A Mum's Night Out!

Last night I did my first one off teaching evening in the lovely Prema Arts in Uley.

It is called Mum's Night Out. Mums come along and have a glass of wine, learn a new skill and make new friends!

They have had a go at making coffee Barista style and felting. Last night it was my turn to teach some free motion quilting in a fun relaxed way!

I opted to make some rug mugs, with all the cutting out done for the lovely mum's so all they had to do was use Bondaweb backed scraps to create a design, which we then free motion quilted.

I had made a really simple design to demonstrate the technique, inspired by blog post by a cuppa and a catch up.

Part of my teaching role is to help people to step out of their comfort zone and create something they never thought was possible. As such I need to present with ideas to inspire them, up until yesterday I had been using books, but I finally had enough saved to buy an iPad 2 - a major investment for me.

Last night I took it along to use as a tool in the class to inspire the designs the learners could create. I was really impressed with the outcomes:

After Googling rug mugs, the class set about putting their ideas onto paper - the images had given them an insight into how much scope there is to create something unique and gorgeous using just a few tools.

These are some the designs they completed during the evening.

Really impressive, don't you think?

None of the mums had tried free motion before and 2 only 2 of them had any experience using a sewing machine recently. I have bought them back to the studio to add the binding onto the mug rugs.

I was a bit worried about spending my savings on an iPad, but after watching the confidence it gave learners to access inspiration so easily I am really pleased I made the investment!