Tell her not to go there anymore! I can't imagine paying for something and getting that kind of "help". And at her last class she should tell them what she thinks about their lessons. I am an advanced quilter, probably, and I would get up and leave if I saw any of this going on.

The teachers at my LQS are great. I've been taking classes there for a year now. They often tell me not to be SO much of a perfectionist as I rip, re-rip and re-re-rip to get something just so. As they say, you're the only one who will notice it and if you stand 5 feet away, will YOU even notice it?

They teach us technique and alternative ways of doing things. In my last class, the teacher called out to me from her station, "What are you doing?" She came running over and asked why I was butting my strips together to make a long border. She showed me a really easy way to sew the strips on an angle. Of course, the class had a whole lot of laughs over my being "chastised." All in good fun.

Tell your SIL to try some other shops for classes. Classes should be for learning AND fun.

Please take a different class from someone different. How is someone going to learn anything in that hostile atmosphere. That is why i am SO glad we don't have quilt police here. I am all for constructive feed back. We all learn at different things in different ways. Beginners need a large learning curve.

In my beginner quilting class, I had a very strict teacher. She was kind and she was funny, but she was strict about the basics of quilting. She told us over and over again that we needed to learn to do things right. She always explained how important accuracy was if we wanted our projects to turn out correctly.

I grew very frustrated with the 1/4" perfectionism quickly too. Her being adamant about "how to press" and "when to press" and which "side you press" about drove me nuts. I have never been a perfectionist and knew I'd never change into one. I left at the end with mixed emotions about her.

Well, that was three years ago. I was in a quilt guild with her for awhile and liked her very much. After three years of making my share of mistakes and realizing that what she said was right, I would now have to admit that I am so glad she was a perfectionist because I now know how to find what I did wrong to fix my mistakes. I now know that if I take the time to be more careful, I am more likely to have an end product that is well-made and that I'm proud of. She was strict with us because she cared enough to want us to learn the "correct" way to quilt. I'm still probably not as "perfect" as I wish I could be, but I do remember what she taught me and am grateful that I know the best way to be happy with my quilting.

By the way, the final night of class, she brought many of her own quilts and wall-hangings to class to share with us. I had to fight laughing and pointing at some of the mistakes I saw in her quilts. Not all of her points were perfect either! That made me feel normal!!

Keep encouraging her! I too am 'self-taught' (sorta). I attempt to quilt because I love seeing the fabrics go together, enjoy the sewing process, and usually can hardly wait for final completion. During the entire process I'm looking forward to, and planning, my next project.

I live very near to Albuquerque and am also a beginner. I had sewn for many years but never pieced a quilt. I had a wonderful teacher. I would suggest that she forget the classes at the LQS and go to Ryan's Sewing and Vac on Montgomery and Eubank Blvd. Ask for Debbie. She is wonderful and does many different styles of piecing as well as teaches the long arm quilting. She won't regret it. I would be glad to talk to her if she wants. Just PM me her name etc. Good luck

what an awful thing for that woman to say! it's good you two stuck with it!

that's terrible. We all have to start somewhere. I've been fortunate to have had good instructors so far. And the way I learned to sew a "perfect" 1/4" wasn't until I took a class where we were making a "Plates around the World" quilt (I think this was my instructor's own pattern). Each plate had 8 angles going together (similar to dresden plate except there's no hole in the middle). If you didn't sew it exactly 1/4", you either had a gap in your plate when sewn together or you ended up with a hat LOL It took us about 4 months before most of us got it just right. It was a great teaching technique.

I hope she doesn't get discouraged. Just tell her to hang on and practice. I never worry about exact measurements of a pattern anyway. I figure as long as I make the same change (or booboo) throughout the quilt, it still goes together.

I did a small quilt one time that required 3-7/8" squares for HST. I didn't want to deal with that measurement so just used 4" squares. My quilt looked just fine.

Have your sister-in-law to ask the teacher if she has her "Quilt Police" badge LOL Maybe that will calm her down a little.

Good Luck to her !!!d

You make a good point about knowing now what she was trying to teach you. But, making a student rip it out over and over is just frustrating. Maybe working on scraps to teach 1/4" seams would have been better. And you are absolutely right about learning to iron properly. My neigbhor (and quilting buddy) always kids me about being a perfectionist but I figure if I'm going to spend all this time making a quilt, I want it to be the best I can make.

Mistakes?? I make tons of them but my favorite quilt instructor (who moved her shop to IN) always used 2 suggestions for dealing with mistakes --

1 - Can you live with it? If you can, don't worry about. If you can't, fix it.
2 - Can you see it from 5 feet away? If you can, refer to rule #1....If you can't see it don't worry about it.

This has made my quilting life so much easier.

I am mostly a self taught quilter. I came accross one of my first quilt blocks. It was a Cardinal on a branch with leaves made from HST. I was shocked, no two squares were the same size. On beyond bad, although I sure didn't see it when I made it. Maybe if I had taken a beginner class I would have been a better piecer sooner but again maybe I would have been discouraged and just quit. The important thing is don't let you SIL be discouraged, stress the fun, she will see her own mistakes in time.