Teaching a Workshop

Today I taught a workshop for my quilt guild. We have workshops every third Thursday of the month. I am the President of the guild and I encourage people to attend the workshops because I consider it to be the social event of the guild. Of course anything to me, as long as there are more than 2 people, is a social event to me!

Today I was teaching a Halloween quilt, Happy Jack. It was in the September 1999 issue of Fons and Porter's magazine, For the Love of Quilting. Sarah Nephew is the designer.

I have taught workshops many times, and I approach them like I would if I were teaching school. I pretend that no one knows anything about quilting. I feel like you have to do that because you don't know the different skill levels. For those that are advanced, they just do their own thing. For those that aren't advanced I have found something that helps so much! I have a design wall that I carry around. It's a peice of cardboard covered in flannel. On my design wall, I have all the pieces of the block: detailed step by step pieces. I walk around the room with my design wall, I lay the pieces out on the flannel, the student lays her pieces out just like mine by their sewing machine, and they sew them together.

There were 30 people in the class, and they all had great success. Most of them made 2-3 pumpkins. I didn't know people would be so excited to make pumpkins in April, but I guess they are wanting to make something that they know they will have finished by October.