Back to the Classroom!

 I am very happy to announce that I will be teaching at the Night Owl Quilting Studio in Goffstown NH. My first classes will be my Liberated Birds and those are scheduled for Thursday May 15 and Saturday May 31, 2025. 

The next class will be my Liberated Letters on June 28, 2025.

We are also planning some multi-session classes that will give students an opportunity to make quilts like this Happy Holidays banner that includes letters, birds and other elements.

Stay tuned!

This and That

While I was at Quilted Threads over the weekend I also bought these fabrics. I liked the one on the left but I don't know what I'll do with it. As for the one on the right, I know exactly where that is going to go.

I know where these two are going also.

This was on sale for 30% off. Two rows was one panel and one panel was six bucks, so I bought four. I don't know where it will go, but if I don't cut it up it will make a nice backing to something.

I also discovered I had made a mistake on the class list in my sidebar. I'm teaching Letters in May and Barns in June. I thought it was the other way around, and I had plenty of time to get my letters class tute ready. Um. Not so much! Gotta get going on that ASAP! (By the way, the information in the sidebar is now correct.)

What Did I Learn?

I always tell people that I learn so much from the students I teach, and they don't always get it. Sometimes it's as simple as this:

These bed risers underneath a work table to make it easier to work on.

My friend Mary, a former schoolteacher, sent me this email last night:

Hi Lynne,

How did it go?  I'm assuming you've been evaluating the experience...what went well, what you'd change, if anything, etc.  

Did anyone approach you with a new idea...perhaps something you'd never considered doing...a new adventure?

I'm going to be interested in how you like your new Elna.

 After typing my reply for about half an hour it occurred to me that you all might like to know just what I did learn. So here it is:

Hi Mary,

Well, the biggest thing I learned was that I had to find a better way of carting my stuff back and forth. When I was in St Louis with Julie and she had this nifty little folding cart. So I have to get (and in fact have already ordered) one of them.

With all this packing and unpacking of my tools every time I teach a class, I finally got smart and decided to get extras of all my nifty tools and keep them packed and ready, so I ordered those from Amazon. (Rotary cutter, spare blades, various rulers, blue painter's tape, seam ripper, pins... stuff like that.)

The room was a typical conference room. It was smallish with a sewing machine and about twelve inches of desk space for each user. Not much. I like to have a central place where the students can work on the bird legs and I can give demos.  The  Center of NH set up a worktable for me just outside the room. I had brought a cutting mat and big ruler, so we used that.

I am so accustomed to classes providing ironing boards it never occurred to me to ask for one. There were two outside the room, but the irons weren't hot and there were always lines. So one of the things I bought at the show was a portable ironing board for the students to press the bird legs. I probably should have bought one that sits on a table, but I got one that has legs and can stand by itself.  Anyway, problem solved.

I love steam irons. So I try to have an extra one on hand. The one I have been using just died, so I pulled out it's trusty twin and didn't miss a beat. So I just ordered two more. One to keep as a spare (kinda line a spare sewing machine) and the other to go in my [new] travel kit, which is my least favorite suitcase on wheels.

When I was at the Bedford Quilt Guild, they put a table up on bed risers and OMG!!! Was it awesome to work on. So I ordered a set of those for my trusty travel kit.

And oh yes... luggage tags to identify what bag, cart, quilt stand is MINE!

I will make a portable design wall. I am so used to being at Quilted Threads where I have a place to pin stuff up, but I need something to show everybody... So I will get a piece of foam core and make a small design wall (18 x 24", same size as a cutting mat I bring to my classes now.) Of course I will order another one of those some time. I will wait until JoAnn's has a sale because I hate paying full price for anything if I can get it on sale. I'd get a portable easel, but places like the Center of NH often have those for the asking. I'll see how that goes. I don't really need to lug more stuff around.

An inexpensive portfolio for carrying artwork will carry my mat and portable design wall very easily.  It will also be a good place to store that extra 6-1/2" x 24" ruler I need to bring to classes. 

I usually keep a ruler in one back pants pocket and a rotary cutter in the other. My cell phone lives in my front pocket. I use it for taking pictures. I'm always putting something down and then walking away. It happened so many times that the students told me I should get an apron with pockets. Damn! Why didn't I think of it? I can make one of those... and OH, can I have some fun with THAT!!!

