I can only call Thursday’s sleep pattern “naps” because that’s what you do when you’re working through a food-borne illness.  You can’t really sleep the night all the way through anyway, so you grab what sleep you can and don’t venture too far from the loo.

Although the vendor exhibits are not open, the Thursday of Market is filled with classes, called Schoolhouse, and the day culminates in an orgy of shopping called Sample Spree.  I’ve heard enough about Sample Spree to stay away from it – super-long lines, crowds, noise, a little shoving, and a lot of waiting.  If you’re willing to put up with all that, you are rewarded with the opportunity to buy new products at a discount from the vendors who participate.  I’m sure other folks will blog about Sample Spree, but it holds zero interest for me. Since I don’t like crowds, shoving, waiting, lines, noise, or shopping, “new” and “discount” just aren’t attractive enough for me.  Even so, it probably would have been a great opportunity to sell Quiltspirations! so that’s something I should think about for Fall Market.

I didn’t distance myself completely from the day’s Market activities though; I had a class in the morning on Advanced Social Media Marketing.  While I did learn a couple of nuggets, I think “advanced” may have been a bit of a stretch in terms of the content, at least for me, but I know many people in the room felt like it was!

They covered 4 main “social medias” (that seriously made me cringe, and the presenter kept saying it over and over. Media is already plural!) Facebook first, Twitter, Pinterest, and finally Blogging.

In terms of Facebook, I was really happy to hear the presenters point out that profiles are for people, and pages are for businesses.  How many awkward businesses have you seen with the name Myra QuiltShopinCentralFlorida Jones or Becky LongArmQuilting4U Davis?  I’ll bet they don’t realize that if Facebook finds out they are using a profile instead of a page for their business, Facebook will unceremoniously delete their accounts, and all those “friends” will be lost & unrecoverable.

I learned about a service called UStream, which is able to connect to your FB page and allow you to do live streaming of video, which could be cool for things like classes, and raising the interaction level on my consolidated business page.  I’ll have to do more research on it though.

When they started talking about Twitter, it was a reminder for me that I forgot to set up Facebook to automatically feed to Twitter!  Too many FB pages will do that to you.  The presenter reminded everyone to not make Twitter just one long advertisement, which is what it probably looked like since I do all my microblogging on Facebook, and previously only fed the blog to Twitter.  That’s not interactive!  I do have to remember to use hashtags when I post to Facebook though – it doesn’t mean anything on FB, but when it makes its way to Twitter, the hashtags are important.

As you already know, I have a like/loathe relationship with Pinterest.  Their terms of service have improved somewhat, but I still am not satisfied with the copyright protections they offer.  On one hand, I know that it’s better for them to store the images on their own servers so that they won’t be accused of bandwidth theft, but I don’t like that they take the photo at the original resolution or allow photo uploads.

The last topic they covered was blogging, but they didn’t really go into much detail here.  They just said, “You should be blogging!” and left it at that.

After class, I went straight back to my hotel room, and then ventured out for a little lunch.  Just some soup, salad, and  sweet potato fries.  I don’t think fries are on the recovering-from-food-poisoning diet, but restaurants rarely have them so it was a treat to see them on the menu.

I spent the afternoon making my list of people to see at Market, in between naps, and then worked a bit on the magazine.  I tried watching TV, but the TV programming here in KC actually sucks the big one.  Not a single episode of Law & Order to be found, none of my favorite court shows, and not even a nice marathon of Storage Wars, Auction Kings, or Hoarders.

For dinner, I just repeated lunch, except I skipped the soup and added a ginger ale.  So far so good; although my stomach is still roiling, I did sleep through the night.

This morning, I’m going to try to finish up the magazine, and then head over to Market!  Hopefully you’re following me on Facebook or Twitter, so you can see it all happen – lots of photos & fun, and hopefully good news!

I spent Tuesday getting my hair cut, working on last-minute brochures and handouts, and packing up BTDF magazine to come with me so I can publish from the road.  That meant a pretty late night, and I ended up not being able to pack my suitcase.

I got up pretty early on Wednesday morning to start packing, and when I went to fill my toiletry bottles, I realized the plastic baggie had a bunch of rips and holes in it.  That’s when I remembered that I had meant to replace that bag with a vinyl one, so what did I do?  I took a break from packing to go and make a new toiletry bag!

