Okay!  Let’s get his blog deal going on.  Blog.  Hmm.  Sounds so lethargic, but I’m being told it’s the way to get the word out, so here goes.  I’m just back from a four-day Palmer/Pletsch workshop for teaching beginning sewing and I’m quite on fire!  Helen, you’re already a beginning sewing teacher—why did you take a class for this?  Well, I think it’s important to see what other teachers are doing and it’s also important to polish up your act, interact with other stitchers and teachers, and to find out what’s happening in the machine world, too. 32 hours of hardcore sewing and all I want is more.  This was an especially interesting workshop in that we were encouraged to take ourselves back to the very beginning of our sewing lives (which for most of us is going back more than a couple years!) and try to remember what it’s like to be a beginner, and try to forget all our habits—good and bad.  It was an exercise in reading instructions and actually following them.  I can’t remember the last time I actually followed the pattern guide sheet.  Dang.  Apparently, there’s some useful info on them!  Okay, with the Palmer/Pletsch beginning sewing patterns it’s ALL useful info.  The best instructions I’ve seen in years.  Still, hard to read and follow along when you’re so used to doing it your own way.  It was good for me to step back and actually put myself in the head space of the beginner.  It was also interesting and pretty amusing to notice that the entire group got so into our new roles that our perceived confidence level dropped and some of us actually made some pretty ‘beginner’ mistakes—oh, cutting out the wrong fabric direction of a prominent pattern, sewing facings in backward—just stuff you don’t think you’re going to do since you made that mistake already years ago.  Made me slow down and savor the sewing experience more than I have in years.  It also confirmed to me that I SO adore sewing and teaching more than ever, and gave me great ideas on how to improve my current sewing class & lesson offerings.

This workshop attracted teachers from all over the country—Georgia, Tennessee, Idaho, Washington, Texas, Nevada and Alaska, to name a few!  And the greatest variety of careers being left or shifted from to pursue a real passion was represented in this group!  There were two nurses, a paralegal, a  747 pilot, a couple of retired, high-level corporate executives and then me, with my crazy, pinball machine history of employment (that’ll have to be another entry) all coming together and sharing the passion for our art.  It was a RUSH, to say the least.   I was especially enchanted with the Southern women.  Something so comforting about their accents and I picked up some fabulous phrases like:  ‘You can put yer boots in the oven, but it don’t make ‘em biscuits!’  I was instructed on the proper delivery of ‘biscuits’—it is indeed a long, three syllable word when pronounced correctly.  Dolls, all of them!  Too much fun.

 For those of you who have requested that I get some pics of my creations up in the gallery—I’m working on it.  I promise!  Lot’s of that stuff is not digital and my scanner is soooo slow.  Until next time, cheers and happy stitching……Helen