The Quilt class from Hell. part 1

So where have I been? Working, working working.  I had a mini vacation planned. 3 weeks before the vacation I heard the person who had been teaching a quilting class no longer works for us.  I am talking to the person taking the class over and she is not comfortable doing it.  Like an idiot I say "I'll do it, just clear it with the education director!"

Now the class was in 2 days, the education director called me at 8:30 that night to say the info was in my folder. Now is when I find out that they are not halfway through the class, as a matter of fact they are treating it like the class has never happened and one of the ladies is returning to New Zealand in 2 weeks. As far as the director is concerned as long as the they get the top pieced the class worked.

Great, what have I gotten myself into? Are the students angry? Are they confused? Next day I picked up the instructions for the quilt as I headed to my crochet group. This is not a bad quilt I see, but not one *I* would choose for a beginner. It is a variation on a roaming or Roman stripe and is strip pieced. The class quilt is done in sage, pink and brown prints, not my colors, but hey I just need pieces for demo.

I head home, hit the stash and start cutting strips. Pattern calls for 11 fabrics. Each block uses 7 strips. 2 cut at 2.5, 2 cut at 3, 2 cut at 3.25 and 1 cut at 3.5. They are put together with a .25 inch seam and a 12.5 inch block is cut on point. Then scrap area is unsewed, sewn back together opposite way and another block cut. that last bit is the part I am leery of teaching beginners. If their sewing skills are debatable that can get messy if the seam frays or stretches due to resewing. 

Class was the next morning, so I made 1 strip set that was sewn incorrectly to demonstrate how mistakes multiply when piecing,  one put together correctly, I cut two blocks from a third and had the scraps ready to take apart and sew back together in the alternate order with a note to point out that I used only 7 fabrics here, but with 11 there is a much greater variety and scraps from different strip sets could be combined as long as the sizes were the same.  Meaning each block must have the 2 of each strip width and 1 of the 3.5 to make the block no less than 18 inches when sewn together. I also made 6 parchment paper templates and packed up my 12.5 square.

So class day arrives and so do 2 students  Andrea and Susan. They inform me yes the class had 5 enrolled but they are the only 2. Ok, that makes it a bit easier.  Susan did not bring her machine as she was not certain what would be done since they had a new teacher and as she later admitted was not even confident there would be a class after the previous 2 lessons.  I mentioned that I had heard one of them was returning to New Zealand . Both are from the UK originally and Susan was returning for a visit the same week as my vacation. She had hoped to get the quilt finished before then to take with her, but if it was not possible that was fine as she will be visiting again later in the year. Not was I was told, but actually was better.

Let me point out here the from HELL part of this class had nothing to do with the students (anyone who has taught anything has one of THOSE classes). In this case it was the time constraints and the circumstances. 

I started the class by laying out the strip sets. Both students have their's cut except Andrea has a lot.  She has one of the same fabrics that Susan did but it would not behave when she cut it.  I looked at it.  It is a lousy mill run.  Susan's batch was like any other printed cotton used for quilting.  Andrea's was much lower thread count and felt almost like a heavy gauze. It stretched and refused to cut or tear straight.  We trashed those pieces and she had another brown picked out instead. She started to cut them.

It was at THIS point the real headache came out.  It seemed the previous instructor did not like the pattern as it was given to us to teach. OK I can understand that. I am not in love with it either for a beginning class. She had decided to alter it, she had left the students with instructions to cut 6 fabrics at 2.5 inches and 1 at 3 for each square.  Now even this English major could do the math on that one.  To cut a 12.5 square on point you need at least 17.5 inches. What she had given them came to no more than 14. She had told them it would work out, but had given them no printed instructions.

OK, so now what?  I went ahead and had them sew their strip groups together, and copied the instructions for them with warnings that they would be changed now but at least they could see how to perform certain techniques and have explanations of WHY things are done differently in quilting than in fashion sewing. Then we measured the first strip sets.  Susan's worked with an 8.5 square and Andrea's looked like a 10.5 or maybe a 9.5 I recut 2 templates on the fly. But both really want a plastic square. I showed them how to cut one either with or without a window.   We decide to end class a little early and everyone would meet back in 4 days to cut the squares and start the layout. More next time.