This bag is nice and roomy because I boxed the edges, but I made the flap a little too long.  Still, it was good enough to take on the trip, and I got back to packing.  Of course, the house looks like the Tazmanian Devil went through it, but I finished packing, then wrote yesterday’s blog post before getting dressed. I get bonus points for getting everything into two carry-on bags, although the larger of the two was so extremely heavy that I knew I’d have to gate check it; no way could I lift that thing over my head!

The ride to the airport was fairly uneventful, except the driver was chatty and I think he was trying to pick me up (I mean, in the flirting way, not the driving way.)

Security was quite interesting, because my bag got flagged for an additional search.  I could hear the TSA agent muttering, “What is that? What is that? I can’t tell what it is.”  Well, I recorded this video so you can hear me tell the story.

When I got to the hotel, I checked in, then headed to the convention center to get my badge holder and program.  That’s when I realized… Market doesn’t really open until Friday!  So why the heck am I here on Wednesday?

Well, for one, my initial plan was to drive to KC, so Wednesday & Thursday were really travel days.  I was going to stop along the road visiting shops and just make a relaxing trip of it, then remembered I hate long car trips.  What really sealed the deal was an unused ticket on American.  I forgot, however, to adjust my travel plan accordingly, and fly out Thursday instead.  You really only want to come to Market this early if you’re exhibiting or doing Schoolhouse… which I am not.

Anyway, it’s a really good thing that nothing important is happening Thursday, because I spent a very miserable evening, night, and early morning pretty sick, on account of some bad food I got hold of at the airport.   Next time I pick up shrimp noodles at an airport stand and declare it a good thing, someone please smack me silly.  This morning I am in search of nothing but water and warm toast, and ready access to a lavatory.  Needless to say, I’ll be spending most of the day in my hotel room.

On the bright side, I’ll get some quality time with the magazine, plan out the rest of my week at Market, and fill you in on all the deets!  Hopefully I can be fully recovered today, because tomorrow I get to visit with two of my favorite people on the planet – Mary Fons & Gyleen Fitzgerald!

I am totally going to post from the road, but I couldn’t help taking a minute to say THANKS to all of you for your support.

It would absolutely be pointless for me to go to Market if I didn’t feel as though I were doing something really important, not only for myself, but for all the people out there who read my blog and buy my shhtuff.

Despite all of my plans to the contrary, I feel woefully unprepared for Market.  So I’m hoping that it’s only the last minute jitters and not the real thing.  I know who I need to meet, where I need to go, and what I need to do.

So… I’m gonna go do it!

Most of the time, I have the age old problem of too much to do at once, not enough time to do it in, and not enough motivation to start until the last minute.  This weekend, I discovered that perhaps instead of forcing my way of working into the deadlines, I should take advantage of spurts & bursts when I can.  Let me explain.

Sometimes, I feel like quilting.  Other times I feel like cutting.  Occasionally I want to vacuum, but when I try to force myself to do something I don’t feel like doing, I usually end up on the couch playing Bejeweled on my iPhone until it’s too late to do anything else.

We already talked a little bit about my BD2012; I tried to force myself to quilt that one, and it just wasn’t working out.  So I needed to take a break.  I realized that I still wanted to quilt something, just not THAT one. (And… I’ll show you THAT one when I figure out what I’m putting on it… I’m close to a decision I think!)

I quilted the Mod Bento quilt, but it turns out that it was only one of four quilt tops that I quilted this weekend, and all of them were mine.  I know my clients are screaming at me through the computer, but trust me… you didn’t want me working on your quilt while I was recovering from BD2012.

A spurt is simply explained by me wanting to actually do something, and a burst happens when I act on the spurt and the spurt feeds another one.  So, quilting the Mod Bento was a spurt that inspired me to load another quilt, and another, until I ended up getting four done.  And this is made even more remarkable by virtue of the fact that I had to drive to downtown Chicago on Saturday to speak at a career fair for the arts (more on that later.)

Another spurt I had involved vacuuming & dusting; I managed to get Darcy’s room all spiffy, but a burst did not ensue because that is the only cleaning I felt like doing this weekend.

