Jan Krentz Class, May 1, Augusta, Maine
Last April, when I was teaching in Paducah, I had the great good fortune to meet Jan Krentz (we shared a van ride, 2 hours each way, from the Nashville airport to Paducah, and ran into each other in the teachers’ boxes room…where all the shipped stuff resided). She gave so many wonderful tips and tidbits on being a traveling teacher, that when she mentioned she was coming to Maine to teach, I decided then and there to sign up for her class. If I want to do the best by my students, learning from one of the best in the industry is a good thing.
Maine’s Pine Tree Quilt Guild had scheduled Jan for two classes and one lecture. I picked the one on Friday, when the kids were in school, besides it was closest to me in Augusta (and hour west of Camden). It happened to be a Hunter’s Star workshop. My education in good teaching began even before the class began: Jan had set up her projector and laptop to run a short “slideshow” loop telling students what supplies they needed to have out and how best to set up for the morning. Great idea! Here’s a picture of Jan
I particularly liked the little table she has, which means you don’t have to stoop to see the screen…it’s at lectern height. The whole table packs down into a 3 pound unit about the size of a large laptop. Cool.
The class was a diverse lot… I knew only one person, Dot. Here we are gathered around one person’s machine…. cool tip: when you’ve done a ton of chain piecing, turn your machine sideways (or scooch around the end) to where the thread cutter is, then cut the chain apart lickety split on the thread cutter. KEWL.
There were lots of great combinations of fabrics–some awesome Hoffman oriental prints:
A dynamic combo based around a Jane Sassaman print:
A wonderfully scrappy version:
My tablemate Mari’s selections to make a quilt for her “tween” granddaughter (not quite a teen, older than a little girl):
Of course, did I take a picture of my first mock-ups? Nope. I’ll do a second post with more on mine….
The tip of the day for me, and probably old hat for those of you who do more piecing than I do, was to (a) mark your rulers on the BOTTOM so as to avoid distortion from having your markings above the quilt (the thickness of the lucite in the rulers). And even better…cut stacks of blue painters tape (about 4-6 layers), cut into narrow strips. Stick these to the BOTTOM of your ruler at the appointed spot, and the ruler snugs up against your stack of fabrics to be rotary cut. This ruler is one of Jan’s (she was out of stock but it was SO good I’ll have to add one to my collection…somehow hers was easier to use than the 45 degree diamonds that I currently have). In this case, you cut your strips the width of your diamond, make the first 45 degree cut, then snug the blue painters tape up and zoom-zoom-zoom you can quickly and very accurately cut a bazillion diamonds.
Jan also used the projector during class to show variations on the theme of Hunter’s Star quilts, and I particularly liked this one:
That’s it for now!
May 28th, 2009 at 9:02 am
I have to thank you for the tip about cutting chains on the cutter at the side of the machine. This has just saved me hours of time. A very valuable tip which I shall pass on to my students. Again many thanks! Val