treat, each she gifted each PVP member in attendance with a copy of her book, Hopi Quilts.