Yes, I was lucky to take a class from her. Got her to autograph my books while I was there - thought ahead on that one and brought them with me in my luggage, otherwise I'd have lost that opportunity. She had some wonderful tips that aren't in the book - the main one I use now is - set your stitch to a long basting stitch when joining sections. Start at the top for a short few stitches, skip down (don't cut the thread) sew where the points are to join, continue to the end. Take it off the machine, open and see if your points are matching - if they are, reset your stitch and just sew over the line you've just made. If they aren't matching, you only have to rip (with long stitches, not a real problem) a short part of the join. This has saved me lots of trouble.
Secondly, for those ladies not real familiar with this book - some of the stars have up to 128 pieces in them. They really aren't hard, just take one piece at a time and soon, you'll have all 4 pieces to join for 1 star.
Looking forward to starting!!!!