1993 - 1994 was a wonderful creative time with many opportunities as I was also fortunate to serve on the Kaffrarian Quilters' Guild Committee. The Committee invited Lorraine Steenberg from Jagersfontein to teach a machine embroidery workshop in East London - she had quite an impressive CV. Lorraine specialized in Madeira Machine Embroidery and did lots of workshops for Bernina and had won some international awards for beautiful tablecloths and similar articles. Although I was packing up our home to move to Harrismith, I felt obliged to attend the workshop as I was on the Committee and felt I needed to support the workshop. The shoe was now on the other foot and I was the student for the very first time....!
The workshop was held in 2 groups, a morning group and an afternoon group for 5 days.... We soon discovered why we could only survive 3 hours per day..... I would go home every day with a monster headache and eyes completely out of focus.....
Lorraine was a wonderful teacher and I suppose she was used to the reaction of the students as the work was so different to normal quilting. She immediately threw us out of our comfort zones.... She taught us to do free motion machine embroidery with dropped feed dogs, to work in an embroidery hoop and to our horror, to sometimes work without a presser foot! She also showed us a very important function on our sewing machines, the slow speed button! Quite a few of us drew blood stitching through fingers etc. Her designs provided in a kit were very specific and we slowly embroidered the designs which she had prepared. We filled in with long and short stitches, granite stitches, some cut work, doing line stitches without using the zig zag stitch on the machine! She also taught us about directional flow in a design. It was extremely difficult attempting this with arms frozen stiff as we were all so stressed, not forgetting the neck spasms...... We were starting to settle down by the 3rd lesson, but it was very intense. By the last lesson, Lorraine showed us a packet of Avalon (wash-away plastic) and told us what we could do with it although she did not demonstrate working with it. We were all intrigued and were delighted when we found some in a shop in East London.
When I was doing the final packing of our home, I was pondering about this workshop. I wondered how I would ever apply my newly acquired skills to my style of quilting as there were no common ground.......
I learnt a very important lesson from her which I still apply when I teach! No trying on a sample piece first, just dive in and work directly onto the prepared piece! If you have to practice until you do perfect work, it is unlikely that you will ever attempt work on the project....! Being in a workshop situation, is most often stressful for the student. Usually they unpick when they get home and perfect the technique in their own time (or the project lands in the cupboard as a UFO!)
Another lesson learnt was to be open minded about a workshop and absorb like a sponge, the emphasis is actually on learning new skills. Even if you don't really like the workshop, you will most likely learn something new or it will trigger something different for you to develop further. Every thing Lorraine did on the machine looked so easy, it was amazing to watch her stitch as she was very much in control of her sewing machine. I realized that she was a master of her craft and that I still had lots to learn. I have never repeated any of the methods or designs which I learnt in this workshop, but it gave me the freedom to play with my sewing machine. It opened my eyes for other possibilities and I took from this workshop what I wanted and developed it further which is still an ongoing process. I think I can say in all modesty that I am now also in control of my sewing machine..... I attribute this wonderful skill to Lorraine Steenberg.
Working in a creative genre is a continuous learning curve as there are always new things to discover. In that lies the excitement of exploring and being creative.....
Sadly for me, it was time to leave East London....
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