Do you enjoy quilting, sewing, crocheting, cake decorating, jewelry making, gardening or cooking? Do you enjoy learning new techniques for one of your many hobbies? Do you want to learn a new hobby?

If so, then you definitely need to check out Craftsy.com. I had heard about this website last year, but it was just a few months ago that I actually checked it out. I had received an email from JoAnn Fabrics that was advertising a Craftsy class about how to make your own bras. It wasn’t long before I had purchased a few of the classes and was looking through the other classes to see what I might like to learn.

The very first class that I watched was “Making Leather Bags“with Don Morin. I haven’t actually put this knowledge to use, yet, but I really enjoyed watching the class. We have AppleTV so I was able to watch the classes on our TV in the family room, but once I start trying to sew I can pull it up on my computer and watch it from my sewing room. Not only do you get easy-to-follow classes that you can watch at any time, but you also receive a list of materials, a list of sources, and whatever other information the instructor feels you need.

Craftsy is more than just online classes, though. It’s also a community. You can look at the numerous projects that other members have submitted under ‘Projects‘. Many of the projects are based upon various classes that were taken through Craftsy. Other projects are designs that the member created themselves and want to share. It’s a great way to get encouragement and inspiration.

Along those lines, you can also look at patterns that have been submitted and that you can purchase through the site. In the “Patterns” area you will find everything from crochet to quilting to sewing to various paper crafts. There are some free patterns that you can download as PDF files, which is great… and also kind of dangerous!

Finally, the area that I found last week and that I’ve been drawn to every day is the Blog. This is where you can enter various sweepstakes, get updated on contests that Craftsy is running, or where you can just get inspired. Yesterday I spent an hour looking at the various Cake Decorating entries despite the fact that I haven’t done any cake decorating in quite a few years. Today I found a free crochet pattern for a shawl that I am going to ask my mom to look at. If you’re into cooking, they have posts with recipes or posts that talk about different aspects of cooking that you might be interested in. Do you like quilting? There are tons of posts with free patterns, updates on new products, and posts from quilters who have something to share. Honestly, there is so much there that I can’t really give a good description of what you will find. I subscribe to the Sewing and the Wood working blog posts, but I can always go look at the entire blog and read about how to take good pictures with better poses for children. Seriously, on my lunch break the other day I spent the entire hour just reading through dozens of posts all on different topics.

Do yourself a favor… check out Craftsy. It will be worth your time!