Talk, Talk, Talk

If you can believe it, when I spoke at the Amoskeag Quilter's Guild three weeks ago, I forgot to take pictures.

Oops.

One of the members sent me these photos.

I gave my talk in a church. There were two tables on which I could arrange my quilts, but I didn't think it would work, so I spread the quilts out on the steps. There was a big projection screen on one side, and a podium for me right in the middle. The woman who introduced me handed me a microphone. "I'm not going to use that," I told her.

(I'm French Canadian. I talk with my hands. I have the remote control in one hand, and if I had to hold a microphone in the other, I couldn't talk, or turn the pages of my speech. So I turned it off and put the damn thing on the floor.)

 I talked. I joked. I told stories. They were surprised when I told them, "Everything about how I made my quilts is on my blog. All my design decisions, all my logic, all my thinking, all my problems and my solutions, it's all on my blog. I share everything.

"You'll be able to read the story of every quilt you'll see tonight, and many of the quilts are here in person so you can check them out in detail."

I talked for almost an hour. They laughed, and afterwards, they told me they loved my talk, they thought my quilts were awesome and they said I was funny.

In the audience was a woman I worked with over 27 years and two jobs ago. (It's funny, now she's a long arm quilter.) At the end of the talk she came up to me.

"Yup," she said, "you're still you."

It was a good evening.