What to Teach???

Just finished teaching another class of fantastic tatting students at Piecemakers in Costa Mesa.  My intermediate students have really been challenging me in that they learn to quickly!  We breeze through so many techniques in one class that it leaves me wondering what else I could possible teach them and struggling to come up with ideas for the next class.

Luckily, other people keep coming up with awesome ideas and are kind enough to let me teach them to my students.  My next intermediate class will be learning Krystledawne’s technique for covering rhinestones (the same one I’m using on my garlands).  One of my repeat students today had already done both of the snowflakes we were learning in class today so she tackled Janie’s Christensen’s (sp?) technique for making a ring of interlocking split rings.  I hadn’t planned to teach her that, but one of the other repeat students had brought the rings they had made after I showed it to them during the last class.

I need to point out here that I didn’t even actually teach it to them at the last class.  I showed them the ones I made at Camp Wannatat and explained how they were made.  Just a couple months later the two of them come back with an entire bag full of rings and a 3 foot chain of the same pattern for hanging their tatting tools around their neck.  I haven’t even finished hiding in the ends on the ones I made in July.  I’m going to have trouble next year keeping up with these girls!

Planning future classes has really been on my mind because Shuttlebird class proposals are due at the end of the month.  Luckily I took the time after the last conference to write down all the ideas I had then.  Came up with nine, so now I have to get those down to my favorite 4-5 and write them up.  I’ll be continuing to rely on the amazing designs of others.  Among my class proposals will be Gina Butler’s string of hearts made with dimpled-single-shuttle-split-rings.   That’s going to be a fun one.  🙂