The teacher learns from her student

As you may have seen earlier, I have been teaching my mother-in-law, Luisa, the basics of patchwork quilting. She has a sewing machine at home and it was a longstanding dream for her to learn to quilt. She does lots of other crafts including painting and jewelry making. This is what she made during her visit to the states:

One pillow and four placemats made by my MIL during her stay at my house this holiday season

 Needless to say, I created a monster...

The pillow design was inspired from my Scrappysaurus rex quilt. She chose a variety of scraps and figured out how to transform the design into pillow sized. She did a pretty good job with the HSTs. I taught her the two HSTs from squares method. She chose a simple envelope back.

The placemat design was from an old quilting book I had. I can't tell you which one because she took it with her back to El Salvador today to keep on practicing.

 This one is for my father-in-law. Machine pieced and quilted. Handsewn binding. It was nice being on the other side of someone making bias tape for the first time. You know what I mean.

 This is one for her. She loves fall colors.

Luisa fell in love with the process immediately and after these two so she started two more for her parents. The blue one is for her father and the green one is for her mom. She picked out all the fabrics without my help (I kept annoying her with the word "or" such as you could use that OR that OR that OR this other thing here).

 She loves the scrappy look and even tried her hand at improv piecing!

I mean seriously, look at the color placement here. This is sophisticated stuff folks. I give her an A+ on layout.

The back was a bit hard to photograph but she attempted some more organized improv here with a flying geese block surrounded by yellow and orange prints.

The binding is in the middle of being hand sewn to the back. She basted the binding to the placemat so that she wouldn't take any of my pins or clips with her. I never would have thought to baste it! So smart and it worked well. I can't wait until she finishes them all and gives them a wash.

 It was inspiring to see her figure out things on her own and pick fabrics without any preconceived notions about what fabics are "in" or what color combinations are popular now. Next year we tackle paper piecing EPP and foundation. Thanks Luisa for letting me post your creations on my blog!

PS: Do any of you know of good online resources for quilting in Spanish?