Who should be teaching and what?

Last night our monthly Mavericks Art Quilt meeting was a travesty. Because our regular meeting site was unavailable, we held our meeting at the Bernina Connection. Since we were sort of barging in on their regularly scheduled Wed. night creative club, we were forced to listen to their scheduled speaker,who I shall leave unnamed. What a nightmare. This lady, who I'm sure is quite a nice person, showed up with enough quilts and notes to speak for probably days on end, but sadly, had very little to say.
For starters, although she said she had been sewing for 30 years (who hasn't?), she had only been making quilts for three years. How she would presume to know enough to be teaching classes is beyond me; but presume she did. Coming from a computer programming background, her true area of innovation was in programming the Bernina Artista 200 to do fancy embroidery stitches. Fine and dandy, but really all she accomplished was shamelessly plugging Bernina products. Much to my consternation!
So what, ultimately was so misguided about her presentation? Well, for starters, she didn't have a clue who her audience was. I've never felt so "talked down to" in years. Because her experience is so limited, she wasted all our time presenting concepts that seemed new and novel to her, but was just the same old stuff. Yes, we all adore Ricky Timms but we don't need to see a half dozen (possibly more!) harmonic convergence quilts. Yipes!
Also, this poor woman seemed to think that she had to show every card in her hand in this single presentation. We covered her entire personal quilting history, plus her experiences working with ElectricQuilt software and other designing programs, plus longarm and free-motion quilting, plus color science plus piecing, plus machine embroidery plus plus plus.........OMG!
Then when she started to go through her "favorite gadgets" basket and show us various Bernina presser feet, I thought I was going to have to run from the room screaming.
All in all, the most educational part of the evening was the lessons learned in reverse: what NOT to do, how NOT to teach, and, most definately, how NOT to leave them wanting more!

Clothing, sewing and second-hand

Being the working girl that I am, my wardrobe has always been a point of entertainment for me. The one point of creativity I can always count on to begin my working day is the answer to "What shall I wear?" Although I have, for all intents and purposes, stopped sewing clothing from scratch; I've started putting my sewing skills to good use by buying used designer clothes from the shops here in Scottsdale and altering them to fit. Due to the wealthy life-style of many Scottsdalians, the selection in the second-hand shops is often remarkable. Over the past year or so I have acquired the following items (this is not a comprehensive list):
a pair of perfectly tailored,Italian-made, fully lined, shorts with a Capezio label that fit so perfectly you would think they were made for me - $8.00
a Hanai Morai black wool gored skirt, (size 2) - $4.00 - this piece will have to be altered as I am no longer a size 2, however, it will be a simple thing to remove the waistband and pull everything up a few inches. I can re-sew the zipper, and face the top of the waist with anything black and it will be perfect. Being only 5'1" does occasionally have advantages if you need to pull things up at the waist to get them to fit.
Hand-beaded and embroidered silk blouse by a fashion designer whose name I can't think of just this minute. - $4
Liz Claiborne cable knit cardigan (offwhite) in exactly my size with the store tags still on it. - $4
Pendleton silk blouse in a print of browns &, golds on a black background ($4)
Black straight skirt in 100% wool fully lined in flawless condition, (size 4) that needed only slightly let-out through the thighs. ($4)
Francois-Girbaud jeans- perfect fit, $8

I divide my friends into two groups according to their attitudes about used clothing. The first group, let's call them the "Receptives", are open to second-hand, love the thrill of the hunt and own many fine items which they - like me - proudly show off.

The other group, let's call them the "More money than sense" group, act like the wearing second-hand clothing is so repugnant that they would never EVER consider even touching second-hand garments. All I can say about this les-than-adventurous group is "Your loss is my gain."

Anyway, the whole reason I have gone on and on about this issue is because I am thinking about doing a book about altering/ cutting down/ adapting used clothing to make it fit and how to update various items to make them more fashionable. For example, would a "receptive" be interested in knowing an easy way to change a skirt with a waistband into a skirt without a waistband to make it conform to current fashion? My theory here is that no one would be willing to pay someone to alter a 2nd hand garment as that would absorb any financial gains one made by buying 2nd hand in the first place.