Beginning quilting classes- what did you wish?
 

Just curious....for anyone who learned to quilt by taking a class....what do you "wish" they would have covered?

My experience.....

Color theory...light, medium, dark. Was not covered...the instructor picked out the fabrics.

How to true-up my seam allowance. It was a year of sewing wonky blocks before I did this. Sure helped!

how to work with stripes amd/or directional print fabric. This Might Be an advanced class topic

sandy

I've taught a few beginning quilt classes. I did cover fabric color choice and getting a true 1/4" seam. I didn't include stripes and directional fabric. I agree. That's an advanced topic. I did tell people to steer away from those in the beginning.

Sorry your class didn't cover all the things you needed. Speak up next time. I always tell my students that they need to let me know if there's something I haven't covered that they want to know. And, usually, I try to make myself available after the class to help by being at the quilt shop on a drop-in day for people with questions.

I teach a Beginning Piecing Workshop on a regular basis, and here is the description: Skills taught in this course include:
rotary cutting, sewing accurate 1/4” seams, quilting tools, thread, machine set-up, pressing, 4-patch, half-square-triangles, sparrow block, “twist and shout,” snowball corners, flying geese, square-in-a-square, matching points and diagonal corners, squaring-up, chain piecing, block construction, “needle down and stomp your foot,” “steering with the pin,” and borders.

I've been trying to figure out how to add color theory, but the students need to have their fabric before they come to class, so they can start cutting. Maybe the first class can be color theory, then they can buy their fabric between the first and second class.

The class is already 5 weeks, so that would take it to 6 weeks. Is 6 weeks too long? When I do 5 weeks, I expect that every one of the students will miss at least one class.

I'm interested in what others will say. I've had interest in an intermediate piecing class and am working on putting that together.

I think thread wts and ply and needle size would have been a great help for me. It took me a long time to understand how thread can change the seam allowance. Of course the instructor should be knowledgeable about it, not just say this is what I use.

I loved my beginner class and we covered a lot of basics. It really helped me to cut better and understand why that consistent 1/4 inch seam was so important. I believe that color theory should be a separate class devoted just to that. I think if it had been part of the beginner class it would have been overwhelming. We picked our own fabrics and now, a couple of years later I would have chosen a bit differently but it was still a pretty quilt and I was proud of it.

That is a hard question for me to answer.

The first class i signed up for was for hand piecing.I had already done some sewing when I signed up for that class. I think the instructor did a good job. I did learn a lot.

How much knowledge/ experience does the student have?

The only thing I can think of would have been statements that there may be more than one way to do something and sometimes patterns have errors. But at that stage, I doubt if I would have been able to tell there was an error.

But as a beginning beginner, I can only absorb so much information at a time and prefer to have only one fairly efficient method presented at a time.

Also, only so much information can be conveyed in a given time frame.

It seems like many of us were "imprinted" with whatever we first learned.

I am self taught, life is grand when there are no expectations, Everything is perfect.:D I am glad I had no influence to hold me back or "correct" me.
peace

I also think an i,portant lesson is how to square up the fabric. It is never cut straight when we buy it . That is an important lesson I learned the hard way. The 1/4" seam is important and pressing each seam as we go.

We did a 6 block sampler. The whole group seemed to have a great time, and was so disappointed when the classes were finished, that the instructor agreed to teach another 3 week course on making a whole top and offered 2 'simple' designs. I still have that quilt, in fact it took me a couple of years to realize that she had taught me how to make an Irish Chain!

We covered the very basics--how to straighten the fabric, position the ruler and cut safely, pressing, stitch length, even an intro to paper piecing and applique. I will always be grateful to this lovely patient teacher.

Self taught myself....trial and error is my life! I have taken classes the last few years and I'm learning more and more!