Whiptips craft advice column for readers to ask questions or offer advice by leaving comments. Whiptips archive here. Questions to whiptips@gmail.com.
Julie writes in asking:
As a full-time working mother of two toddlers, I would love to take some classes but can never manage the time away from home. I would love to hear about online classes, especially any that are more challenging.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Shimelle Laine at http://www.shimelle.com offers great online art journal and scrapbooking classes. I have taken several of her classes and had the best time. She just recently offered a free class as a New Year’s present called I Have to Confess which was so much fun.
What kind of classes are you interested in? There are a lot of doll-making classes on line through Crafty College- http://craftycollege.com/
Also Joggles has a wide variety – http://www.joggles.com/onlineclasses.htm
Actually, now that I’ve looked at them, some look really interesting!
pattern review runs some great sewing classes. i did one a year or so ago with kenneth king on couture handbags – i learned so many new techniques. the course materials were very thorough and we were provided with a materials list in plenty of time. there are dedicated message boards for each class and live chats, which you can read in transcript if you’re in the wrong time zone (although i found i was up at strange hours with my baby anyway!).
all in all i’d highly recommend them:
http://sewing.patternreview.com/cgi-bin/sewingclasses/index.pl
May I add a question … what about online advanced knitting tutorials? Are there any good ones?
Try also Quilt University – http://www.quiltuniversity.com – many classes, mostly quilting oriented, but some others too.
Thanks for all the great suggestions!
For knitting tutorials you should look at http://www.eunnyjang.com/knit/ under techniques she has great directions for steeking, working lace, dying self striping yarn, and “unventing” a cable.
Knitting.about.com also has some good tutorials at:
http://knitting.about.com/od/knittingskills/Knitting_Skills_Intermediate_and_Advanced.htm
Also this blog is often way over my head, so perhaps it’s advanced? I keep it on file for the day when I’ll need it: http://explaiknit.typepad.com/let_me_explaiknit/
enjoy!
another great knitting tutorial site is knitting-help.com It has videos explaining a range of techniques.