So much quilting though required that I bite the bullet & purchase a shock-absorbing floor mat; the resistance I’m getting from the concrete sub-floor makes my calves ache.

The next quilt top I worked on is a Take 5 quilt that I am planning to kit for sale in my Quilt Possible shop, since I have bolts & bolts of this fabric.  Obviously I can’t really kit it if no one can see the quilt it makes!

This was also an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone; the quilting is a pantograph pattern that I’ve been meaning to try, and I try to show quilts stitched-out with the patterns when I list them in my design catalog.

This is called “Birdseye.”

The next quilt top is really for me; it’s a pattern by Cozy Quilts, and I got the fabric & pattern from her shop when I visited.  Since it’s not my own quilt pattern, I didn’t want to use it as a canvas for my custom freehand quilting either, so another untested pantograph was put into service.

And it’s a good thing too that this is my quilt, because I bumped the laser light on the last row, and it ever-so-slightly overlapped the previous row.  I don’t really care because this is going on my couch once it is bound, but had it been for a client… rip, rip, rip!

For quilt #4, I decided to go completely hog-wild and freehand it.  I was flipping through some quilting books and came across one by Karen McTavish (Mastering the Art of McTavishing).  I remember in a class trying to learn this technique and having such trouble with it!  Today, after looking at a couple of her pictures, I just decided to wing it.  I tried sketching, but that was just frustrating to me – I think I have some sort of sketching-block, and I think if I relied on my sketches as a measure of my quilting, I would never have purchased a long arm to begin with. 

I think what really motivated me (and finally helped me get over BD2012) is that Karen, who is a phenomenal, talented quilter, doesn’t have perfect stitching.  She misses her backtracks, and sometimes (gasp) she will even mark a quilt to define spaces before she quilts them.  In her book  she also showed a quilt where a poor thread choice really ruined the quilting, and she had to rip it out – just like I did.

It made me remember that when you’re quilting something that relies on traveling a previous line, or is really about creating a texture, it should be done in matching (not contrasting) thread. By using matching thread, you’re also not as concerned with “mistakes”.  They just blend in, and then by the time you finish, you’ll double-dare anyone to find your missed backtracks.  I really thank Karen for being willing to show her flaws, because that helps people learn.

In light of that, I recorded a video of one of my attempts at this technique (shown in the photo above).  I call it “Swirl Doodle” rather than McTavishing, because I think everyone develops their own signature with it.  I think of McTavishing as a technique, rather than as a claim on every single stitch that is built with echoes.  When I showed this quilting to a few quilters, they didn’t say “nice McTavishing!” So I think those who know this technique will see the inspiration, but no one would mistake this for Karen’s work under any stretch of the imagination. 

Across the entire quilt, I tried to do some different stitches that I haven’t really tried before (or don’t have great photos of), which turned this into quite the sampler.  The back is a little more interesting than the front.

I will get some better shots of the quilt & blog about it more fully later, but right now I’m totally pooped!  I guess for these quilts to really be finished, I’ll have to wait for a spurt & burst of binding!!

This little bento project was the perfect choice.  I actually started this quilt back in early 2011, and I was supposed to be part of a block swap, but I dropped out of the swap when I realized the swap designer had made the block in such a way that it was not possible for me to die-cut easily – making strips 2-3/4″ wide for example.  As you can probably tell these days, if I can’t die cut it, I’m not doing it.

Still, I had cut quite a few strips before I got so frustrated that I gave up on the swap, but it turned out also that I’d cut too many strips to give up entirely.  I finished it into a smallish quilt top (blogged about here), made a scrappy back from leftover yardage, and stuck it in my quilt top closet to age like a fine wine.

(By the way, I think it’s hilarious that I have so many quilt tops, it warrants having a closet for them, but there you are.)

So I loaded this puppy up on the frame, and was just about to go crazy with some free motion madness, when inspiration struck.

Ordinarily, when I see too many straight lines on a quilt, I think curves, but there’s so much going on in the fabric, that I didn’t want the quilting to be a distraction, I just wanted to add some texture.

