Busy Bees

Phoenix, Arizona

Busy Bees was formed as a chapter of AQG April 13, 1985 when one of our members Sandra Steele was AQG president. At the present time our membership is around 24 ( but has been as high as 60 ) but now consists of older members. Our primary goal at this time is to share our quilting skills with new members and others interested in the art of quilting. We also stress learning new ways of doing traditional quilting and encourage our members to be open to current trends and new techniques.

We meet the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of each month at Westown Baptist Church,11415 N.35th Ave. Phoenix, AZ 85029. The 1st meeting is a business meeting.  We cover AQG announcements, current activities, have a skill or new tend featured each month with Show and Tell from members. Our 3rd Wednesday is our sewing meeting with either a class, new skill or do your own thing sewing so no one is excluded from our meetings. In the past we have hosted national teachers as well as traveling teachers. Our own members often share their skills learned from classes they have attended. Once a year, usually in the Spring we host a Spring social and invite another quilt group...these have included teas, Mexican Fiesta's, Spring Flings, bed turnings, Hawaiian Luau hosting a speaker for the event and games and food aplenty. Each Christmas Holiday we have a themed Holiday party with food, games and prizes. We've made opportunity quilts, raffle baskets and yard sales (when former members have passed away). On the 5th Wednesday we sew charity items or work on our own projects. Each member is encouraged to take part with a tip, demo, truck show or class. Since we have some very talented members proficient in applique, wool, paper piecing and even several that lean toward the more modern quilts we end up with a good variety of shared teachings.

Our charity work has covered quite a range of organizations. At one time we made quilts for each service persons killed from AZ and donated to the families and collected items of the homeless veterans. We currently support a pregnancy New Life center with baby quilts, we collected toys and quilts for Phoenix Rescue Mission last Christmas, an abused women's center, we've made pillow cases for a number of groups. One year we made pillow case dresses and sent them to Africa. We do not have a charity chair this year so we do not have organized projects monthly.. Our former chair had a new pattern we tried every 5th Wednesday to learn new patterns and do charity work at the same time however; we are doing individual charity projects and still participating in charity events. 12 of our ladies reported their mask making efforts and have made over 1269 mask for various organizations family and friends.

Currently we have a chapter chair, secretary, treasurer/membership, program chair, and hospitality. We are still doing charity items on our own and bringing them to meetings for someone to take to a charity of choice. Our dues are $10 yearly and is paid annually in December for the coming year. Our 1st meeting in January is to set our program calendar for the year. All events are planned, classes, themed socials (quarterly potlucks as well as our Spring social and Holiday party at the end of year). This takes a burden off our program chair who organizes things according to membership interest.