Blooming Sheers with the Israeli Quilter’s Association

Teaching is always waiting to give you a surprise, one of the things I love about it. I taught an international group this week, the Israeli Quilter’s Association, a group that draws from the entire country. I had no idea what I was in for. This was a group of highly talented, experienced quilters with a wide variety of skills. I taught “Blooming Sheers” in 2 3-hour zoom sessions. This is a class I have taught several times before and it has been a rousing success each time. I love that class!

There were 11 enthusiastic women in the class 1 (not present in this photo):

These ladies were ready to go and took off running! By the end of the first session, they were already about 90 minutes ahead of any other group that I’d taught this to. There was one day in between our meetings and I started getting emails of completed work – after 3 hours of class! And it was good work. Class started at 6AM my time, 4 PM their time. I am a super early riser so this was not a hardship on me at all. It was a little weird to be done teaching at 9AM though!

I was sweating it because almost half of the class had completed some work and because of their accelerated pace, I had about an hour’s worth of content left, for a 3 hour class. I have never had that happen before! I could add content, but the subject matter, sheers and free motion quilting, was fairly narrow. What was I going to do? I figured I would have a prolonged Q & A after I’d presented the material I had. Maybe the class would end early, something I did NOT want to happen. I always strive to give an abundance of useful, relevant content that takes up the entire class time.

Whew, lucky me! When I opened the floor for questions, they came one after another and we covered a lot of ground in the last 90 minutes of class, taking us right up to the end. My students were thrilled with all that we covered! I was so happy it ended up that way. We had fun talking about everything from Kraft Tex to wool batting to fills and grids and a whole lot more.

Some times teaching gives you a gift. This was one of those times. I was so happy to have time to delve into subjects that were beyond the scope of the curriculum, things they really wanted to know. Oh I love teaching! Let me show you some of the work done by this talented group:

I didn’t capture all of the work done – there was more!

My crawl space work continues…with dirt, dust, noise and debris. But, something we really need done and I am grateful that there are men that will work all day underground.  It does invade my peace. I think this is going to take longer than they said it would. It’s hard to get anything done.

Random flower photos, again!

Look at that! Trader Joe’s Peonies. They are my favorite flower. If I were super rich I would have my house full of them year round. Aren’t they just outrageously beautiful? Can you imagine the smell?

These are not mine, but grow across the street at the pond. OMG look at that purple!

I’m hoping against hope that the crawl space work (“encapsulation”) is done next week. Hah!

I’ll be posting at Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday!