I have agreed to present three classes or workshops at G Street Fabrics sometime this fall for a six-hour day for each.  One will be on machine applique two ways, one will be quilting with feed dogs up, and one will be free motion quilting for sit down machines.  So I have been working out what exactly I want to present and how best to present them.

In the past I have done a couple of these classes and found flaws in how I developed them and hope these will  be much better.  One thing I did at Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival this year was take  a class from Sue Nickels and carefully observed her methods for presentation. She ran one of the best organized and presented classes.   I have also taken classes from other noted quilters, like Pepper Cory, and will be drawing from all of these teaching methods to improve my own.

One of the things Sue Nickels did, as did Libby Lehman in a class I took from her years ago, was to have a camera on their work at the machine so people could really see what she was doing when demonstrating.  I thought this was extremely helpful when taking these classes.

Between my oldest son and myself, I have everything I need to do this with the single exception of the projector.  G Street has a projector they are going to loan me to see if I can make everything all work together to manage this for those classes.  Eventually, though, I will maybe get my own projector if I teach anywhere else.

So I will now make some samples and determine what I need to do to make a kit.  I decided to use my Go! cutter and precut some fusible shapes for the applique kits so it will save the students a lot of time.  I have designed a fall scene for the applique class.

I also will be putting together small sandwiches for the quilting classes.  I tried with my last class having them bring the sandwich.  Several of them arrived with no sandwich at all, some had all the pieces but had not put them together and I had to spend time telling them how to do it.  Time is like gold at a workshop.  So I decided to make a 20 inch x 20 inch sandwich that I premark.  I am only going to have six to eight students per class, so this will not be a huge burden and make a big difference for the class.

So I will really appreciate any suggestions you may have both from the perspective of classes you have attended and of classes you may have taught.  I don’t yet have the dates for these and I’ll tell you more about it later.

Sew happy everyone!  Add your comments to help me make the best workshops ever!