Teacher's Reward

There's a reward in teaching that I didn't fully realize until my students started coming back to show me how they'd applied their learnings.

Pictured above is Michelle, one of the students in my fabric bowl class two weeks ago. Michelle expresses her creativity in a number of ways. I've admired her crocheting. She is not a quilter. She's not even much of a sewer. Her machine is an older Pfaff that her mother gave her. For making fabric bowls it is more than sufficient.

This week, Michelle walked into my office holding the bowl you see above. The blue isn't the traditional quilter's cotton fabric most students use. Instead it is a scrub suit top given to her by my boss. It looks great and is a superb way to "repurpose" fabric.

Michelle asked for a critical review of the project. I went ahead and nitpicked it. All in all, she did a fabulous job with this, her second bowl.

I am thrilled with her. I love it when my students take what I've taught them and then go out and experiment and grow on their own. It's a wonderful reward for me. Thanks to Michelle for giving me permission to include this photo on my blog.

-- Joanna

The Eye of the Beholder

I belong to a wonderful group of quilt artists who participate in the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge. The last Friday of the month we are presented a challenge. Similar to many challenges with a twist: we have just one week to finish the challenge! We have to think out of the box and we have to work fast.

It was the working fast that tripped me up last month. I lacked inspiration for most of the week then got into a creative frenzy. The challenge was to take or a quilt and then deconstruct it. I had a small project that I had done for another group and disliked it so much it almost went in the trash. Instead, I took my cutter and had great fun cutting it apart. The reconstruction was a series of "what if?" What if I did a loose weave? What if I experimented with different threads? What if I added an inside border?

Lots of fun and I rushed to get it finished. Problem is, I rushed too much and made a horrible mistake. One that couldn't be corrected. No way. No how. What to do? I decided to go ahead and finish the quilt. Could someone see the mistake? Doubtful. Could someone feel the mistake? Possibly. Do tell ...when was the last time you saw someone go into a home and take art off the wall?

As I usually do, I took the quilt into my office to be admired. All artists like to get ego-stroking and I can rely on my co-workers to give me appropriate stroking. No one said "hey, I see a mistake!"

Now that you have admired, it's time for me to confess what I will use forever as a "teaching moment" with my students. I had dutifully spent a few minutes practicing my free mothing quilting. Being rushed I wasn't quite as careful as usual. I didn't realize I had very neatly quilted a section of my practice piece to my top! Ouch!

I cut as much away as I could then fused on a back and applied a binding.

Now you know the secret. Can you see it?

-- Joanna