Teaching and Learning

The last couple weeks have been very busy!  I took the first of my CPA exams last week and so was very focused on nothing but that until then.  As soon as it was done I took the next couple days off from studying (next one is coming up!) and did a bit of catching up with life.  And of course, life includes lots of tatting.

I’m teaching beginning tatting at the Pacific Fabrics store in Northgate this month, Tuesday  evenings October 16th and 23rd (one class two sessions) and I needed to put together some samples for the classes so I heading over there after the test and sat in the store to demo while I made them.  Got some interest in the class and hopefully it will be a full one.  Here’s the link if anyone is interested.  This will be a very basics class.  Next month will get a little deeper into working a pattern and then in January I’ll be teaching 3-D flower hairclips as a more advanced beginner class.  I’m considering the samples that I worked up last week to be my weekly finishing of an UFO for the week, so I’m staying pretty well on the path of finishing one project every week for the rest of the year.

This week I’ve been playing around with a new veil pattern and I think I’ll do another one with the same edging as I used for the first one.  It worked well because there were no joins in the pattern and so it formed nicely around the veil, letting the veil give shape to the tatting rather than the other way around.  The new pattern I’m working on has a natural curve, but it doesn’t match the circle of tulle.  I don’t think it will matter once it’s pulled together into a veil.  In fact, the extra ruffle will probably be nice.  I have another one that has a much thicker and straight edging and I’m not sure how that’s going to turn out.  Hopefully well since I really like the colors and the pattern.

The big thing I’ve been working on this week is getting together my application for Shuttlebirds.  I’ve got all 5 class proposals written up and just need to put together my teacher bio and some of the pictures.  I may get that done today, but if not, then by the end of the weekend for sure.  I am proposing the veils as a class so I’ll be working on a lot more of those over the next couple months.  The pictures on this post are for two of the other classes I’m proposing.  Both are adaptations of a pattern from Priscilla Tatting Book #3.  In one class we’ll look at using modern techniques to make it an easier pattern to make (split rings!) and in another we’ll take it a few steps further and add two more shuttles and encapsulation to have the flowers alternate colors.  I can’t wait for April!