Members gathered to help with the very collaborative process of building a gourd quilt. Each member made a square, and with lots of studying, placing and replacing, we constructed a wall hanging. This was donated as a fund raiser for the annual Arizona Gourd Society.
Spirit of the Desert Gourd Patch wraps up another great season with our last meeting on May 18, 2017. Most members travel over the summer, so meetings will resume in October. And while many members keep gourding while away, many others take the summer off completely. Gourds and all the supplies are rather bulky to pack!
The Fall/Winter 2016 through Spring 2017 has been a great season for our patch – very active as always. Our patch has had the following accomplishments and opportunities:
* Eight meetings – third Thursday at 4:30, Oakwood Sewing Room in the Arts and Crafts building, from October-May. Each meeting has had about 40 members in attendance, with educational demos and lessons and with member show-and-share time.
* Thirty-two workshops with other members – once a week, we’ve met just to work on our own project with others. Usually there are five or more in attendance, and it’s great to see and learn by working with other artists.
* Three hundred (+/-) pieces of art have been sold by our members through patch facilitated sales. We had a huge triple booth at the annual gourd festival and sold over 200 pieces of member’s art.
And we just finished a very successful sale in the Sun Lakes CC lobby in March. This sale was a new experience – nine members displayed and sold gourds on a Friday afternoon. It was such a fun and profitable event, another sale is being planned for November, right in time for a unique Christmas gift!
* Four classes were arranged by our patch, for our patch. It’s hard to book good teachers, guarantee enough students to fill the class and find a place to hold it. To get to take four private classes was an amazing member opportunity.
* And maybe our biggest accomplishment was successfully running the annual Arizona Gourd Society artist competition, running it and improving it, we like to think! So many volunteer hours to make it happen, but without all these hours, there would be no public competition. We have already committed to running it again next year.
If you would like to become a member of this active, accomplished, gourd artist cooperative, please check out our website, Spiritdesertgourds.com, for more information.