And another friend, Jackie Taylor of White Cottage, was one of the traders. Must be fun to take your shop to a captive audience. Everyone is there for 3 whole days with nothing on their minds other than quilting. OK, let's be honest, maybe there's a little eating, drinking, talking and general merriment going on too!
Generous souls had contributed beautiful items to raise funds for the Guild. There was a lovely tulip and jug composition from Hilary in front of a gorgeous quilt from Annabel Rainbow. Some lucky individuals are going home with these beauties tonight. How lucky is that!
At 10.30 the Gail Lawther lecture finishes and the audience begin to take their seats for our talk which we called 'What Makes a Quilt?'
It's a huge auditorium and just look at the size of that enormous screen. At this point no one was aware the laptop was in a sulk and refusing to talk to the projector. You might just be able to make out Laura next to our tech support guy in the picture below - they are on the phone googling to find out what the problem may be. Not a great situation when there are only 15 minutes turnaround between lectures and it's about 5 minutes before we are due to start. This is the kind of nightmare that keeps us awake at night. I get so anxious I have sometimes dreamt that we turn up with no slideshow and no quilts either. Neither of us can sing or dance so what would we do? With the worse case scenario in mind I'd filled the boot of the car with a stack of quilts just in case the presentation didn't work, there was a powercut, the world ceased turning or some other such disaster occurred. We call it the belt and braces approach to public speaking!
With great calm the technician proceeded to take the furniture apart and fiddled with a mass of cables.
Despite all the fiddling and twiddling still nothing happened. Of course, true professionals that we are, Laura had a back up plan. She inserted the memory stick, the images magically appeared and we started exactly on time. The 'just in case of disaster' quilts remained in the boot of the car and all was well. Phew - why do we do these things? I'm ready for a sit down and a gin and tonic!
Bye for now - Linda
Hope you've had that G&T by now, sounds as if you earned it.
ReplyDeleteYou did a very good job of covering up the potential disaster and I enjoyed the talk. It's always interesting to hear the story behind the quilts and to see the results of your work on DMTV.
ReplyDeleteYour post leaves me smiling -- and hoping that one day I see a UK quilt show! Memory stick aside, I'm sure your audience would have loved to have seen those quilts 'up close and personal'. :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks Jill - I did manage a little one!
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoyed the talk Julie. We are never really sure how our work is received - I know what we do is not everyone's cup of tea.
We did take a few quilts Margaret but 1 hour isn't long to fill and with such a large room believe it or not it's easier for the audience to see more detail on the screen. Hopefully, if people liked what they saw they'll try to see the work for real at an exhibition soon. We'll be at Festival of Quilts in August and at Minerva in Llanidloes, Wales all summer.
The AGM looks interesting -I have never gone to one, always slightly scared of going without knowing a soul. Maybe I should take the plunge!
ReplyDeleteYour work is always fascinating and I love it!
Hanneke
I think very many of us hit the gin or wine botle with relief after the AGM! Everything I heard about your talk was good - I knew you had strated as half my audinece disappeared, only to re-appear an hour later! Thanks to Laura again for the photo - it was all great fun - Hilary x
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