I used the same thread that I had used for BD2012, but what was loud and obnoxious on that quilt, is actually quite subtle & lovely on this one.  Go figure.  I am naming this quilting stitch “Organic Lines”, and it was inspired by the green, blue & purple fabric you can see here pretty prominently in this section.

I have admired many quilts that have perfectly straight rows of stitching on them, but I like the freedom of this one too.  It’s not complex to stitch necessarily, but it does take a lot of thread because it is so dense.  Four bobbins worth of King Tut #985 Shekels were used on this 44″ square quilt.  Really!

Since I was experimenting anyway, I also took the opportunity to use a new 100% Rayon batting by Legacy.  People tend to think of rayon as a synthetic, but it’s actually made from many different plant fibers.  The awesome feature of this batting is that it is flame-retardant, non-combustible, non-toxic, and will not melt or drip in a fire.  Too bad this quilt isn’t bigger or I would totally sleep under it!

The batting has a fairly low loft, and I had no issues quilting it, although it doesn’t feel as soft as a cotton or bamboo does.  Once I get the quilt bound I’ll throw it in the washer & dryer & see how it fares.  It’s not a stiff quilt really, even with the dense quilting, but it’s no bamboo. 

From this distance, which is me standing a couple of feet away to snap this photo, you can’t even see the color of the thread.  That’s so perfect for this quilt, because the thread isn’t really a distraction, but when you look at it much closer, you get a nice surprise with the subtle variegation in the thread.

You can see in this photo a little bit more of how the variation in the lines is achieved; by purposely leaving open spaces, or by bringing the lines closer together.  I think it will take a bit more practice to get those open spaces to look and feel a little less deliberate, but for the first time out of the gate on this one, not so bad.

When I originally got my long arm, I thought that I would want to do very complex & intricate quilting.  As I quilt more & more quilts, I think I’m learning that while I love looking at intricate quilting, and admire (and even sometimes envy) those quilters who do that type of work, I don’t know that I aspire to that skill level anymore.  Not that I’m saying my quilting is therefore mediocre, it’s just that I don’t want to “quilt to impress”.  I think my talent is in a different area; not by executing complex designs, but by having an eye for color (BD2012 notwithstanding) and choosing quilt designs that complement a quilt best.  I’m never going to be the quilter people come to when they want feathers on their quilt… I know how, I just don’t wanna. And sometimes, simpler really is better, so why make it complicated just because you can?

And also… sometimes I just want something DONE without having to think & stress over it, which is why paper pantographs appeal to me too. 

I think I’ll add this to my catalog of quilt designs; I wonder if I’ll ever get a customer brave enough to have me use this on their quilt!

Whenever I do something, I don’t do it halfway.  My friend WenR tells me I am not a planner, I am a doer.  It sounds funny to me because I think I am always planning, but when I look back over the things I’ve done, it usually works out like this:

• Come up with an idea
• Fall in love with the idea
• Immediately set to work on the idea
• Deal with the consequences later

This approach works pretty well with quilting, but not necessarily with businesses or websites.

When I first started Quilt Possible!, it was to carve out a space for my die cutting patterns. I started out with a blog format, then launched a store.  I didn’t like the way the store & website looked (it was very disjointed), so I hired a web developer to do the heavy lifting to overhaul the site.  It’s actually a very beautiful site I think, but when I started setting up the structure for the store, I set it up the way I thought it would be if I were giant retailer. Lots of categories and subcategories.  Placeholders for things I didn’t have yet.  Multiple ways to purchase by cross-linking items to many categories.  I have 12 products, yet the store was set up as though I had hundreds.  Check out this menu:

When I went back to look at this the other day, even I couldn’t figure out where on earth to look for something!  So I got to work simplifying and streamlining.  To do that, I went back to basics, and thought about what the store is really about.

First & foremost, the whole thing started with patterns, so that should be a category.  I used to also have subcategories for each cutting system, which was supposed to help you narrow down your pattern selection.  However, I only have 3 patterns listed, so “narrowing down” is a bit of overkill, don’t you think?

Next, I had a category called “Fabrics & Kits”, which had subcategories for die cuts, quilt kits, and fabric. Again, I don’t have enough products to warrant  that many categories yet.  Plus, I have so many dies (over 400 at last count) that it was pretty overwhelming to think about adding a product for each one, plus photos & descriptions.  At some point this year, I will add more products, but I think I’ll refrain from adding additional categories unless the products trickle over into a second page.

