journal - Susie Monday

Susie Monday

Artist, maker, teacher, author, head cook and bottlewasher.

The art I make is the result of a life-long love of pattern, texture and color. How I teach is a skill honed by experience (I started teaching creative arts to younger kids when I was 12). After earning a B.A. in Studio Arts from Trinity University, I helped lead an internationally recognized educational foundation, designed curriculum exhibits for schools and other institutions, wrote and edited for a major daily newspaper, opened the San Antonio Children's Museum and then, a dozen years ago, took the scary but essential (for me) leap to become a fulltime artist and art teacher.

About This Blog

This weblog is about the maker's life. The teacher's path. The stitching and dyeing and printing of the craft of art cloth and art quilt. The stumbling around and the soaring, the way the words and the pictures come together. Poetry on the page and in the piecing of bright scraps together. The inner work and the outer journeys to and from. Practicalities and flights of fancy and fearful grandeur, trivial pursuits and tactile amusements. Expect new postings two or three times a week, unless you hear otherwise.

To reach me, leave a comment after a post, OR email me at susiemonday@gmail.com

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Entries in Craftsy (1)

Tuesday

Nov132012

India Inspired Pillow

Tuesday, November 13, 2012 at 06:53PM

http://www.craftsy.com/classes

I hope to offer a class on Craftsy one of these days (you can help get me there by reccommending me as a teacher send an email to courses@craftsy.com). I demo'ed a couple of two hour sessions during the Houston International Quilt Festival and liked their professional attitudes and have enjoyed checking out the website. (Jane Dunnewold teaches a dye class there, too.)

So it seemed essential to actually take a class on their platform and to see how it worked. The lessons here are all video, with supporting print materials -- though I admit, I just went by the video and had no problem with the pillow project I tried. The class was taught by Carol Ann Waugh, Slash and Stitch, and she was great -- easy to follow, not boring, but certainly thorough. I just plowed through in one day with the class, though all the Craftsy courses are taken when and where and on your own schedule. The class commentary and questions to the instructor seem to be easy -- though it definitely must mean quite an ongoing commitment to the class by the teacher, since students start at any time and work at their own pace. Here's my project. I think I'll make more for Christmas gifts if I can work in the time. This pillow took me about 6 hours, but I think the next one will go more quickly as I learned some tricks from the first time through -- like, don't use slippery fabric for your bottom layer! And for less stitching, use more print or patterned fabric on that bottom layer, too.