City and Guilds thoughts - part 2

This post follows on from Part 1 and will probably make more sense of you read that first

This post is about the circular thoughts that are raging in my brain as I consider whether or not to go on and do the City and Guilds Diploma in Patchwork and Quilting. I share them because I was encouraged to do but also because the wise comments I hope to receive may help me!

The first thing I should say is that the thoughts are a little premature as I have a year left of the Certificate to do before I can do the diploma anyway, but I am genetically programmed to think ahead!

My first dilemma I think I have solved - that was whether to stay at the same level and do the Certificate in Machine embroidery. I do want to learn much more about machine embroidery but I realised that I was going to have to repeat all the same design work as I had just done if I did the same level course. In some ways this means I could do it better than I did first time round but on balance I want to go forward so I shall not be doing this. I will however be setting myself goals to learn in this area and in due course buying lots of books so if you have recommendations - please comment.

So the remaining dilemma is whether or not I should do the diploma. Here, in no particular order are the contradicting thoughts running through my head. The log book for the course can be found here:


1. My experience with the Certificate makes me sure that I do not want to continue at the same institution. I want the benefit of good personal tutoring from active artists. A long conversation I had with Linda Kemshall convinced me that her company would provide just that. It would costs a lot more than going in person to my existing institution.


2. However, at the end of the same conversation she asked me why I felt I needed a course - why I didn't just learn by myself! This is a very good question and goes to the heart of the issue requiring some real navel gazing. I have several graduate and post -grad qualifications - I have (excuse the lack of modesty here) excellent research skills and learn very well independently. My time management skills are re known. So learning alone is no problem - either literally alone or online without a class structure.
So why am I so attracted to a course? Possible answers are:

(a) I am a qualification junkie. I love education and learning. I think constantly that there is more information or knowledge out there that I could glean if only I was at the right class and I want it. ( To wit: I just e-mailed a museum in Aboriginal art which we may go to on our holidays to ask how to get on their digeridoo workshops. Do I need to learn the digeridoo? No of course not. Do I need to spend holiday time in a class? No. But I could have done and what fun that would be! In fact they no longer run them. Bah!)

(b) I respect other people's knowledge. I believe that people can teach me. I am also jealous of people who know more than me and I want to be like them. I believe that I can do things if only I learn how. I was bitterly disappointed however with the standard of teaching and inspiration I got on my certificate course and would be very very careful to ensure that I chose the right person this time round. I had a similar experience with a University when I started my third masters degree, which was my second in Creative writing ( see (a) above!). The standard was dreadful and half the class including myself pulled out. So I am very concerned that I falsely assume that a course holds the mysteries I am seeking. Plus, it occurs to me I could spend my money on a series of master classes at Festival - the three days ones that run before the show for example - or travel to short courses and achieve a variety of teachers inspiring me.

(c) I like purpose. So the idea of a qualification at the end is a motivation to do work, which I might have otherwise avoided, not realising that it would actually be of worth to me in the end. However, I think I might finally have learned this lesson and now know that sketchbooks and samples are not a waste of time necessarily! I have an exceedingly supportive husband so it is not a case of needing an excuse to work on my 'hobby' but somehow a course gives 'playing around' validity.

(d) the Diploma involves an in-depth research project with samples and work coming from that chosen inspiration. I love the idea of a research project. I thrive on research projects. My whole family ring me to get me to Google all and sundry rather than research it themselves because I am good at it. So, I could just set myself a research project and set to. Why do I need to spend £1250 ish to do it? Because there is a qualification.....

(e) Why do I need a qualification? Well, I don't right now in career terms. I guess in the future if I wanted do teach it would be handy to have a diploma. But my 'day job' is such that I would not be giving it up to do textile art ( love it too much/ it pays too much) any time before semi-retirement. So I could do the diploma later.. but if I am going to do the work now, why repeat things?!I did say to a friend that I wondered if I needed the approval - you know having a tutor say. Well done you clever girl'. She told me to find my validation elsewhere ,which might be good advice if I knew how to do it!

(f) Will the course be what I want? To some extent it is in the sense that it involves taking what I know to the next level. I feel that I have so much more understanding of how make the course work for me than I was given at the beginning of the Certificate that I could really make the most of this one.
to learn what I want to learn if I just taught myself stuff and on the other that I would be stretched into areas I However, it involves some work I am not fussed on (miniatures) and doesn't cover some I am ( machine embroidery, felting) - although I gather there is real scope for edging towards that in the way you interpret the syllabus and work. I feel that on one had I would have more flexibility might otherwise ignore if I did the course. And If I did it online there is no rush as it is time flexible so I can go off into jollies in other areas anyway. Indeed I quite like the idea of spinning it out so that (i) I can really do it in depth whilst still having time to do fun quilts and (ii) I can avoid having to find another course to do when I finish it :)

(g) wherever I do it - is it really worth the money? I am lucky in that I can pay for the course without worry. However, that money can only be spent once and I do not want to waste it. Is it better spent on materials/ books/ short courses etc. ( Or blown on a trip to Houston?!) How much value is there in what I pay for as opposed to the the value of the work I would do for myself anyway? Of course one option is to pay to register in person at my current institution knowing full well I will not get the inspiration and tutoring but in effect allowing me to teach myself but still get the qualificaton - sort of C&G-lite! (It galls me to give them my cash though!)

