First class report

First class went well! We were scheduled to have a grand total of two students (with a third joining in a few weeks) but before the class got started one called and, I think, told me she'd have to skip due to a sick baby and no sleep the past four days. It was hard to tell over the very angry, very hurt screaming of the poor little kid. I feel for both of them - it stinks to be sick and it stinks even more to be the one caring for the sick person, especially when they're so little. So we had a very personal class for my one student. :)

On the good side, I found that I'd erred on the side of preparing too much rather than too little. We spent a lot of time just sewing on lines on paper, getting used to controlling the paper, the different stitch lengths, speed control, and all that. My student's the total opposite of me insofar as sewing goes - she wanted to make sure she had each step down pat before moving on. Me? I skipped any sort of training and went straight for the fabric. Nice fabric. Nice, slippery, shiny, polyester fabric. So it was a great learning experience to teach someone so different. She seemed to enjoy it and said she felt like she learned a little more about her machine and is gaining confidence. Since we only had 90 minutes, that's pretty good! Plus she's coming back next week so that's encouraging. :) Looks like I'll be learning how to catch up one student while teaching the other. Ideally I'd just tell student #2 to sign up for the next beginner class but, ideally, she wouldn't be 33% of my class. So we're dealing with reality.

To help her catch up and as a great excuse to do something I've wanted to do for a while, I made a series of instructional sewing videos just covering the sewing-on-paper bit of the lesson. That filled up my memory card but now that I've dumped it all onto the computer I want to move on to the basics of threading the machine and sewing up the neato felt coasters. Once my molasses-speed internet connection uploads the videos to YouTube I'll put up links here so you can watch and relive your earliest sewing days. :)

Thanks for the encouragement, it's helped so much!