What I Learned–While Teaching

Yesterday I taught a workshop at Orange Grove Quilt Guild.  I always tell people to take classes from as many different teachers as you can because you learn something new and different each time.  Not only to you learn from the teacher but you learn for others in the class.  Well that’s no different if you’re the one teaching you still learn new things all the time.  I’m sure I learned a bunch of new things yesterday but I thought I’d share a couple of them that I’m implementing for myself, today. 

First up…………………..What I learned from Christi Kolisnyk

I have attended a lot of retreats with Christi.  She is a very talented seamstress and she is the one that helped me make my cushion back in September (click here to see my blog post about my cute cushion).  At every retreat Christi has a very very large pincushion covered in her yellow pins.  This may not seam like a big deal after all I have lots of pincushion that are suppose to live next to my sewing machine, on my cutting mat, on my ironing surface and on and on.  The problem is I still tend to move them all around my house and half the time the pins from one all end up in another one and not where I am.  I’ve decided to give Christi way a try.  I have two giant pincushions that were collecting dust (I collect them of course ).  Starting today I’m going to consolidate into one and since I carry them around from one spot to another anyway, I’m going to give it a try. 

Of course it could take me all day to decide which one to promote to “Pincushion Number One”.

Second thing I learned………………………………from Bonnie Lippincott

I also attend some retreats with Bonnie. (I know I go to a lot of retreats)

Here’s the deal with Bonnie, she always has what you need to borrow, it could be a glue stick or some odd ball item.  Bonnie has a very nice little tool organizer that sits on the table by her machine but when you need that odd ball thing she reaches for her plastic tote that she calls her “Fibber McGee’s Closet”.  For those of you youngsters, Fibber McGee and Molly is a very, very old TV show and Fibber McGee had a closet that was like a giant junk drawer.  When you open it everything spills out.  So Bonnie has her plastic tote and she just tosses things in it that she might need some time in the future.  I love this idea and have decided to make my very own “traveling junk drawer”. 

As you can see on the left I do have a fairly organized traveling zipper bag but it’s over stuffed with things I don’t regularly use and can be moved to my new “junk drawer”. 

I’m sure there are many other things I learned yesterday but these are the two that stuck with me and I’m implementing them today.

Enjoy,