I had read about Craftsy in the Wall Street Journal- an on-line class vendor that was doing very well financially by creating low-cost classes directed at home craftspeople- mostly women. When I went to Quiltcon, the modern quilt show in Austin this February, the Craftsy people had a booth and were giving out free classes. Can’t get better than that! I signed up.

Logging in for the first time, I discovered that in addition to the classes you pay for, Craftsy offers ‘mini-classes’ for free. I decided to start with a mini-class, largely because I was afraid of a big time commitment for something I wasn’t sure of. I found “Know Your Wool” with Deborah Robson and enrolled by putting it in my cart. I didnt look too hard at the description (what can you expect for free) but I figured it for a maybe 15 or 20 minute single lecture.

Ha! There are 6 classes of about 15 minutes each. The introduction portion talks about the differences between wools, the next is a visit to a wool market where you see sheep and fleece, there’s a discussion on sourcing wools- finding breed-specific yarns, then a class on swatching and a finally class on using the wools. There’s quite a bit of meat in this free class, in easy 15 minute chunks! I found this free class to be amazingly worthwhile.

So I still have my free full-length class to try. I was browsing the website and discovered that there’s now a free Quiltcon class. Fast work; the convention was only two weeks ago. Eight lectures recorded live at the convention. Go to www.craftsy.com, use the search feature and search for Quiltcon. Check out the fun for free, then consider signing up for a class. Oh, hey- they’re looking for lecturers and they pay pretty well. Think about that, too.