Thanks to everyone who attended our lecture earlier today in Austin at QuiltCon. For those of you who weren’t able to be there, we left everyone with homework:

1. Know thyself. Make a list of what you’re good at – use your strengths to develop your own techniques and your own pattern. Now make a list of things that you don’t know how to do – then figure out how to whittle away at this list to expand your skill set
2. Aim high and ignore what other people are doing. Following the crowd will not teach you as much as figuring out how to combine you interests with your skill set. Where do you want your quilting to take you?
3. Challenge yourself  – if you could only make one more quilt, what would it be?
4. Reflect. Who you will be tomorrow as a quilter doesn’t have to be who you were yesterday. What would you like to learn?
5. Think broadly. Don’t get hung up on labels; you needn’t adhere to making one type of quilt—even though we consider ourselves modern quilters, there’s something to be learned from every genre of quilting. Which types of quilting could you learn from?
6. Experiment. Work with small prototypes that are a minimal investment of time and money – don’t get overwhelmed the thought of a big project. Experiment with different types of stitching, mix genres of fabric, play with unlikely color combinations, make sample pieces that are entirely unlike anything you’ve ever made before,
7. Share your work – volunteering to organize a quilting day to make quilts for your favorite charity, offer to give a lecture on your work at your aunt’s retirement community – you needn’t be famous or have written a book to share your quilts with others
8. Give and receive. Learn how to give and receive constructive criticism for those who seek it. Find four positive things to say about someone else’s quilt and look for one thing that you think they could improve
9.  Encourage one another. Bill and I have an agreement: love it for 10 minutes, which means that before you decide if you like it or not, give it 10 minutes. Look carefully. Think about it. Listen to the point of view and find at least as many positive things to say as negative ones.
10. Have fortitude to follow all the way through on an idea, even when you stumble and are tempted to give up.
11. Document your ideas. Use a notebook, a sketchbook or a box to collect even the most simple sketches or ideas for future quilts. Photograph everything you make and keep those images together. Print them and put them in an album so you can see them all at once.
12. Evolve. Lastly, look at your work over time. What makes your best quilts the “best”? How have you evolved? How will you continue to evolve?