This is just spit-balling a concept to get some input.
What if we renamed the Sewing SIG the Sewing/Quilting SIG?
While the topic of “sewing” encompasses a wide range of skills, I find myself wondering whether the random person makes the connection between them. At the SIG meeting last week, we pondered the question, and decided we didn’t have a firm opinion, and wanted more opinions.
Some people sew… some quilt and sew… some of us assault fabric in other ways… it’s a spectrum and difficult to label… some of us defy labels… so yes! Sewing/Quilting
I’ve always though that sewing encompassed both regular sewing and quilting. Although – while I’ve made a couple of blocks, I’ve never considered myself a quilter, so maybe the extra definition will be helpful.
As someone looking in from the outside, with relatives with a plentiful selection of machines, and hearing about the classes they take: yes, quilting is certainly a form of sewing. That said, simply saying sewing implies to me, clothing, alterations, hemming drapes, making things to fairly simple patterns. Quilting gets into different layout techniques, cutting techniques, die cutting machines, long arm sewing machines, etc. I personally see it as an advanced art that is not implicit if you are talking about sewing. So if you are naming a single SIG that does both, I would make both explicitly part of the name.
The separate comment about fiber arts would include spinning, and work with unwoven, and unspun materials, which would seem to me to be a different SIG, no?