Then came “Notions”, and there were three subcategories there.  You can see where this is going, right?  Then I created a category for “Quiltspirations”, which is literally one product – the card set itself.

Lastly, I had a category called “Services”, which had die cuts, my cutter rental, and classes.  I think we talked about the Classes piece last week – that got moved over to this site under Lectures & Workshops.  The die cut category was confusing, because it even had sub-sub categories, for individual units like letters, and another for “quilts” like Drunkard’s Path.  Well how is that different than the categories I had under Fabric & Kits?  Sheesh!  So I completely renamed this category to simply “Die Cutting.”  It felt great to go from 20 categories to just 4. Check out the new menu!

It’s pretty straightforward, and I think reflects the shop that I am today – small, with room to grow.   In the Die Cutting section, I have provided a pretty simple way for someone to get custom die cuts from me.  Either they come to the studio & cut it themselves, or they can fill out a request form to get more information.  I’ve even created a basic catalog of dies that I have, so people can get an idea of the selection.  It would be really difficult anyway for someone to place a precise order for what they want, because they’d have to calculate the fabric requirements, know how many pieces they need, and know exactly which die(s) to use.  It’s far better for someone to just describe what they need, and let me figure it out.

I debated for a while about whether or not to get rid of the blog; it’s packed with information, but I don’t post to it very often.  I wasn’t really sure about whether I wanted to commit to maintaining  a blog here, a blog on the magazine, and a blog for Quilt Possible, but I think for now I will leave it where it is.  If I commit to just posting once a week over there, I think that will be OK.  It doesn’t need to be as “chatty” as this blog, because it serves a different purpose.  Plus, I would probably post more often if I didn’t have so many irons in the fire everywhere else!

Aside from the website though, there are other “simplification” plans on the horizon.  I’ve been thinking more specifically about how I write patterns, why they take so long, and whether I’m trying to force-fit my style into the current industry standards.  Case in point: I’ve formatted and published my patterns to be printed & distributed through traditional retailers.  Yet, my audience is primarily composed of those who know me through my videos & website.  So why can’t you download my patterns?  Better yet, why are they in black & white without any photos?  If I change my approach, I may be able to finally get out of the 10-15 pattern backlog I am currently in. 

I know this might seem to some as just making cosmetic changes; like I’m not really doing less, or getting rid of things, I’m just dressing up the windows and nothing is changing… and you might be right.  However, I think what these changes actually reflect is things as they actually are.  I am not a 20-category shop, I am a 4-category shop.  So I don’t need to feel the stress & disappointment that comes from not being able to populate a 20-category shop.

Similarly for the magazine, I’m a one-person operation, so the website needs to reflect that the magazine is core, and everything else is a bonus.  That also alleviates the guilt of not being able to regularly post to all the categories that used to be there.  It’s about freeing up brain space, so there’s room to think about what it could be.  Or maybe even do some planning, eh?

This should also serve as a lesson to anyone sending quilts out: if you really care about something, don’t assume your quilter notices or cares the same way you do.

First, let’s talk about the quilting.

This quilt presented somewhat of a challenge, because it had some three-dimensional elements incorporated into the quilt (and they couldn’t be removed). The client had some ideas for one section of the quilt, where she wanted a leaf & loop pattern:

She didn’t have an idea for what she wanted on the 3D portion. I thought these looked like flowers so I wanted to emphasize the floral element with this spiraling rosette.

That design then would get echoed around to other places on the quilt.  Sometimes it helps to play with the design on clear plastic, to get an idea of what it might look like before going to the trouble of stitching it in thread.  I sent these photos to the client, along with my thread recommendation (Superior So Fine #40 JJ, which is a lovely variegated peacock green.)

Now, when I went to look at the quilt backing, I noticed several things.  First, that the backing was not square; second, that it had these green border strips tacked on; and third, that these border strips did not completely meet at the ends.

If you look closely near the top of the image, at the ends of the green strips, you’ll see a muslin square on either side.  Those are pieces that I had to stitch in to complete the corners of the strips.  You’ll also notice that there are only a couple of  inches leeway at the sides, and more room at the top & bottom.

