Sunday 10 November 2013

Leatherworking Class - Achievement Unlocked

After months of planning and a delay last month for when I got called in to work the weekend, I finally delivered my leatherworking class at the Harrowgate canton meeting today.

To be honest I was kind of nervous going in, having never taught a class before but I think it went pretty well.

For details on the class, see this post where I planned out the contents (with links to the pics of the pouch we made).

I had capped the class at 15 to keep it manageable, but I'm glad we weren't full. We ended up with 8 people doing the class, and that was about the right number to make sure I could devote some time to each person and help them as needed.

The class took about an hour and half, which is on the upper end of what I was aiming for, but didn't feel too rushed or too drawn out. People seemed pretty happy with their pouches.

Some notes:

  • Folks seemed to like the handout and a number of people with lots of hand sewing experience were able to work ahead using just the handout, so I'm hoping that means the steps were explained well.
  • I got lots of compliments on the format, with me popping around helping people, answering questions and explaining some of the documentation and embellishments as people were working.
  • Need to buy different needles. I had bought a bunch of #3 harness needles but the eyes weren't big enough for the artificial sinew (we ended up having to split the sinew to help people thread it through the needle).
  • I think for Practicum I'll cap it at 10 people to make sure I can devote enough time to people. 15 would probably have been too much.
  • One suggestion I had was to do up a couple of more demo pouches showing some of the embellishment options. If I have time I think that would be nice.

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