“You just have to start to dare!“

This weekend I am teaching a workshop on improvisation for a group in Herzogenaurach, near Nuremberg. They are a group of experienced quilters, with a lot of expertise between them and no technical difficulties. 

Except for the fact that we had lots of flies in the classroom the first day that seemed impossible to get rid off (they appear to be multiplying when you swat at them) it is a very pleasant workshop. Hot!

The nicest moment of the first day came after I challenged one of the participants, who had seemed just a little bit sceptical at first and said she could not sew really small pieces, to make a smaller one yet – no more than two inches square. When that one turned out just about 2 ½ inches, she turned to her off-cuts next to the sewing machine and made another one, really small. These are exercises that are supposed to loosen students up, and then she looked at me, smiled a big broad smile and said “You just have to start to dare! Now this is beginning to be a lot of fun." And continued to turn very creative and inventive.

In the evening we went to a typical frankonian restaurant, where I caught this magnificent reflection: