The Rockford Files . . . a report and a reprieve

The trip to Rockford was a rousing success!!

The drive north was mostly uneventful (emphasis on "mostly"). I was listening to "Nostradamus Ate my Hamster" by Robert Rankin (read by the author). It was an interesting listen involving time travel, a subliminally-charged movie that literally converts the world, and Adolph Hitler (who gets his head bashed in to put him out of his misery). Unfortunately, I was so intent on hearing the end that I missed my exit (and the tollway). Several locals got me back on course, and I arrived at my hotel around 9:00 p.m.

I gave two lectures on Thursday, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. There were about 100 people at the afternoon lecture, and 50 people in the evening (the cold, rainy weather may have affected the evening attendance). Like at my lecture in Flint, MI last month, I gave away free copies of my design tiles to the guild members. I sold a dozen copies of my book and donated one copy to the guild library.

There were eight people in the design workshop Friday morning. Colleen, one of my students, told me her elderly mother had been in the audience the previous evening and took my design tiles home with her. Colleen said her mother was busily playing with the design tiles that morning. She thanked me for coming up with something to keep her mother occupied!! Do you think I should target nursing homes next??

There were five people in the construction workshop Saturday morning. I gave each student one set of my sandpaper-backed templates and sixteen pre-stamped muslin foundations. They asked if I had any muslin foundations for sale, and bought about a dozen bundles of eight foundations!!

I got some great feedback, suggestions, and ideas from the two workshops. I have a lot more material to add to the book later this year. Since the patterns are basically shape-driven, I've come up with a change of the design tiles for emphasis. There's interest in more products (templates, stencils, and muslin foundations) for sale.

I returned to St. Louis early Sunday evening. My partner, Ed, was happy to see me (the cats could have cared less). We had a relaxing evening . . . end of report.

On Monday morning, I bought and prepped more muslin . . . while I was washing the muslin at the laundromat, I met the part-owner of the video production office next door. Did I ever tell you about the DVD of my lecture in Flint, MI?? The audio was terrible!! The camera had no direct-feed microphone, so there was an echo-y quality to the sound, and you could also hear every cough, scraped chair, etc. in the room. Ryan said his company could fix that. He said they had studio facilities to film other presentations as well.

If you think my quilting is "out-of-the-box," just wait till you get a load of my videos!! I'm thinking/dreaming of lectures and workshops on DVD for those who would never see me otherwise. Just think: individual classes on the design tiles, block construction, and color theory you can watch again and again!!

I'm writing (and designing) copy for "packaging" for the templates and muslin foundations. I cut an additional 450 muslin foundations to stamp, but I may leave that for something to do in my hotel room.

I had been rushing around to get ready to leave Wednesday, but late Tuesday I learned that my hotel in Willowbrook is booked for Thursday, not Wednesday . . . a reprieve!! Now, I have additional time to make the sandpaper-backed tempates, bundle muslin foundations, redesign the design tiles for the workshop, etc., etc., etc. . . .

I'm a little busy at the moment . . . later, sweet taters!!

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