November: November meeting was on the topic of How the Library Can Help Your Business, presented by librarian Alicia Cartwright. This short, but information-packed demonstration of library capabilities focused on what we can do online away from the library. She showed us how we could get demographics on people in desired geographic areas, of particular age ranges, of a specified gender, and with income in a given range. She also showed us ways to generate and download a mailing list for our target audience, which could be potential chapter members or customers for our services. We managed to finish before another heavy snowfall hit the Denver area. (Denver got around a foot and Boulder got nearly two feet of snow from the storm.)
October: October was to be our Community Outreach Project, but it was rescheduled to February 2020 due to heavy snowfall that had started the night before.
September: In September we had our annual Membership meeting. This was essentially a business meeting, special topic meeting, and board meeting rolled into one meeting to focus on membership issues. Member Carol Phillis (V.P. of Membership) gave a presentation on her thoughts for increasing membership, leading to the discussion of the need for new photos for the web and the next brochure.
August: In August we had a hands-on activity rather than the originally scheduled talk about the Sewing Industry in Denver. Instead, we brought our machines and Karen Bengtson showed us her way to install a fly front zipper. This is the method she uses in her pant workshops, so it is an easy method to apply in under an hour. That included plenty of time for demonstrations of each step.
July: July’s topic of Fabric Restoration was presented by Dry Cleaner Sunny Jung. We were entertained by her journey as a child in Korea to eventually becoming a dry cleaner in the Denver Area She is now an expert at restoring old garments such as bridal wear and christening-type gowns. Sunny also emphasized the importance of not trying to clean a stained garment when it is soiled. Instead, it is better to take the garment directly to the dry cleaner and let the expert work the magic on cleanable fabrics and stains.
June: In June we had a talk by our Webmaster, Pat Bornmann. She reminded the group how to navigate web sites in general and how to find things on our chapter and national sites.
May: The topic for our May meeting on Lingerie was changed on short notice due to a family illness. Instead, we took a short field trip to visit a business located in the nearby shopping center. June Kim, owner of Sam’s Tailor & Shoe Repair, showed us her the equipment used for various types of seams and seam finishes in fabrics and leather. Some of these machines were 80 years old and still going strong. We also saw a number of sergers, each with different thread colors already loaded so that time would not be wasted rethreading machines.
April: April was a special meeting, replacing the planned Avenir museum tour. Alison Hughes and husband Nathan Barefield came to tell us about their business of making dress forms (BeatriceForms.com). These forms are made from photos of the individual, conversion to 3-D dimensions, cut with an automatic system, and mounted on a quality stand. There was much interest in the process and member Karen Bengtson will be getting one, so we’ll get input from her about the final form.
March: March was the month for the annual Sewing Expo. Our free booth was smaller this year, but one again looked very enticing with the many mannequins and garments made by the members. Member and Director-at-Large Denise Blankenheim and Jane Stoeck did an excellent job of arranging the displays.
Our March meeting was a special meeting, held in the evening, with the goal of attracting new members. The topic was Buttons: The Finishing Touch by Harriet Brittenham, from the Colorado State Button Society. Harriet and her colleague brought many displays of buttons demonstrating historical significance, cultural aspects, and other features of button groupings. Harriet walked us through a historical review of button, starting in 1775 when buttons were worn as a sign of wealth and obituaries mentioned the number of buttons a man owned. By the mid 1800’s we had mass produced buttons and women got buttons with functional buttonholes. As the 20th century progressed, materials evolved to include, synthetic polymers (e.g. Bakelite and plastics) and novelty buttons.
February: Our February Meeting featured a presentation by Marcia McGilley on The Mind of the Entrepreneur. She started by noting that most of us attending the ASDP meeting were entrepreneurs. She proceeded to debunk various myths about entrepreneurs, such as that they take excessive risks. (For the entrepreneur, this behavior is not perceived as a risk but an activity likely to succeed.)
January: Once again our January meeting was cancelled due to Denver weather. Snow throughout the Denver area had commuters crawling at 15 mph on the highways. The planned topic about Buttons was rescheduled for a special evening meeting in March.