The forever student

In our country there is the term ‘forever student’(eeuwige student), by this we used to mean young people who took forever to finish a university degree. They were probably having too much of a good time to actually study a lot … 😉

Although not in the way this expression was originally meant, I am something of a ‘forever student’,  always curious to learn new things or find out more about things that interest me.

Over the years I followed a training to be a beautician (next to my day job at the time) , a gold smith course (but after hurting myself in a nasty way a few times I concluded that it was safer for me to work with fabrics and pins rather than with steel, tools and machines…), all kinds of cookery courses, an Italian language course and just out of interest and because I did not have the opportunity at the time, about ten years ago I went to (Leiden) Law School for a few years.

Too many interests, so many things to learn…

So patchwork and quilting…

Except for a period of 12 years where I did not have time for it due to family and work commitments this passion has been with me since the late 80’s of the previous century (…) and I of course I followed a lot of courses and workshops since. As a ‘forever student ‘I just like the process of learning new things, of satisfying my curiosity.

The past few months I have been following a course that really triggered the forever student in me…. I love it! For a long time I have admired Marcha’s (click) work, it is so neat, so clean, so precise. Once a year at her shop the Quiltster (click) she offers a course (click)  on techniques based on the Dear Jane quilt. And even though I have been a quilter for quite some time now I am learning so many new things about various techniques and find my work is improving. We only have two more dates left on our course, sad to see the end of this.

I don’t want to reveal anything about the actual work, but let me show you a few pictures of those course days(the picture above shows that we are well cared for by Marcha’s mum with coffee, tea and yummy cakes):-

Marcha’s shop at the new location is great, lots of light, filled with quilts, projects, beautiful fabrics, delicious tea and Bunzlau pottery

The course takes place on the open second floor: my busy fellow students and our teacher Marcha… see you again in a few weeks, ladies  :-) 

So far these are the blocks I finished:

And the blocking board that Judith (click) gave me last December comes in handy now, so thank you again, Juud. 

So will I make a Dear Jane quilt… never say never!

And speaking of students, Anja, one of the participants of the Happy Scrappy Workshop (click) that I taught with Hubertine (click) as the Feathergirls two weeks ago, is really on a roll, she made so many blocks already, have a look at her blog (click), really nice to see this as a result!

Phyllis