When I graduated from graduate school my parents asked me what I wanted as a graduation gift, “More design education!” I answered. So I signed up for a week at the Maine Photographic Workshop. It was like summer camp for grown-ups wanting to learn various aspects of photography. All we did all day was take photos, develop film and print. I loved the total immersion.

When we started FunQuilts, we decided to create a similar immersive environment for quilters. One week–totally focused on quilt design. There are lots of one-week summer programs in the US so I thought I’d post information about a few I’ve heard about. Some of the classes offer housing and meals and others refer you to local inns and restaurants.

Arrowmont offers courses in basket-weaving, clay, fiber, metals, drawing, woodturning and stone carving. Penland has classes in book-making, clay, drawing, glass, iron, photography, printmaking, and wood. Sievers has classes in weaving and quiltmaking (one of which is taught by one of our students). The Maine Photographic Workshop has classes in everything from basic black and white photography to operating very expensive cameras used for making movies and even courses in lighting. There are a number of classes and travel opportunities offered by Shaw Guides.

For quilters, Empty Spool Seminars offers classes in California by well-known quiltmakers traditional and contemporary. We will be teaching this summer at Quilting in the Pines near the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Quilting by the Lake in Upstate New York and at our own Design Camp in Chicago (which is almost sold out).

Perhaps readers in other countries could post information about similar classes in other countries.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 24th, 2007 at 4:51 am and is filed under sewing+quilting+fabric. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.