Teaching day

I had such a great day yesterday teaching some quilters from the Waterloo Quilt Guild. I was nervous to schedule a class in snowy January that required a bit of travel, but as you can see in this photo that I took as I was driving to the class, the highway was clear and dry. I took this picture because I think it is a typical "driving on Canadian highways" photo. I probably should have been paying more attention to my driving and less attention to using my camera!
Here is some of the required baggage for a day of teaching, just brought in from the freezing cold outside (it is currently minus 11 degrees, and with the windchill it feels like minus 18!). It takes a while for the sewing machine to warm up and get running smoothly. And it takes me about 1/2 hour to get everything out of these bags and organized for the quilting demos for the day. But this baggage is nothing compared to some of the huge bags of scraps and cases of fat quarters that these quilters brought to make miniature quilts with!
Here is a photo of the quilters at work in the wonderful community centre they use for classes. In November I taught a different group of quilters from the same guild - click here, and you can see how bright and sunny the classroom always is. It is like stepping into the sunshine zone (in more ways than one!!).
And here is a group shot of some of the blocks they worked on during the day. Since it was the guild's 25th anniversary, the class was organized to celebrate that milestone. They each had to chose one project from 25 mini quilt designs to focus on, which is why each quilter is showing different blocks.

They selected their project based on what they wanted to learn, or which design interested them the most, or for the experienced quilters, which project challenged their skills. It was so much fun touring around the room and seeing the quilts come to life - with different types of fabrics, various colour combinations, and a wide variety of traditional block patterns.
We joked a lot about how making miniature blocks takes just as long, and sometimes longer, than full size blocks, which makes for an interesting "show and tell" when you get home and show your family what you worked on all day!
And we joked about how quilters use their chests as design walls!
Thanks to everyone for making yesterday such a wonderful day, and don't forget to bring your finished quilts to show at your next guild meeting.