The First Ever Lazy Gal Quilting Class

Okay, I'm ready to start enrollments in the online informal Lazy Gal Free-Piecing Class.

We will be making Happy Love Quilts. That sounds kinda silly, but I'm terrible at names. The goal is for you to make a quilt that reflects YOU, what you love and what makes you happy. I'm hoping by doing that you will find your own sense of style or at least start you on your way. Perfectionism, stressing out, matchy-matchiness, and EQ software will all be seriously frowned upon. We will play and explore and have a good time.

But just because we're playing doesn't mean there won't be exercises to do and blocks to complete. I'm a big believer in practising. You may end up with several blocks that don't make it into your quilt, but instead can be set aside for the next quilt, used in an orphan or utility quilt.

I don't want to give too much away. The one thing you will be sewing is free-pieced letters. Where it goes from there is up to you.

I have structured the class so that everyone can participate, from "experienced beginners" to those who've been quilting for far longer. Class will be limited to 20 people. Does that sound too big?

For this class, you will need a sewing machine - this isn't a technique that works for hand-piecing. You'll also need a rotary cutter, ruler (the standard 6" x 24" will work fine although 6" to 8" squares are wonderful to have as well) and a mat. And fabric, but we'll talk about that in class. You'll need to be able to share pictures of your work on the web so yes, you either need to own or borrow a digital camera or else be really creative.

To sign up for the class, please email me and tell me you are signing up. After hearing back from me, please go here and donate a minimum of $50 to sponsor Quiltville Bonnie's husband in the MS Bike Ride. This will work until 15 September and after that we'll figure another method of donation. If you don't have a credit card and can't donate this way, email me. This is on the honor system - I trust you. Besides, how could you work on a Happy Love Quilt knowing that you had cheated? I couldn't.

After you've made the donation, let me know. I will then invite you to the Blogger classroom. If you don't have a Blogger account, go ahead and set one up, you will need it. Picasa (or some other photo editing tool such as Adobe Photoshop) would be helpful. It's fairly easy to use and it's wonderful.

There will be several thinking/writing exercises for you to do before we start playing with fabric and sewing. I have the first one already posted. You may do this at your own pace, but I think it's fair to give you a deadline, say the end of the year. That's four months, which should be plenty of time to have a quilt top finished and the quilting started.

A couple of you have worried that I should get paid for teaching this class, but you don't need to. I look around the web and see some incredibly generous quilters donating quilts to all sorts of charities. I do very little of that myself, so this is a way for me to give back something.

Any questions or concerns, just ask.