Resolved to improve quilting abilities this year? Plan to sign up for more classes? Learn a new technique? Want to create a quilt based on a specific pattern? Or maybe it is time to delve into another area of quilting such as landscapes, art quilts or faces?
DVDs and online tutorials as well as various workshops and classes offered around the world at quilting events such at the Houston Quilt Festival and the AQS annual quilt show in Paducah, KY, offer unlimited opportunities to learn and grow your quilting. DVDs published by almost every quilt and craft book publisher including C&T Publishing, Nine Patch Media, and Quilting Arts, are for sale online and in the quilt stores in the $20 to $30 range.
Some teachers and authors, Jan Krentz for example who is known for her spectacular star quilts, are taking it up a notch and making DVDs to use with their print books. Some, such as Jackie Robinson, offer a downloadable PDF booklet. In her Weaver Fever DVD, the booklet reinforces the cutting instructions, layout, and all at an instant’s reference right on the page. For those unfamiliar with Weaver Fever, Jackie introduced the bargello inspired pieced quilt back in the 1990s and it has never gone out of demand.
Some online tutorials are free. YouTube is loaded with every quilting lesson imaginable. Some good, some not so good. A few free tutorial sites that might get you started include:
Sharon Schamber’s Network
Schamber offers a variety of free tutorials online. She also pushes membership in her network which includes 90 classes not available to nonmembers in topics that include her signature technique of Piec-Lique, longarm stipple and feathers, advanced design and use of color, as well as needle turn appliqué and more.
The free tutorials offer glimpses at some of the same topics, but also branch off into making a complete Stash and Dash Quilt, setting up your work area, Sharon’s Magic Triangles, The Perfect Curved Binding and more.
Jackie Robinson’s company, Animas Quilts, offers a few tutorials but some vital ones. The tutorial for mitering corners may be the best ever. She also demonstrates fussy cutting curved pieces, right angle triangles, and more. Robinson is methodical, easy to follow, organized and experienced, having been quilting and writing books since the early 1990s.
Quilting and Sewing Videos
Another site with an assortment of free quilting tutorials from appliqué to art quilts and beyond has the simple to remember name: Quilting & Sewing Videos. Embellishment, art quilts, appliqué, garment sewing, and some that are simply for inspiration. This site offers a wide variety of teachers as well as techniques and skills.
One of the good things about DVDs and tutorials is that they offer the ability to stop, rerun, rewatch, and work your way through it with the teacher. In Jackie Robinson’s DVD Weaver Fever published by Nine Patch Media, the video is divided up into segments where the watcher can pause the tutorial while he or she makes what was just learned, then moves on to the next step. This quilt Weaver Fever project requires organization and careful step-by-step progression that would be near impossible to get in a limited-time class or even in a printed book.
DVDs and tutorials have become a necessity for the quilter who wishes to advance her skills on a limited budget.
If you like this article, you may also find these interesting:
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- Tips and Techniques for Fusible Applique: Many have discovered that time doesn't permit labor-intensive handwork when there are many quck and easy techniques and products that produce similar results.
Dawn Goldsmith - Dawn Goldsmith is a freelance writer and former news reporter with Freedom Communications and Gannett. Her work has been published in a ...
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