BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE QUILTING BEE

I thought you might like to know about the people whose names do not appear on the quilt label.  There are a lot of behind the scenes jobs that have to be done in order for the quilt to make it to Montgomery.  Besides the artists and block makers, there are the project manager, incentives coordinator, marketing both online and in-person (at Montgomery).  I hope I didn't leave anyone out.  

It starts with an online brainstorming session to come up with an idea usually a year or more ahead of the quilt drawing.  Someone steps up to the plate to act as Project Manager.  This year it was Patty Eisenbraun, who came up with the basic layout and dimensions for the “town” theme of this year’s quilt and determined the necessary sizes for the individual blocks.  With her artistic background, she was able to guide the other artists in drawing the shops and Airedales in proper proportions to one another.  Patty also shepherded the group by setting up the schedule that kept the Bee moving forward and on track.  She set up the web pages, wrote all the directions, and answered everyone’s questions when they had them. On top of all that, she also drew the 4 Center blocks that form the Town Park, as well as 4 of the shops. 

Once a theme is decided on, the block makers choose which block they’d like to make and find an artist on The Bee to draw their idea. 

Then someone has to find the stabilizer that goes on the back of each block, draw the block outline dimensions on the stabilizer, and mail it to each block maker.  This year Jeri Langman tracked down the oversized stabilizer needed for the larger block size in this year’s quilt and mailed them out to each block maker. 

Rebecca Eash updated the Bee database with the 2013 member information updates.  She also very kindly emailed me photos from the database for the blog since I wasn’t able to access the database for quite some time until I switched my internet browser.  Once I switched to Google Chrome from Internet Explorer, I had no problems accessing the sites I needed.  She also designed the label and sent it to Sharon DeBoer to print out and affix to the quilt.

You’ve already read the Sign Embroidery story in an earlier blog about Cindy Johnstonbaugh and Lori Taylor.  They are also the two who bring the quilt to Montgomery.  They set up the quilt in the Hospitality Room in the headquarters hotel and sell quilt tickets and on Sunday they set up the quilt display tent at the Montgomery Kennel Club show site near the Airedale ring.  It is an enormous amount of work and a lot of it is physical labor.  During the Montgomery week/weekend, you are going from dawn to dusk and beyond.  Then after it’s all over, you have to pack everything up and drive several hours home.

Cherice Jobmann set up the 2013 Quilt website, showing the quilt in its entirety, the donation information, the link for PayPal and snail mail donations, the individual blocks that link to the block makers and artists’ bios.  She said it is not hard to do, just very time consuming.  But truthfully, I don’t know what the Bee would do without her knowledge and creativity in doing the quilt website for us!

Linda Hobbet, besides drawing several of the quilt blocks, coordinated the Incentive Prizes this year for the Quilt Blog and notifies the Incentive winners.

There is Sue Senerchia, Lydia Ross and Sidney Hardie, who provided technical and moral support for the blog when I didn’t know what I was doing.  Sue Senerchia set up the intial blog page for me.  Lydia Ross had the quilt tickets printed.  Sidney Hardie receives all the snail mail donations, and sends the donor information to the online ticket sales coordinator, Eileen Tedesco.

And probably one of the most important jobs on The Bee, the person who keeps track of the online donations and snail mail donations. Eileen Tedesco had the monumental task of receiving email notification of all PayPal donations and a list of snail mail donations from Sidney. For all the donations, Eileen uses address labels to fill out the ticket stubs which lists name, address, email and phone number of each donor. She sends an acknowledgement to the donor with the ticket number(s). She keeps a spreadsheet w/all this information – name and email of each donation, along with the amount, number of regular and bonus tickets and the ticket numbers. Included in this are donations from individual ticket sales at Airedale events. Each day she runs a total, both daily and cumulative, of the ticket sales. She sends a spreadsheet to Sidney every week for verification. She draws the tickets for the incentives. Sends daily totals to Candy and Sidney. At the end of the PayPal sales, she overnights the ticket stubs and any remaining unsold tickets to Lori Taylor to take to Montgomery for the drawing on Sunday, October 6th. Eileen estimates that normally she spends 1 -3 hours a day, but the last couple of days before the end of online sales it can be about 6 hours a day of work. Last year she personally created labels for over 3,500 tickets!

There was a Surprise Incentive tonight (9/13) and Cherice Jobman of Bellevue, WA won this cute Airedale Pin. Thank you, Cherice, for supporting the quilt fundraiser and Airedale Rescue!

*Remember Incentive #10 ends on Sunday, 
Sept. 15th, at 8 PM EDT.*

Not only does your donation make you eligible to win the main quilt or one of the bonus quilts, but if you donate between Sept. 10th and Sept. 15th, you might be one of 2 winners of Incentive #10.
Thank you for supporting Airedale Rescue. All the Rescue Airedales thank you! And so do all the Airedale Rescue volunteers because your donation makes it possible for them to continue to do what they do best – rescue Airedales in need.