Teaching at a class day
February 2013

I volunteered to teach two classes for this past weekend. One on sanbūsaj, or meat-filled pastries, and the other on advanced t-tunic construction.

The sanbūsaj class fell flat.  Two people stopped in for handouts, and one person showed up for the class. When he tentatively asked if he was the only the one, I suggested he take a handout and head to another class (classes were stacked 10 deep per hour, so it was easy to have a second and third choice). Several people approached me before hand to say mine was their second choice class. Sigh. I felt loved with the pre-apologies, but I had been excited about the idea of working with others on redacting recipes and learning pastry tricks.

The t-tunic class was well attended, but I fear I was just low enough on spoons that people did not come away with as much knowledge as I had wanted to share [learn more about the Spoon Theory for people with auto-immune disorders at butyoudontlooksick.com]. People asked good questions, and I have my contact info on my handouts, which included measurements and sewing directions. It was suggested I do more with how the layout looks before cutting. Not a bad suggestion, but I hesitate to share my layout, which works for a luxury-sized 5’10” woman. There are many more people who don’t fit that description than do. I suppose I could give mine as examples. Cataloging all of the tricks I talked about may not hurt, too.

I also thought about making a small tunic with each of the different pattern pieces colored differently. And maybe serged pieces that can be played around with….