What happens when offices go vacant.

Earlier this week I was doing the East tour of the shops, meeting with owners and trying to drum up some advertising for our newsletter. We have not had a retail liaison for our guild for many months and our current contracts ran out. Since I write for the newsletter and there seemed to be no one who feels up to the job; I thought it would be good to at least start somewhere. My feeling is that we are all members of the guild and enjoy the activities and programs it brings. Many of us are working full time an don't seem to feel that we have much time--probably because we don't. Others have served for years and want a break, I can respect that. But when everyone feels this way, we end up with no one.

When you pay for membership, you certainly expect to get your newsletter. One of the ways we defray the costs of printing and postage is by selling ads for it to local sewing related businesses. This is not a hard sell. We have common goals. One of my goals is to provide you with a quality newsletter.

It is my considered idea and opinion that this is an office that many can share. With the price of gasoline, it is not practical for one member to traverse the counties that our Chapter encompasses. We cover the area between Rochester and Albany and from the Canadian border to Binghamton. I live in Liverpool and can't see driving myself to Skaneateles! But Pat lives in Skaneateles and is willing to stop by Patchwork Plus and other businesses in her neck of the woods to touch base with the shop owners, remind them we are here to support them (and in return, they support us). She is willing to get some ads and drop off brochures, she says "heck! I'm there anyway!".

That is the spirit we need throughout our territory. Please don't be alarmed if I call or email you with a request to stop by a shop near you to drop off a brochure, a contract and a rate sheet. We will be making these documents available as pdf's to be downloaded from Scrib'd. scrib'd If you are willing to stop by a shop after being contacted with a need, please email me at scarlettquilts@yahoo.com and I'll send you an invite to our group there so you can download those documents. I would like to invite everyone to scrib'd and to this blog as authors too! As soon as I can research and learn a less awkward way to do this, I will post it forthwith.

I'd also like to hear from members who are not in the central Syracuse area. I may be missing some good places to solicit ads and build relationships with. If you know of any fabric, machine shop, or sewing related business, please contact me! I'll add them to our list.

Having retail partners is a very good thing. They will work with us for programming, are often willing to help cosponsor a national name here and share their prodigious database to attract more people to the programs they cosponsor and thus further exposure of the guild to others. Some businesses will host neighborhood groups in their classrooms. Some will offer discounts to our members. We have been very blessed with the partners we have. Many have donated door prizes when asked. They are also assets in the community boosting the joy of needle arts to the young. I can say the same things about our neighbor guilds--the quilt guilds, the embroidery or heirloom sewing guilds and the knitting guilds. We are all in this together.