Excitement

Tomorrow I will board and plane to Columbus, Ohio, meet my sister, pick up a rental car and drive to Athens, Ohio for the SAQA conference and the opening of the Quilt National '05 show at The Dairy Barn. This is probably going to be the one and only time in my life that I will have an opportunity to be part of something so grand, and the excitement I feel is a combination of nervousness, insecurity and, well, maybe, just a little bit of pride.

Results of a presentation

Last month at our Mavericks meeting I did a presentation - a book review - of Betsy Dillard Stroud's book, "Painting from the Inside Out". I worked hard on it, scanned in dozens of her paintings and photos showing many of her techniques. We discussed how her techniques could cross-apply to fabric surface treatments and covered some of the exercises in the book that could also apply to art quilt making.
After the presentation, many members came up and told me how much they enjoyed it. This was very gratifying as I had worked very hard on it. But last night's meeting was really the frosting on the cake.
One member told me she had been so impressed with the presentation that she had gone home and ordered the book from Amazon.com. Two others brought in work for show and tell that had been inspired by some of the exercises suggested. Seeing their work just made my heart soar! Not only was it nice that the presentation inspired them; but the work was GOOD! woohoo!
I guess that the reason this gives me so much joy is because I know that my work on creating the presentation was not wasted. It meant something, not only to me, but to other people, too.