We Take Ourselves With Us

I had one more class. The teacher was solid--upbeat, knowledgable, approachable--and has designed a ruler and technique for making flying geese that I both bought and really will use. Yet, with all that going for it, this was not a good class. Why? Bad machines: All the sewing machines at Quiltweek are provided. This is awesome, except when they're awful and the machine instructor is even worse. One class out of three had this convergence of events. Guess which one. Yep. We were doing a quilt that required a precise quarter inch seam allowance and involved lots of sewing of pointy edges. And--even according to the sewing machine helper--this particular model does neither well. Wait, what? So, everyone's fabrics were getting chewed up and their blocks weren't aligning. Ugh. Bad students: One can sense a problematic class climate ahead when 1) students start over sharing personal family issues with strangers; 2) students proudly state that they don't se...

When I reviewed the program months ago and saw Gwen Marston was teaching at Paducah this year, my heart raced a bit. Gwen has been so influential in quilting--pushing quilters to find their own style and be guided by color, arrangement, and energy of design. Well before the newer crop of modern or contemporary quilters and even before the (unfortunate) advent pre-cuts, do-it-all sewing machines, and self-regulating, programmable long arm quilting machines that can quilt for you in your sleep, she was going back to the simple and eternally complex roots of quilting, filled with make-do beauty and patterns born both of necessity and desire. In so (sew) many ways, she is the precursor to the modern quilting faction (Schmidt, Ringle, et al.). And, it turns out, she's totally awesome! Funny, thoughtful, generous, gracious, kind and quirky while also being a solid teacher full of constructive criticism that lands softly and effectively. She could name drop with the best of them if...