I am bouncing around this morning as my new online class has been announced. Yes the news is I have a new course to offer via workshops at Joggles.co

Drum roll please …. It is called …. Studio Journals: A Designer’s Workhorse

The aim to help people keep and use a studio journal and hopefully students will not only put stuff into it but develop designs from that ’stuff’ and take what they design into a fiber form of some sort. Here is a a description taken from the blurb …


Keeping a Studio journal is a process for catching ideas, developing those ideas into designs with the aim of realising those designs in fiber. Unlike an Art journal which aims to be an aesthetic object in its own right a Studio journal is a designers workhorse.

This course covers the process of using a Studio journal to create designs suitable for textiles such as contemporary embroidery, or quilting. To use a Studio journal as part of your creative practice you do not have to know how to draw but there are some tricks to establishing a process that leads to a design that can be applied to textiles. This workshop covers the process of how to keep a studio journal, how to develop and idea further, and how to turn it into a design suitable for a project in fiber

Painters keep a sketchbook to take visual notes of what they see but their finished paintings and their sketches are very different. Writers keep notebooks but their published book is not the same as what is first put down. Notebooks are starting points for more developed ideas. Both writers and painters go through a process using their sketches and notes as a starting point. Fiber artists do the same thing when they develop a design. Studio journals can be used as the starting point for textile practitioners. This is what this course is about.

Each week a series of design exercises are introduced. Students work though these in order to develop designs that can be applied to fiber. They aim to develop design skills and the habit of using a studio journal.

Please note that this course is about keeping a studio journal as a work horse not about creating an art journal that is a finished object in its own right. The emphasis is very much on using a studio journal as part of a design process to produce something in fiber. The course contains design exercises and techniques and discusses how these might be applied to textiles. It is a course where students spend their time designing for textiles and working in their Studio Journal rather than working a step by step project. That said I am definitely not going to discourage anyone from jumping in and making something!

This class will begin on June 27 and click here to order it from Joggles.com

Also my Online class Encrusted Crazy Quilting will run again


Also taken from the class blurb …

One of the delights of crazy quilting is that there are no rules. This is liberating on one hand but for those who are beginners they often get stumped as to where to start and how to control what they do to start! Encrusted Crazy Quilting offers students the opportunity to learn how to piece, develop and heavily hand embellish a crazy quilt block with hand embroidery, beading and exploring different embellishing techniques while solving design, composition and colour issues. This class is suitable for beginners to intermediate crazy quilters.

Encrusted Crazy Quilting will start on June 19th Click here to order or find out more

How the classes work
There are two major components of online classes, the lessons themselves, and the forum. The lessons are the guts of the class. The lessons are an Adobe PDF document are disseminated to the students by joggles.com. Each student is given a User ID and password as well as the URL to the class webpage where they are expected to go and download each lesson. There is a one lesson per week. I have designed the lessons so that people can work at them as much or as little as they choose. Some people have more time to put into them others do not. I understand this, for this reason I have designed the lessons to be self paced.

The expectation is that the students download each lesson weekly and progress through the class. They can choose to just do a few hours stitching or more. It’s up to the student.

Each student is invited to register at the forums, which is where all class communication takes place. While not real time chat, you can post messages. I check the forum daily to answer questions and join in on the chat. Students can post images of their work online so I can give them feedback. Participation in the forums is totally voluntary but I think this is the fun part of the process as it is where students get feed back from me, bounce ideas off each other and share pleasure in learning a new skill.