I knew there would not be 5 days worth of vendors or show quilts to keep me busy so I wanted to take classes from some people we don't have around Louisiana. It was very smart. The best one of the whole show was Compositional Drawing with Krista Withers.
It was a 3 hour workshop in the Conference Center upstairs. No homeless to stop me here! Krista spent most of the time on the floor with us gathered around. Of course she is a 20 something with good knees still! And I loved the long sweater she had on, it was so me!She was giving of her information without referring us to any book to purchase. I have to admire that. It was clear that others were interested in selling their books and patterns so they would give constant references to the books so you would have the purchase to get the information you needed to fully understand what they were talking about.
She was encouraging even though she was presenting a totally different way of looking at a quilt for the quilting designs. I felt excited as she made it seem easy.
There was adequate time for us to play with the design framework, which was lacking in the other class I had. Not the dyeing class, we had a lot of time to play as it was an all day workshop! And the experience we gained with the practice made it something we could go home and do ourselves.
So that covers the two workshops I took. Dyeing with Kim Messmer and Quilting with Krista Withers.
The other workshop I had was supposed to be Backfills with Lisa Sipes. And that was the material list I brought. What I had when I got to the Center that day was Getting It Straight with Cristy Fincher. Her claim to fame was that she was the daughter of Sharon Shambler. Nice for her, but she and her mother made a ton of money on the workshop by charging everyone $30 for a 20 x 20 piece of muslin with batting.
She then proceeded to show us how to sew a straight line with a mid arm sit down machine. Something I don't have and will not get anytime soon. I can do straight line very well thank you.
I was not given a chance to refuse this workshop which cost me $149.00. The worst part about it was that I had to explain to and teach the person I shared the machine with everything since she had only been sewing for 3 months!
Why was she even in the class? Maybe like me she was thrown in there from a beginner sewing class. She certainly did not come from the Backfills class, huh?
