Not On the Road: Lodi Valley Quilt Guild Virtual Fabric Collage Lecture

I have a series of blog posts called “On the Road“—posts featuring my in-person classes and travel throughout a typical year. Of course, 2020 is not a typical year, so today we inaugurate the first ever “NOT On the Road” post.

This past Monday, rather than traveling to give a lecture for a quilt guild, I gave my first virtual lecture and trunk show. Our experience with Thursday Night in My Studio Live! presentations prepared us well for this event held for the Lodi Valley Quilt Guild whose members live near Madison, Wisconsin.

As it happened, I was in Madison teaching and giving a lecture almost exactly two years ago at Blue Bar Quilts, so I could picture the location and feel of the area at this time of year. I have a friend through my travels who lives there, and she was a great host during my stay (thanks Nancy!). To take an armchair trip to the city of Madison, click here to transport yourself to the good ol’ days and lovely class of mid-November, 2018. Don’t miss the drive through holiday light show video at the end!

Our host for this year’s virtual travel to WI was Trisha Urben, president of the Lodi Valley Quilt Guild. She set up and ran the Zoom meeting, which was attended by more than 70 members, including a few I had met in 2018. Thank you Trisha for your organizational skills.

Slide Show

Doing a slide show virtually was pretty much the same as giving one in-person, which I have done dozens of times before. The main difference was that there was no speaker-audience feedback: no laughs, no gasps, no nods of understanding, also, no watching anyone fall asleep. Giving a lecture is a performance, like acting, and when you can’t see or hear the audience, it’s hard to know if what you’re saying is reaching them. It’s a shot in the dark.

Afterward I could read the transcript of the text chat that was going on during the lecture, proof that an audience was truly there after all!

This lecture outlined my four decade development of fabric collage—as I do it. Using pictures of my quilts, I showed some very early experiments working with fabric as an art medium from college days and a few years after, through the evolution of my fabric collage technique, which has shifted and changed over the last three decades.

In revamping and updating the slideshow, I realized that as of 2020, I have been working with the fabric collage technique for half my life! Though technically not quite there yet, I do turn 60 in a little over a week, and weirdly enough, I actually look forward to the turning of every decade. It’s like a new start in a new stage of life. I’m ready to move ahead in my 60’s and into 2021, regardless of the restrictions of COVID. There’s too many things to do, and I can do them right here at home.

I enjoyed delving into my creative past and rearranging it for this slide show, though Tom tells me it was a little long. At least I couldn’t see those that were nodding off in their own homes.

So now I feel charged up to create a series of new slide shows focusing on various subject matter—portraits, pets, other animals, sea-life, who knows where this will go.

Trunk Show

A highlight of Monday’s live event was the reveal of “Crocodylus Smylus“, my quilt of a 20-foot saltwater crocodile. “Stevie,” as the quilt is nicknamed, resides on my studio wall and requires three stationary video cameras to capture her entire length.

This was Stevie’s first appearance in a guild lecture/trunk show—for obvious reasons. The video excerpt below shows her in all her bulk and glory.

I also held up to view, “Monarch Maia,” “Dixie Dingo Dreaming,” and “Kaloli Moondance”  in this virtual trunk show. (Click the links to view Quilt Stories of each.)

To show close-ups of these quilts, Tom used a hand-held camera which he could place inches away from the quilt. We were trying to simulate as much as possible the experience folks have when they walk up to a quilt and put their face in it to see the details.

Questions and Answers

After the slide show and before, during, and after the trunk show, Trisha fielded questions from guild members. There were lots of how-to questions and “how much does Stevie weigh?” (Around 32 pounds with a shipping weight of 38 or so.)

Admittedly, the show did run a bit long and I’ll need to make a few more adjustments. But something extra I thought to put together the next day, was a reference list of what was covered, or asked about, in the lecture—so if eyes did glaze over, guild members could follow online links to see the quilts again, or gain more information. That list got a little long too. Ah well, it’ll give me something (else) to work on in the next decade.

For information pertaining to a lecture for your own guild or group, please contact Tom.