Summer school

Now I've had a chancw to recover I thought it would be good to post some words about the summer school last week. This year Jenny decided to try something new over the summer when the Patchwork Corner workshop is usually unused. She thought she would try offering a more intensive five day course with food supplied so the students could concentrate on a project without worrying about anything else. We weren't sure if people would be interested but we tried the idea on some regular classes. The students were not only up for it, but they also knew what they wanted to do. Cool, saves me thinking of anything.

During the year students got increasingly excited. They had their books and were starting to come up with ideas for their own designs. Rather than running one 5 day course we realised we needed at least two to accomodate everyone. That was tricky. Between us there weren't that many options so the second course runs from a Sunday to a Thursday over the bank holiday at the end of August. Even so there is enough interest to run it.

Monday morning I arrived at the shop early only to find a couple of students had beaten me there. The lure of breakfast was strong. I was there by 9 every day from there in, even though the official start was 10am. After toast, fruit, pastries and yohgurt the students didn't seem too worried about actually getting down to work. Just as well I am a slave driver. A few had already designed their patterns and got straight on with printing their foundations but the rest needed to overcome their reservations about the dreaded D-word. I was so pleased when all of the got down top some serious playing. It's by far the best way to come up with a good mandala design. By lunchtime everyone has their framework organized, by the end of the day most students had all their foundations printed ready to start sewing.

Tuesday we had the breakfast idea sorted and were rewady to work by 10. Having the vatering area was reallt handy for teaching as we could all gather round one table. It was nice to have so much space to layout samples as well. For me Tuesday was quite hectic as I made sure everyone had their fabrics sorted and were getting on well with the foundaton piecing. It was also the time to make sure every foundation was pieced in the right order. Even though most of the students were doing really well with this, I didn't feel I could relax yet. If there were going to be problems this was the time.