Picking up where I left off in the last post, remember that on Friday morning, the first day of Quilt Market, I was feeling tired, jet lagged and nervous heading into the Inchie Quilts Schoolhouse presentation. On the way over to the convention center before my presentation, I ran into Bonnie McCaffery. I met Bonnie in 1998 in Innsbruck, Austria at the Quilt Expo. Bonnie was the Jewel Pearce Patterson Scholarship winner that year, and I was a volunteer with the Education Department at the Expo.
I wouldn’t say we’ve kept in touch over the years, but we’ve had some contact now and then. Bonnie prepared a presentation about quilting podcasts for Quilt Festival a few years ago and wrote me to ask about my Driven To Quilt podcast. We met again last year on the show floor here at Quilt Market and chatted a bit and she gave me a few tips about A/V equipment I might like to use for my classes. On Friday, she was kind enough to give me some last minute encouragement about my Schoolhouse presentation, and said she had planned to be there since she was curious about Inchie Quilts. We agreed to meet for lunch later in the day after my presentation.
Setting up for Schoolhouse was crazy as the presenters before me were running late, so I was rushed and pretty nervous about the whole thing. The presentation went well enough I suppose, but was a bit shorter than it was supposed to be. 🙁 I do talk fast when I get nervous, and I thought we’d be short on time since the other folks were running late, so I didn’t show every single quilt from the book. A number of the attendees came up to visit after the drawing (AQS gave away two of my books at the end!), and enthused about the book and the quilts, and were very excited about the ideas and techniques. Even though the response seemed good, I still left feeling a bit down about it all, so I headed back to the room to rest a bit before lunch.
When I met Bonnie for lunch though, she told me that she thought the presentation was great, and not to worry about it being short. She was also very excited about Inchie Quilts, and asked if I wanted to do a vidcast with her! Bonnie films and produces free vidcasts for her website featuring art and techniques from such quilting luminaries as Paula Nadelstern, Sue Nickels, Ricky Tims, Caryl Bryer Fallert and Alex Anderson, among others.
I’m sure I had that “deer in the headlights” look about me at that moment, since I don’t like cameras much (especially video cameras!) and the last time I tried to do anything on video wasn’t easy and might even be termed a total disaster. And wow, just to be asked to do it was such an honor that it made me nervous right there! Bonnie convinced me that it would all turn out okay, that we’d just chat about Inchie Quilts casually, and her “magic editors” would make it all work! After lunch, we found a quiet sitting area between the rooms in the Hotel, and went to work.
Now how cool is it that Bonnie and I spent an hour and a half filming a vidcast about Inchie Quilts? The filming went really well. It really was just casual conversation and she made it totally easy, just like she promised. I’ve no idea when it will be shown on her website, but you can be sure that as soon as I know, you’ll know. I can’t thank Bonnie enough for the boost she gave me during lunch on Friday, and while we filmed the vidcast. I felt so much better and more confident, and able to face the coming Quilt Market weekend. So despite the jet lag, Quilt Market started out great after all, and more exciting things were yet to come!