Well, this is a long post and I guess that if you got this far you must not have found it too boring. In summary I think my head is saying I don't need it and it costs a lot of hard earned money and my heart is yelling 'Its a course - take it , take it!'.

Sigh. What do you think?!

City and Guilds thoughts - part 1

I have been encouraged by Kirsten L Flamme to carry out my threat to gaze at my navel and talk a little about my thoughts on City and Guilds courses. I am going to split this into two posts, this first one being about my experiences so far on the certificate post, the second will be about my debate about doing the diploma.

I hasten to say that what follows are my personal experiences, no doubt influenced by my personality. Other people may well have entirely different views and if so I invite you to blog them and comment her to let us know you have done so.

I have been doing the Certificate for Design in Patchwork and Quilting for 2 years now. I attend in person, once a fortnight on a Sunday morning, at an institution which also offers distance learning. It is 20 mins drive from my house. I found the course in the February of 2006 after I discovered quilting in January 2006 and was excited to find a course that would take me through all the different techniques as well as design methods. However, by the time it started in September 2006 I had learned an awful lot myself through books and my class at Morceau in Penrith.

You can find the syllabus for the course here.

We did it so that the first year was concerned with building up portfolios on the five design methods: line, form, colour, shape and texture. This involved a lot of art techniques albeit at a very basic level - my husband and I took to calling my class 'going to kindergarten' because there was so much sticking and gluing. We were banned from doing anything with stitch for these portfolios which I found frustrating.

However, I did learn from doing these portfolios and I now do look at the world around me with entirely different eyes. Personally though I found that some of what we had to do seemed extraneous. For example we had to paint a colour wheel. Having read about and viewed a colour wheel I don't think painting it added anything - but then I learn well by reading. Others learn better by doing. I did feel that there was a strong element of doing to show that I had learned. Obviously that is always going to be the case with a formal qualification. However, I would have preferred to be able to work to a greater and more advanced level with the textiles themselves . I am still unsure why I made a model of an African chief's hut from table protector, a San Miguel box and Costa Coffee Straws!

It is certainly the case that doing the course has opened my eyes to design theory and practice. However, it is not a course which really respects improvisational design. They assume that good design requires planning samples etc

As for the samples and techniques, I found that we were given scrappy pieces of handwritten notes ( 2 or 3 pages A4 per week.) Sometimes these were taken ( in breach of copyright) from other books. I found my teacher used the words 'difficult' and 'tricky' frequently in relation to every technique and was generally very discouraging. There was no inspiration from her current work we could take as she teaches by showing her own dated portfolio from when she did her certificate some many years ago. My class were frequently befuddled by what we were supposed to do and got little or no guidance. I learned from books.

The class was held in overcrowded conditions when it was very hard to actually work in class - most of the time we used it as social time and did the actual work at home. Supply lists for each class were often inadequate anyway so we found we did not have what we needed for that class and got into the habit of bringing something different to do. All very annoying! However, I have made good friends from my group which in itself is valuable.

I do strongly suspect that this experience is related to this particular institution and may not be the case if the course was done elsewhere.

I am now at the stage of going to on to making my resolved pieces and can see that I am working in a way which I would not have done without the course. I also feel though that I was not supported to achieve the quality of work I could have done in my earlier pieces though and am now in the dilemma - do I go back and redo samples to satisfy myself that I have done the best I can or, do I leave them at the 'passable' stage they are at and use my time to go on to new things.( My tutor has seen very few of my samples.)

I would think that any one with a basic art training and who has either done some patchwork and knows the basic techniques or who can follow book instructions and / or is prepared to supplement books with short classes on line or in person would not get much out of this course. If you have no design background at all or of you wish to ( slowly) work through techniques and are happy making samples for samples sake then you will get something out of it.

The advantage of attending in person has been that the fees are much much cheaper. Doing it by distance with this institution costs £1,175 in total and I have paid I think £600 for the three years plus £55 registration fee. However, I would think that if you took the log book ( see link above) as a starting list and invested in a good library, you could - if you had sufficient self-motivation- easily learn everything by yourself for a much lesser cost ( bearing in mind I had to buy the books anyway because the teaching was skimpy).

My views as a say... I don't regret doing it because I haev learned a lot about design from it, but my mixed experiences are causing me dilemmas for the future... see the next post!