I just returned from teaching two workshops and speaking to the East Cobb Quilters’ Guild in Marietta, Georgia, near Atlanta. What a wonderful, warm group of quilters! I was invited to teach there after Danielle Morgan wrote me; at the time, I think she was the guild president, and discovered my blog and website. That’s Danielle above with the wonderful dragonfly she created in the thread sketching class I taught on Saturday.
I can’t tell you how wonderfully they treated me; taking me for great meals, helping me schlep all my stuff in and out of several different workshop and meeting sites, helping me set up, helping me sell my patterns, book and DVD, but most of all, helping me out when I got sick. It is hard to be away from home and attempting to be professional when you are sick. Especially sick the way I was sick (I will spare you the details, but you can take my word for it that it wasn't pretty.) Luckily, it was only a 12-hour bug and I was back on my feet in time to speak to the guild on Friday morning.
What a great program chair this guild has in Pam Cornutt. She is a ball of energy, and was unfailingly helpful, organized and cheerful.
After the guild meeting, Linda Christensen came up to me, excited to see my rust-dyed piece. She had been collecting rusty stuff, and after talking with me and finding me to be a fellow admirer of rust, went out to her car and brought back a big box filled with the most marvelous rusty bits. Look at this!
These are scraps from a metal stamping company. Wow, wow, wow! Thank you, Linda! I wish I had time to work with these right now, but they might have to wait until I get some big projects finished up. (After I took this photo, by daughter came in and said, “Those are interesting rusty things on the kitchen counter, Mama… you have had a tetanus shot lately, haven’t you?”)
Asking students to complete evaluation forms after I teach a class is something I started to do recently. I’m so glad I decided to do it, because I’m getting wonderful feedback from my students. Most of them gave my two classes and my teaching good marks, and that was reassuring. But the constructive criticism and suggestions were invaluable. It made me wonder why more teachers – and more guilds, for that matter – don’t make teacher/class evaluations a regular thing.
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