It all has begun a couple of weeks ago when I started my free trial on Craftsy Unlimited. And I was hooked and excited to learn from those remarkable professionals that I’ve been familiar with through their books, YouTube videos, blogs, and communities in social media.

What is Craftsy Unlimited?

Craftsy Unlimited membership gives access to tutorials and online classes and community of creative people where you can learn from videos and ask some questions, share useful information with other members, and show your works.

Nice features

Here you can explore the classes by topic, add classes to Saves and come back to them later, get access to free patterns and class materials (sometimes teachers share even their e-books with students).

Here is the list of topics:

• Quilt
• Embroidery
• Draw
• Sew
• Photo
• Paint
• Bake
• Knit
• Paper Crafts
• Crochet
• Kids
• Garden
• Wood
• Spin
• Cook
• Jewelry
• Cake
• Weave

Each class is divided into several lessons (generally from 6 to 10) which in their turn consist of chapters. By clicking on the chapters, you can easily navigate through lessons, skip some materials and jump right into those parts that interest you the most.

Another great feature is adjusting speed of the video. I found that 1.25 is the best option for me if I want to go through lesson quicker.

I like that you can rewind and fast forward video 15 seconds, which is really helpful if you need to go back and listen again for the last few words. There is also a repeat function with 30 seconds step, but I haven’t used it a lot.

You can also place bookmarks with little notes so that later you would easily see which places are marked at useful tips, which are funny and made your day, which are inspiring, etc. I’ve made about three dozen of bookmarks in one class!

Each class has some downloadable class materials such as list of supplies, metric conversion guide, patterns, list of resources, reference materials, and even e-books.

As a bonus, subscribers can download some additional patterns for free:

Prices

The advert says that monthly subscription costs $14.99. However, it is good to know in advance that while Craftsy advertises in USD, the prices will always be based in the local currency of subscriber. The local currency for Europe is always EUR. And I must say the prices for different regions vary. Here you can find more information about pricing model and information.

What can be improved

It would be nice to have on Craftsy Unlimited some short preview videos for each class and see user comments regarding the class just like on Craftsy.com. Actually, I ended up choosing classes on Craftsy.com and then looking for them on Craftsy Unlimited.

Also, the names of downloadable files are a bit messy, and I always rename them at once, if I download some class materials.

I love majority of Craftsy classes, but sometimes I get disappointed if the teacher builds the whole class exclusively on their products (such as special very expensive hoops that don’t work for all embroidery machines). I had already written to Craftsy with proposal to change descriptions of such classes so that people would know what they are paying for 😊

My experience

For now, I was just quickly going through some classes to see which are the best for me to continue learning. And there are quite a lot of them!

Most of classes that interest me are related to quilting, piecing, machine embroidery, and hand embroidery. I also saved a couple of drawing and photography classes. I’m going to write quite a lot of reviews to help other creative souls to choose classes on Craftsy that are perfect for them 🙂

My favourite teachers so far: Carol Doak, Angela Walters, Debbie Caffrey, Edyta Sitar, Steven Reddy.

If you are thinking of buying some new books, you may also check if the authors posted any classes there. I find it’s more convenient to learn new technique from video rather than book.

What I love the best is that I could ask them questions and thank them directly for their wonderful tutorials! It is so inspiring to receive answers from them.

Conclusion

I love quality of Craftsy classes. It is always nice to discover some new media and opportunities for self-expression (such as dying fabrics, painting with thread, or creating my own quilt settings and blocks), and their classes are very helpful and inspiring. The teachers are celebrated professionals, and I would recommend their classes to all creative people!