Houston Classes

I had 2 classes. Both of them all day.

The first class was called Navigation- Charting A Course For Your Soul with Lesley Riley, she has a blog here. It was an interesting class with a couple of unique questions, but I’m not sure that I have a style or a course to chart. I don’t think I am a ‘free’ enough thinker to be truly original in my design or process. I don’t think I am an artist with a statement to make… I am probably more of a ‘crafter’ with a vast amount of ‘crafty’ knowledge. We were provided with a ‘journal/sketch’ book to work in. Ms. Riley supplied a sheet of questions, quotes and exercise outlines and an ‘art journal’. Our first exercise was an interview with a partner… where we answered the questions and the partner wrote our responses in our journal for us. The second was a scribble to open ourselves to options. Another was over our lunch break; to either take pictures or notes about quilts that caught our eye in the show and to find a common thread as to why we liked it; and then as a collection.

Based on the pictures I took, (I did not go through the whole show, just a couple of rows for these), I was drawn mostly to bold graphic quilts and bright colors.

Another exercise was about time, something I don’t really have a problem with, other than just getting up to the sewing space and using all the time I have!!! I think my bigger problem is focusing…. and choosing a project to work on especially if I don’t have a deadline.

In the morning, Ms. Riley put an apple in front of each of us. The she said that we should describe the apple and that we had a time limit of 5 minutes. We repeated the timed exercise twice more; with no instruction other than to describe the apple. It was my favorite exercise of of them all … I think I would like to take a course with more of these types of exercises… to work on my creativity… rather than the course for it.

The last exercise was to go through the interview again… answering the questions from possibly a new perspective after the exploration. There was also a discussion about using a journal… for sketching, but my feeling about sketching is similar to the one I have about writing… I am not good with the pencil… and showing/using my rudimentary drawings makes me feel as self conscientious as writing in a journal does.

My second class was Beginning Electric Quilt 7 with Barb Vlack, she has a web page here. Yes the beginning, and very basic. Not having used the program… and whenever I tried, I found it to be NOT intuitive. So I thought a class would help. It will, but I must make a plan to open and play at least once a week. We spent the whole day on just the basics. I signed up to be the “teachers pet” when I saw that there wasn’t one for the class. I am sure glad I did, because the number of ladies that could not keep up or had equipment (not familiar with their laptop computer) issues would have kept us from even getting half way through the syllabus, which was only 10 pages, half of which were images! Another was the number of students that had opened and tried to use the program and came with personal stumbling blocks (pun intended) that ate up valuable class time.

I think it is very difficult to pick a class from the limited description given in the catalog, and often going to an instructors web page is not much more helpful. My friends Wolfie signed up for several classes, but only got into 2 of her choices, and my friend Trish signed up for 2 and only got into one.

Have you picked a class from the description, only to find the description did not adequately describe the class?

More Later!!!-

                                   Beth