Evaluation of the master class

• THE GOOD
• Overall I thought the year long master class with EB was a great class and very worthwhile for me to take. I think my quilts are much better as a result of taking it.
• I thought the exercises were all worth doing. I thought rhythm was a good idea, but a little hokey to be doing it to a particular song. I was in the minority with this opinion.
• The format of the class was good. I liked sending sketches, getting feedback, sending blocked quilt, getting feedback, and then finished quilt and getting final feedback. Although a slightly longer time frame might have been nice. (Maybe 1 1/2 months for each lesson instead of a month.)  Apparently I was in the minority here as most students thought a month was just fine. I am thinking that they do not work outside the home. My teaching job does allow me more time than most jobs to do art, but not working at all would have been better.

 

THE NOT AS GOOD

Sometimes feedback was not clear and easy for me to understand. I did have to ask a friend to help me figure it out sometimes. There were times that EB said the sketch was good and then saw something wrong when the quilt was blocked out from the sketch. March is a good example of that. The sketch is on the left and the blocked quilt is on the right. She never said anything about the angle of the diagonal on the right hand side being off until it was blocked out. Not sure why. Maybe it could not be seen until then?  Although I think the angle is pretty obvious in the sketch.

 

At least this was an easy fix. Some problems not caught on the sketch would not be as easy to adjust. The finished and adjusted quilt has the angle of that diagonal fixed.

There were other students that I noticed that she praised the sketch and then criticized something that should have been noticed in the sketch when it was blocked out.

This was not something that was a frequent occurrence, but it did happen.

 

 

 

IMPROVEMENTS

Feedback on the actual quilting design would have been nice to have been discussed. I think the quilting is a big part of the design and should be thought about just as much as the balance, values, fabrics, etc. I know that quilting will not save a bad design, but I also feel that quilting could ruin a good one. At the blocked stage maybe the student should mention how they plan on quilting it.

E did make some comments about quilting after the quilt was done, but at that point it is a little late. She did like the quilting I did of the stones in my “Spiritual Sanctuary” quilt shown at the top of the blog. But if she did not like the quilting it would have been too late to adjust it.

The students in the class did not really participate other than submitting their own work. Rarely were comments made by the students. I don’t know how you change that.

I think it would have been fun for E to have posted the entire body of work by each student at the end of the year. That would have been nice to have seen. During the class we are anonymous. I wish we had used our names, but most students did not want that.

Sometimes students did not really follow the lesson. E did hint at times that this was happening. I don’t know how you control that aspect of human behavior.

WOULD I TAKE ANOTHER MASTER CLASS?

Yes I think I would like to take another class, but with a different teacher. Someone suggested Lisa Call’s classes. Anyone else have a suggestion? At this point I am going to take a break from online classes and do some mindless sewing after the holidays and make some bed quilts. Eventually I will work on my canal houses. My husband keeps asking about that one.

 

Thanks for reading.

Linking to Off the Wall Friday.

Chris