These pictures are of my wonderful students in BA – the one with the sewing machine in front is the advanced class, the others are the ‘beginners’.   Apart from mine, the classes offered at the festival were very traditional and I think were wiselychosen taking into account the relative short involvement of patchwork and quilting in latin america.   

I taught a beginner and advanced class on freehand cutting and piecing, suggesting that going into the advanced class the student should have done some of this before (I have taught a number of times over here in Uruguay, once to several argentines who came over for a class)  or, if they hadn’t, that a worksheet on absolute basic principles available to practice at home before class, but only a couple asked for it.  Interestingly, there were more outstanding results from the beginner class than in the advanced – probably partly a scheduling issue that made it more convenient for some to take a class with me on one day than the other – and partly because I think some saw themselves as ‘advanced’ which maybe they were in terms of traditional piecing.  From making traditional patchwork with its focus on precise measurement and exact 1/4″ seam allowances,  it’s a huge step from there to cut and sew as you go without templates, and decide what seam allowance you feel OK with, and understand that ‘this is not at all important’.

Whatever class I teach, there is never just the one project everyone is doing, so everyone is holding up something different.  Students make choices, taking options to follow one of several directions, all the while learning what I am teaching.  These classes were technique based –  freehand rotary cutting and piecing (which produces irregular shapes – no pattern, sew as you go) and part of the class includes devising some simple repeat blocks which I prefer to call ‘units’ since in some cases they really aren’t ‘blocks’ per se.  Some students came up with their own plan, others chose from several options available.   I was impressed with them all, they worked hard and were a lot of fun.