In a big class (like one with 20 students) it's easy for students to miss out on part of a demo. Very often students sew the head triangle to the bird the wrong way (they sew the long side of the HST to the body. Wrong, wrong, wrong.) I often have examples pinned up on a wall for reference, but this class didn't have walls for that and I didn't have a portable design wall. So I need to make samples, but they need to be BIG, so I students can just look up and see the CORRECT way to sew these pieces together.  So that's something I have to do.

Years ago Julie told me to make a bunch of birds and hand them out to each student before they get to work on their own birds. They can't keep them, but they can turn them over and see how I put them together, how I pressed them, etc. Several students told me this was VERY helpful, especially if I was across the room.

This tip I learned a long time ago. It's almost simplistic, but when I park my car in a parking garage, I always take a picture of the nearest location sign. After a long and stressful day of teaching, I can barely figure out what to do next, let alone remember where I put the car. Something like this helps me remember and keeps me from losing my cookies while dragging stuff all over hell just to find my car.

Another tip: Decide where I am going to treat myself for dinner after class BEFORE I leave in the morning. Along with trying to remember where I parked the car, knowing I won't have to go home and make dinner (translation: macaroni and cheese out of a box, eaten with a soup spoon directly from the pan as I sack out on the couch...) but still get a good meal really works wonders. Sometimes it's fish tacos from Shorty's, sometimes it's pizza at 900 Degrees, sometimes it's a steak and cheese sub at Nadeau's or fish and chips at Daniel's. Sometimes it's pasta at Johnny Troy's and sometimes it's a steak at Longhorn, the deal is, I don't cook. It's amazing how a good meal rejuvenates me.


So that's it Mary. This class taught me about working in a tight space, and lugging my stuff long distances and how to avoid making several long trips to the parking garage and packing my things better.

Thoughts on Teaching

This is my dear son, and on Christmas Eve a few years ago we were discussing how best to teach students how to make the free pieced letters. He suggested I have them start with "easy" letters to get the hang of it.

I disagreed, because that would tell them that some letters were "hard" and I didn't want to give them a reason to NOT make them. I told him the first exercise would be to get the students to make their own name. "Because they have an emotional connection to their name, and no matter how complicated the letters are, come hell or high water, they'll do it."  My son wasn't so sure.

"Come," I told him. "I'll prove it. I'm going to teach you how to make your name."

So I did. And yes, he made his name panel. We were both drinking vodka and orange juice, so it was a very fun evening.

 I knew I had proved my point when he took out his phone and took photos of the finished name panel.

To this day, I take his name panel to my letter class, and I tell the students the story.  "So what you're really telling us, " one student piped up once, "is that if he can do it, then we can do it too."

Correct.

The afternoon exercise is a four letter word using multiple fabrics, as you have seen in yesterday's post. I give each student a list of twelve words, and they can pick any word they like, and they can swap pages with anybody else in the class. Some words are trickier than others. And yes, Charlotte, students often have to be nudged gently to stretch themselves a bit. If they've done it in class, it will be much easier for them to continue on their own. Not every student needs that push. I had one lady once who wanted to make ALL the "hard" letters (I let her identify them) in class. Her logic was that once she could do those, she could make any letter.

Each student is different, and my job is to help them learn. As a teacher, it is also my job to give them something to think about, so they can take the lessons of the class and continue on their own when the class is over.

Final Font Factory Flimsy

Yesterday's bird was too big, so I made a smaller one, and this time I made it pink. I think it fits better.  Yes, she should probably be higher, but she's staying where she is. Two blue butterflies, and one red asterisk flower (same red fabric as the letters above it) and a bi-color asymmetrical heart complete the flimsy and fill in the empty spaces I didn't like.

Once again, these letters are arranged in columns by construction. There is more than one way to make a "Q", so that letter appears more frequently. A lot of readers ask why the "A" is not in the group with diagonals, but I construct my "A's" differently. I start with the horizontal crossbar and add the diagonals afterwards.

I made the flimsy as a teaching aid, to help students figure out where to start when they make free-pieced letters.       

Font Factory

The Font Factory is now a flimsy. I need to add a bit to the left, but it's done. This is a teaching quilt that shows how I construct the letters. I had originally considered adding goodies like asterisks and birds to this but I decided it would be too distracting.


** Brenda, Everybody tells me the A should be with the diagonals. But these letters are sorted based on how I think they are most efficiently constructed.  When I make my A's I start with the crossbar, and then add the angled pieces to either side.