Fine Line Piecing Workshop with Kathy Loomis in Germany

Hard to believe that it’s been two weeks already since I returned from the Prague Patchwork Meeting. Kathy and I came back by train 

One of the few Czech works I haven't forgotten -
all the others I can still read and pronounce, but all
my little former knowledge has given up...

– no additional changes required this time – on Monday afternoon, and in the evening we started setting up the room for her workshop. Which began Tuesday morning, and went on for three days.

We had an international lot of attendees – Edith from Switzerland, Hildegard from Germany (the only local one in the group), Mieke from the Netherlands ... a total of eight participants, and a lively group.

Kathy gave us not only the secrets of her fine lines, but several intensive lessons in adequate ironing methods to make things work.

And then she walked us through several different exercises of her fine line technique, which will probably keep us busy trying different things for a little while.

Marking...

... matching...

...cutting...

Straight fine lines (beginning stage - this is by far not enough!)

Diagonal fine lines (too many colors - but not bad for an exercise piece)

Will several different color approaches go together eventually?
We shall see...

Final discussion round with some student's results

The idea to organize this workshop had happened rather haphazardly, as I have written about before. After this particular workshop filled up so quickly I was amazed. My husband, who is a well-connected public person in town came up with the idea of going more regular and/or getting more professional about such an event. He got me in touch with the manager of a local motel where conference rooms are available (including pinning boards, which we had to do without this time in our make shift arrangements). And for a little while I thought I might begin to organize workshops with international teachers on a more regular basis. But after calculating it all through, I decided that it was not a sensible idea to do so, because of the costs that would come with renting the conference rooms. These costs would add so much to the overall charge for the workshop that I believe people would not come any more – so the current state is that we might do it again, but stay in the same room we had this time, which was on the lower end of the buget scale in terms of rent. It can accomodate up to 10 participants, which makes for a wonderful class size. And when Kathy is up to coming back to Europe again for an event like this, she might be teaching another workshop here in Vilsbiburg.