Let's see if you guys agree with me. I took an aplique class with Nancy Chong and she taught us some basic skills that I think enable me for doing aplique pretty well. What I need now is practice, which comes from doing it, right? Together with my boss' secretary, we signed up for one of those weekday night aplique series with her. First time was fun, she asked what we wanted to know and I got some refreshers of parts I didn't remember well. But then we went two more times, and most of the time was spent talking about other stuff, showing everybody's progress since last time (I had almost none, as my plan was to do it during the 'class', and very little time actually doing the aplique or learning anything new! Lots of time talking about quilting cruises she organizes, and some pushing her Hawaian aplique book... DH thinks I should do this, he said I don't notice it but I come back happy and relaxed after taking a quilt class in general, forget about my worries about career and work and future etc. But I was kind of dissapointed with the way this was working. I liked her and all, but in all my previous classes it looked to me like the teacher was working much harder and I was getting my money's worth. My friend figured it is an excellent deal for her, 20 bucks a person for those 3 hours, she doesn't really do much teaching, while we weren't learning anything new or getting much done either.... I figured I'll be better off taking the odd class here and there to learn a new technique, which has worked great in the past (eg. I learnt Machine Quilting, needle-turn aplique after a class... what I never took is a class to learn how to make a particular quilt... one with curves would be nice, another technique to learn!).
- posted
20 years ago