David and I have spent our week working on our presentation for our upcoming talk at the Village Quilters guild  on May 10th. David and I work on our ideas and speaking topics separately. We bounce our ideas off each other in order to narrow down the topics that we want to cover. We do a lot of adding and editing as we go.

Each of us have our own 3 x 5 cards. We put down what we think are the important points to each quilt and then practice talking about each piece. Having another artist to critique our ideas and individual presentation is very helpful. David has indicated several things that I should mention on some of my pieces. I need to remember that not only are we covering how we work together in our studio, but also the techniques we use for the pieces being discussed.

David and I are working on not only our speaking points, but also the order and the quilts we will be sharing. Trying to decide which quilts will be displayed during the whole engagement and which quilts will be shown individually as we speak about them is very difficult.

It is very interesting looking at our pieces with an eye towards dissecting them down to their design components and reason for creation. Some of these pieces were not displayed in our home. We keep them stored away from dust and light. Seeing them in a group is really fun. I can really see where my favorite and most successful techniques develop. 

We are auditioning our quilts on our photographer's stand to decide which quilts view best from a distance. We are also deciding which ones look best together.

We will spend the week rehearsing our topics and then on Saturday we plan to do a final run through with our final sequence of shared quilts. That gives us a week to work out any bugs or timing issues. We are speaking for about one hour and feel we have more than enough quilts to fill the time.

I have signed up for Craftsy classes on different techniques that I hope will not only give me inspiration for my art quilts but will also help in mastering my general sewing skills.

I not only watch all the quilt and quilt art shows that I can for inspiration and techniques but I have also started following some of the general sewing shows. I have found some great ideas that can be used in my art quilts that come from commercial sewing techniques.

I watch Sewing with Nancy and of course It's Sew Easy on our local PBS channel. I just found a show called Fit 2 Stitch that looks interesting and may be another one that I will glean some new techniques from.

Do you have some favorite shows that are not quilting specific that you have learned new skills from? Let me know and lets share the knowledge!

I have a "store bought" knit top almost exactly like this one and I love it. It is a flattering style for me and if the first one works out I might have several of these in different fabrics. The bonus will be figuring out how to use the knit scraps in an art quilt!