You Meet the Most Interesting People at Quilt Shows

I’d like to start this week’s post by thanking all of you for the comments, stories and kind words many of you sent after last week’s post about recipes! Amazingly – my Mom is still with us and filled with the joy of the Lord.

After sharing a number of posts about the Great Wisconsin Quilt Show, I realized I needed to add one more. This one is about some of the people I met while there. It was delayed a bit because I was so excited to tell you all about my time in Nevada and Mom’s cookbook. Now the time has come and I think you’ll enjoy meeting these dear people too.

So here it is and the first person I’d like to introduce you to is Shweta Gupta. She was a student in one of my Paint Stick Appliqué classes.

Shweta was very intrigued by the paint stick techniques and asked many good questions during class. Afterwards she stayed to chat and I discovered that she has a child attending college in Madison. She told me she was thrilled to realize her trip to bring him to Madison coincided with the Great Wisconsin Quilt Show. Shweta lives in Bangalore, India, and has a quilting business she calls Twinkle Quilt Threads. She told me that quilting is still not wide spread there, but she loves making, teaching and selling her work. Click here to find her on Facebook. I know you’ll enjoy it.

On Thursday evening Nancy Zieman Productions and PBS host a “Teachers Meet and Greet” each year. It’s a wonderful way to get to know others on the faculty and to find out what they’re sharing at the show. The snacks are always delicious. I love to mingle and talk with everyone. We were sitting around the outside of a large square of tables. Part way through my mingling this year I noticed three women sitting across the way. Two were actively chatting, but the other woman was sitting quietly looking around. I took the opportunity to join her and I’m so glad I did. I enjoyed listening to her Scottish accent as she told me that she did quite a bit of sewing in her life, but now she lived in Senior Living and didn’t have the desire to do it anymore. She said she loved to encourage others and she was at the show to assist her friend Joe Vecchiarelli who is a “fit specialist” and is known for his work with costumes on Dancing With the Stars (among many other things!). I was embarrassed to admit I hadn’t heard of him. At this point in the conversation he came over and Tania introduced us. He needed to talk with her about putting his dress forms (which he is famous for) in the classroom for the next afternoon. He was concerned about where the classroom was, and if he could leave them there. It was a fun moment for me because I was able to tell him I was teaching in that room in the morning, and they wouldn’t be in the way at all. I explained where it was and he and Tania left to make the move. The next day Joe’s dress forms were waiting for our class.

As the “meet and greet” came to an end we made our good-byes and she said “you may want to Google me. My name is Tania McKnight Norris”.

That night while Lori and I were discussing the adventures of the day, I told her about Tania and looked her up. WOW! She is an incredibly accomplished woman! She’s lived all over the world, her artistic and sewing talents are amazing, and her ultimate claim to fame was as a designer for Walt Disney. She worked closely with him on many projects for both Disneyland and Disney World. I found a recent Sew & So podcast on YouTube in which she was interviewed, and I know many of you will find it fascinating. It’s a bit long, but worth every minute.

In case you wondered about the creepy image at the top of this post, Tania designed this purple wallpaper for the haunted mansion!

What an interesting woman. The next morning before their class began I snuck in and asked Tania if we could talk for a moment in the hall. She agreed. I thanked her for telling me to look her up, and told her it was a blessing and a joy to have met her. Her response was very kind. We hugged and she even agreed to a selfie. What fun!

Now if that wasn’t enough… I have one more story to share. My daytime lecture this year was entitled “Problem Solving Tools, Tips and Techniques”. It came about because I’ve shared so many of these ideas on my blog over the years that I thought it would be nice to put them together in one place. The fun part was that I could include a handout with the lecture that provided the links to those items on my blog so the students needed only to mark the links they wanted to remember on their handout, and when they needed it in the future ~ it was there ~ and with photos! The lecture seems to have been a hit.

One of the tools in the talk is called Annie’s Scissors Holster. Annie is the granddaughter of the couple who owns Sew Very Smooth. She made this device on a 3D printer when she was eight (if I remember correctly). It sticks to your machine and holds scissors, snips and tweezers exactly where you need them (click here to purchase one for yourself).

I have one on each of my machines ~ and I love them. When I brought up the scissors holster in my second lecture, someone in the audience said “Sew Very Smooth has a booth in the show”. I’d not been able to visit the vendors at this point because of my rather crazy schedule, and I was thrilled to know they were there. I finally got to check out the vendors in the final hours of the show on Saturday. When I purchased my holsters a few years ago, I didn’t connect with the owners. So when I found their booth this time I tapped the holster on a machine and asked Steve if they’d been selling well, with a smile on my face. He looked up and asked “are you the one?” I had to laugh, and it started a fun conversation about Steve and LuAnn’s very creative grandchildren. This conversation wove through the topics of quilting notions, family (I shared about my Mom’s amazing improvement in her health since going on hospice), and faith. That’s when I found out that LuAnn had recently been through a difficult time with her health. We talked and then prayed for one another. And as the show ended she agreed to join me in what else? A selfie!

As we parted Steve and LuAnn gave me a sample of their Polish Kit. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m sure I’ll be telling you all about it in a future post.

I think you’ll agree ~ I met some very interesting people at the show this year!

**************

And one more thing! A while back I posted about needle threading (click here for that post). Jill sent me a photo of two interesting threaders she owns, along with this comment:

“My father’s Aunt had a sewing kit that I was lucky enough to inherit. She had to be born in the early 1900’s. These needle threaders were in her sewing things. They have advertisements on them so maybe they were free? Maybe some of your other quilting friends would know? They sure are a treasure to me! Thank you for your blog.” 

Wow! I haven’t seen any like this before. And the one from White Sewing Machines says “since 1876” and “American Made”. I did a bit of web surfing and found some available for sale on Ebay:

I learned that Needle threaders in Europe date back to the 18th and early 19th century. Thanks for sharing Jill.