I have been debating for a couple of days as to whether to post this or not, but have decided to go ahead, even thought it's going to be largely a negative post. On Thursday night, Dawn and I attended the first session of a Quilt of the Month series at one of our local quilt shops. I'll leave the shop name out of this since I have some criticisms of the class. The concept is great...you make a cute little wallhanging for each month and the kits come with a coordinating hanger. The cost is $30, which includes everything but the batting, thread and fusible, so not too bad. The main technique learned was supposed to be applique/quilt as you go, so that sounded interesting.
So, the first class was scheduled for Thursday, January 7th and as of Tuesday, the 5th, no supply list had been provided. I had to go down to the shop to even find out what color threads to bring since this was an applique project. Between Dawn and I we tried to come up with a list of everything we would need, but even then, we missed some things, which was frustrating to say the least. We started out having to do some cutting that we weren't expecting so had to use cutting implements which we weren't familiar with. Then I went to press my borders and found that someone in the morning class had fused their applique on the wrong side and burnt it on the iron which then transferred to my white background fabric. No time to ask for them to cut more fabric since we were already behind, so I am hoping I can get the black marks out as well as those on the red border fabric.
I was constantly behind all night because there just wasn't enough time allotted for cutting, tracing and fusing applique and then still doing the basting, quilting, etc. When the instructor (one of the shop owners) asked who wanted to sign up for the next month, I asked if we could at least get the pattern in advance so we could get the applique traced and she agreed. Even better would be if they would also give us the fabric kits so we could get everything fused and prepped for the actual applique, but I don't see them having them available far enough in advance to get that done.
I probably could have tolerated the haphazard and disorganized manner in which the class was conducted if there hadn't also been constant sales pitches for the other classes, events, products, etc. If you couldn't take the time to provide me with a supply list for the class I'm sitting in, I really don't want to hear about other classes.
But, at the end of the day, the project is really cute. Dawn has hers completely done, but I've got a bit more to go. I had to hand sew the letters (another frustration, but I will leave the details on that out of this post), so that took forever, but I like how they turned out. I have decided to run a wavy quilting line around the red border and then will trim the quilt and bind. I'm hoping to get that done this coming week. Here's my progress so far:
