Teaching a Quilting Workshop

While teachinIMG_1582g and training was part of my professional career before retirement, since I started making art quilts I have shied away from doing this.  I have done the occasional trunk show for quilt guilds, traveling a few hours away to meet new quilters.  Often at those show and tell events they ask about workshops, some “how-to” sessions about the quilts I make.  The challenge of teaching a group how to make these improvisational quilts with no patterns has kept me studio bound.  I don’t want to teach how to have us all make something the SAME.  Even quilts with similar designs in my own studio are not the same because I don’t use patterns.  How to teach?

Late last fall I did a trunk show in one of my rural counties.  This group just would not acceptIMG_1581 NO for an answer when it came to a workshop.  I thought perhaps it was time to take the next step and try to structure a workshop around one of my common design features – curved piecing.  I am scheduled to do a 3 hour workshop on “Curved Piecing” on May 20th for the Juniata County Quilt Guild.  In December, a typically slow month for me, I drafted this workshop.  In early February some wonderful local quilt friends are going to be my guinea pigs for a trial run to be sure I have my timing and teaching figured out.

I’m giving the workshop participants a choice of three design motifs AND encouraging them to pursue lots of creativity within those options.  They can make an abstract landscape quilt, a  sunset quilt, or a tree quilt  I have pictures included in this blog of the three sample quilt tops I have made to show them.  These quilts are all small, about 1 – 1.5 square feet total or around 10″ x 14″ or 12″ x 16″ when finished.  Each will have about 10-12 curved cuts and sewing seams.  I’m getting very excited about the workshop and who knows….maybe part of this retirement business will be teaching in addition to creating!! 

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