Class last night

[mmcnealy]

Yesterday was the body block and pattern drafting class. All three class takers showed up with lots of enthusiasm and pretty close to being on time.
There were some serious rough edges that showed up during the class, the biggest one was that somehow between my computer at home and the printer at work I lost a column out of one page and most of the labels off of another.
The measurement taking went well, but the drafting brought up a few surprises. I have drafted patterns for myself and for my siblings , but not for such wide ranging body types and periods.
I definitely learned a LOT and things will be improved next class and I am so glad that I kept it to 3 people. I had just enough table space for everyone. We didn’t end up having enough time to finish everything last night, so they are coming back next Wednesday for a mockup fitting session.
I am hoping that they learned something useful and things turn out well with the patterns. I just have visions of things turning out horribly and them blaming me for wasting their time and them muttering dark thoughts in my direction. Can you tell that I am not feeling very confident about last night? I am not even going to go into the dreams I had last night about the fitting session next week, was sort of like a horror movie with the misshapen monsters of my own creation chasing me down the street.

Lessons learned:
1-Review, review, proof-read and scrutinize handout before coping and distributing it.

2-Add bibliography and put my name on the documents.

3-Write instructions for drafting a front closing bodice, a fitted garment down to the hips and sleeves.

4-Run through the instructions with a dry run so my students aren’t my guinea pigs/ beta testers who find all my pathetic mistakes.

5-Have a teaching plan so I don’t forget to talk about such important topics such as Ease, Seam placement, Closures and planning for them and so on…..

Comments

[wengeue.livejournal.com]

I definitely learned a LOT

That is the secret of teaching! The teacher learns the most! :)

I just have visions of things turning out horribly and them blaming me for wasting their time and them muttering dark thoughts in my direction.

Oh, of course not! I learned a lot that I may or may not use for the particular dress I had in mind (I have a feeling that after the Netherton class I may want to go a different direction with it) but I will be able to use it for other projects and even modern clothes, so you have taught me something very useful.

If I can add some other suggestions... it might have been easier for you to pick a specific period or garment and focus on that, so that we would all be working on the same type of clothing. It would have been way less stressful for you, and probably faster. :)

I think two of us being early period may have been a problem, because in early period they didn't have things like set-in sleeves, etc., so the techniques you were teaching are more suited to later period. (I think the gown I want to make is from the beginning of that transitional period to fitted, tailored clothing.) I actually thought about that before coming in to the class, and thought about working on a Tudor garment instead, but since I don't have the underpinnings it would have been tough to get the measurements.

Also, as a visual learner, I need to have lots of visual aids. The handout was pretty good in that regard, but where you combined multiple steps into one drawing, sometimes it was unclear which line was which. (Probably the missing labels were part of this.) And when the instructions referred to things like "the edge" I was unclear which edge was intended. So enhancing the handouts to illustrate more clearly would help people like me who learn visually. (That's why I made those rectangular construction handouts I had with me last night -- because I needed the step-by-step drawings.)

Now I LOVED the letter-coding of the different measurements and being able to refer back to those. That made it much easier.

I think the pattern-fitting next week will be really good. Don't worry! You did a good job despite the unpredictability of it and I personally thought I learned a lot about an aspect of costuming I haven't done, since I've done so much early period stuff and never drafted a real pattern.

[mmcnealy.livejournal.com]

Pheew... Wiping sweat off my brow. Ok, I feel much better now and thanks for the feedback on the handout and the class. I fully intend to clean that up and send you guys the revised, no labels missing version, along with the measurements sheet with all the columns. It occured to me _after_ the class was announced that I should have put a time period around what we would have been covering. 10th century Frankish to 16th century English was a too little much to cover.

Its all part of learning, thats for sure. ;)