Dreaming Spirals

It seems to be the time for finding online courses - I found Artella e-courses a few days ago.  These seem to be mainly in creativity and design.

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About 18 months ago, I wrote a series of blog posts about online courses related to quilting and fibre arts generally (click back to May 2006).

I have recently discovered more, specifically directed at quilters, at Quilter’s Thread.   They cover free motion quilting, dyeing, making a quilt from a picture, and machine applique.  They cost $40.00 each.  There is also a free trial class on making an evening purse so you can check out their style of teaching!  I haven’t any personal experience with these classes but I am always glad to find out about any I didn’t know about.

Another new quilting venture is Quiltwow.  Many of you will know about Workshop on the Web, which is geared mostly towards embroiderers.  Well, Quiltwow has grown out of WOW and is being edited by Carol Dowsett.  There is a trial issue which looks really interesting.

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I have taken the free online courses offered by HP Learning Center in the past and so occasionally get email notifications when new courses are coming up. One which attracted my attention dropped into my inbox yesterday and I have signed up for it. It is called “Jump-start your creativity; exploring Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks”. It starts on October 4th and you can access new lessons twice a week or download the whole lot at once in a PDF file, or they are available on podcast. They also have a discussion forum. I’m looking forward to doing it!

I have taken several of their courses and the one which I have probably benefitted from most is Building your first webpage. It started me off with basic html, from where I was confident enough to search online for html and css resources and to build my website. Which reminds me, I really must take more photos and update it!

My rust dyed fabric came out really well and when I’ve taken photos I’ll post them here but at present my studio is a bit … dark…. the bottom middle window is boarded up at the moment because DH found part of it was rotten so now it is away at a timber merchant’s being rebuilt… oh well, maybe I’ll be back in there by Christmas!

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Jill Smith has a new website.  Make sure you put your sunglasses on before visiting it, because it is very bright!

She is still doing her online workshops and she says that if you tell her when you book that you read about it on my blog you can have 10% off the price. 

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Pat Dolan has a great Tutorial on framing small quilts on her blog. I am always looking for alternatives to hanging sleeves so this was most welcome.

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Sara at Mainly Zaz has a brilliant photo tutorial about how to make handmade paper. Be warned, though, it’s soggy work!

I made some last year and posted some pics on my blog. Some more here and here.
(Sorry for the multiple links but it was when I was with Blogger and used to use Hello and Picasa to upload photos and only used to upload one at a time…).

Oh for the good old days… my blog will be two years old on 21st January!! I’m mentioning it now just in case it passes me by on the 21st!

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One reason I have been quiet over the last couple of weeks is because I have been taking a course in Search Engine Optimization and website marketing - a free course! - run by Cricket Bailey and that led me to another related course on html and css.

Search engine optimization is how to write your website code and content in order to improve your ratings on Google and other search engines - in other words, how to improve your chances of people finding you! This course has been teaching me lots of new things… it has also made me realise that I need to rewrite a lot of my website content and code so I’ve joined another of the related groups to get to grips more with html and css.

In case anyone else is interested, they are starting another rerun of the courses on January 6th. You have to join at least two Yahoo groups and fill various forms in to register correctly and I found this a bit of a kerfuffle to start with, but it has been worth it! Once you have joined, you can stay with the classes as many times as you like - they encourage you to work on one webpage at a time.

If you want to do the courses, you have to register with them and follow the links to join the relevant Yahoo groups.

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I’ve just finished reading an interview with Carol Miller of Quilt University about how she came to start it. It’s interesting to see how it all started…

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