And Now, Mastery Classes

I had an appointment in town on Thursday, so I stopped in at the quilt store on my way home. The owner came out to my car to chat with me as I was on my way out. One of her employees is leaving. This employee currently teaches all the mastery classes, which are the classes that customers get when they purchase a machine. (I had a mastery class when I bought the Q20.) She wanted to know if I would be interested in teaching the serger mastery classes.

Oh, sure, why not.

To sweeten the pot, she said that when teaching these classes, I’d be considered an employee of the store, not a contractor, and I would get the employee discount. (Twist my arm.) I need to familiarize myself with the Bernina sergers and with what’s covered in their mastery classes, but that’s doable. I’ve already got copies of the Bernina mastery books.

She also ever-so-gently nudged me about deciding on a class for September and getting my class samples on display at the store. Store samples do help to generate interest in the class. When the class coordinator and I discussed future classes a few weeks ago, I suggested that the fall classes might focus on making Christmas gift items. That’s a big and wide category, though, so I need to narrow it down a bit.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how to structure my classes. A successful class is going to be one in which the goals are clearly laid out and students get a mix of both theoretical and practical knowledge. No one wants to sit through a two-hour Power Point presentation. I took a photography class like that once, at the community college, and I didn’t know any more about my digital camera at the end of the class than I did at the beginning. Finding that sweet spot where the theoretical and the practical come together is key. It also helps if the class progresses from easy to more challenging, so the students have a chance to build on what they’ve learned.

While I was in Alaska, DD#1 asked me if I could make her a batch of cloth napkins. We use cloth napkins here at Chez Schuster-Szabo, although ours have a simple mitered hem. I seized on this request as an opportunity to practice making rolled hems on my serger. When I got back to Seattle from Alaska, I picked up several packages of cloth napkins at Ikea. They were approximately 14” square and I thought I would cut them down and make rolled hems on slightly smaller napkins.

I spent yesterday working on that project. I used my 12-1/2” square ruler to mark the new size of the napkins, then set up my serger to make a rolled hem using regular serger thread in the lower looper and right needle, and wooly nylon in the upper looper. And I made lots of rolled hems.

Napkins will work for a class. I’d like to have at least a couple of projects, though, because there is always that one prodigy who gets through your class handout way before anyone else. Because a rolled hem flows naturally out of a three-thread narrow hem, we’ll start with a 3TN using some decorative thread in the looper. We’ll move on to some rolled hem napkins, and we’ll finish up—if time permits—making a lettuce-edge scarf, which is a rolled hem on knitted fabric. That’s ambitious, but the last project is optional. It could even be its own class. I am happy with that plan, and it will take me only a day or two to make up class samples.

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The Singer 9W is partially back together and looking very nice. I think I may put it into a treadle base. It doesn’t have a motor boss, so I can’t mount a handcrank easily. The 9W reminds me of a Singer 15 with pheasant decals that I picked up at an antique store in Whitefish in 2010. I cleaned it up, put it into a treadle base, and sold it. That machine literally sang as I sewed on it. It was the oddest thing. I couldn’t tell if the machine was happy to be sewing again or what, but it was a beautiful sound. This is why I do this.

We’ve “cooled off” to the upper 80s and low 90s here. It’s still hot, but not as brutal as being up near 100. The hot-weather crops are going nuts. A couple of my tomato plants have already set fruit, which is unheard of, and I’ve picked several cukes for our salads, also unheard of. The lettuce and the peas are struggling, though. It got way to hot way too soon for them.

Every year is different. Every year is different. Every year is different.

The forecast doesn’t change much for the next couple of weeks—mid-90s and no precipitation, although it’s hard to predict those afternoon pop-up thunderstorms. Hopefully some of them will come with rain.