It all started about a month ago whilst sitting at home and checking my email. Coleridge School were looking for a tutor for an adult class every Monday afternoon. The tutor employed to teach this class had dropped out.
It had been a long held ambition to teach grown ups. Don't get me wrong, I loved teaching children but adults would be a welcome change. I was interested in this class for three reasons: it was on a Monday afternoon, it was 2 minutes walk from my house and it was a beginner's class. Three ticks.
What followed was a frantic session of form filling of various bits of paperwork. So with 5 days notice I arrived at the school to meet seven delightful ladies full of expectations. The Janome machines were a challenge as I'm a Bernina fan and there were no 1/4" seam presser feet to be seen. Oh, and no bobbins.
Never mind, I'm used to thinking on my feet and I got the ladies to make a piece of crazy patchwork.
And the end result by one lady. However, this quilt evolved using only fabric from my scrap bag. Here's the result..what an eye for colour!!
We also tried a four patch and half square and quarter square triangles.
Not bad for a pile of scraps! Looks easy but in practice it is all too easy to forget to completely cover up the previous row and lose all sense of direction. On another day we quilted the pieces and turned them into zipped pencil cases.
Without the proper patchwork feet I decided to take a bit of a risk and teach the class how to do foundation piecing. Quite mad really as it's not the easiest of techniques to put over but at least you can sew on a line.
I made two samples.....destined to be 'mug rugs'!
This one, above, in an unfinished state and this next one below
where I added quilting and a binding. Did I mention I was being observed this lesson? A tad nerve racking.........
So, some of the results although not totally finished......
As the weeks progressed we tackled making flying geese. Everone made a set of eight geese and found different ways of putting them all together.
Last week we made the 'disappearing nine patch' as shown below. This is a great block because you get a 'wow' factor for not that much effort. Accuracy in cutting and piecing is coming along nicely...
Finally, I can't resist adding this last photo. My four year old grandson was in Cambridge last weekend. I had ready some wooden templates of trees and stars bought at a craft fair. We had a fun afternoon with a glue gun and my button collection. It's great to be a granny....
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