You should also be able to see that the backing is not square; the bottom is bowed out and the top is at a pretty severe angle.  After I attached the muslin squares, I squared up the backing as best I could, and loaded the quilt so that I would be sure not to run out of the backing.  Another issue was that because of the way it was constructed, there was a chance that one of these border seams would end up right near the edge of the quilt, where the binding is attached, and make it too thick to bind.

When I saw this backing, my immediate thought was that the client had only added these green strips to make the backing bigger, and by the way they were attached, I assumed she didn’t really care about the backing.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Whenever I get a backing that is borderline too small, I try to load the quilt top so that I have the best chance to not run out of backing fabric before it’s done.  Quilts are funny things; you can never tell how they will behave once they are on the frame.  Sometimes they draw up & shrink, other times they stretch a bit.

I can control where the quilt starts, I can monitor the sides, but I have no idea where the quilt will land once I get to the bottom.  It’s pretty straightforward to center a quilt from side to side on the backing, but extremely difficult to center from top to bottom.  I always tell people, if there’s something on your backing that you care about & don’t want to lose, don’t put it near the edges of your backing.

Also, if you are piecing your backing, don’t try to center it.  Offset seams are better anyway (because people tend to fold quilts in half, you don’t want seams down the center) and visually if you purposely make it off-center, it won’t look like a mistake once it is quilted.

You’ll notice here, in the upper left corner of the photo, another muslin strip.  This is pinned to the edge of the quilt backing to extend the sides for my clamps, so that I can quilt up to the edge of the quilt.  When we ask for extra backing, it’s not for us to quilt on necessarily, it’s to give us room to work.

Here you can see the quilting a little better:

I was pretty pleased with how this turned out, but I wasn’t able to start the rosette from the center of the circle.  This particular section was applique on top of foundation piecing, with more applique on top.  The center was just too thick for me to position the needle there.

The rest of the quilting was pretty uneventful; leaves & loops are pretty straightforward, and it makes a nice filler for this quilt.  I think the thread was also a good choice.

Here’s the quilt finished from the front. I think it’s cute!

And here is the quilt from the back:

This is the part that my client was not happy with.  She actually didn’t say anything about the quilting at all, but she was extremely disappointed that the back was not centered from top to bottom.  If she had mentioned that she wanted the backing precisely centered, or that she didn’t want the 4 green strips quilted into her quilt, we could have had a discussion about why that may or may not be feasible.  (I did offer to try to fix it, but never heard back.)

So let this be a lesson for all of us:

• If your backing is important to you, take the same care with it as you would the quilt top.
• If you care which direction your backing faces in relation to your quilt top, make a note of it, either on the backing itself with a note pinned in a conspicuous place, or on your quilting order form.
• If you care about elements being in certain places, tell your quilter.  Don’t assume they will automatically know, or will automatically ask.
• If you want your backing perfectly centered, quilt it on a domestic machine, so the layers are basted together and you can quilt it from the center out.

For my own part, and I don’t know how many more quilts it will take for me to learn this, I should never quilt things with obvious issues that cause me to improvise.  I’d rather offend someone by sending something back unquilted, with my reasons for doing so, than to quilt it and have them be unhappy with the decisions I’ve made for them.  Maybe this sounds a bit like blaming the client, but rarely do things turn out well where both sides have questions and each make up their own answers.

I’ve been pretty fortunate as a long arm quilter to be able to pull in customers the way I do without having photos of my quilting style or available patterns on display.  Not to mention, my website was so intricate that when it can time for me to update it today, it took me an hour to figure out how everything was organized.

Today I did a number of things that I hope you’ll find helpful as you explore!  The first thing I did was simplify the navigation.  I don’t have sub-menus anymore; everything is right up front.  It doesn’t mean you don’t have to click through some things, but as I thought about what LoveBug Studios actually is, that helped make it easier for me to think about what should be front & center.

I forgot to take a photo of what it looked like before, but trust me, it was a mess.

So, what exactly is LoveBug Studios?

Well, first of all, it’s my company – it’s what I do, it’s what my entire business is built around.  So it’s important that it be something of a “portal” to everything that I do.  The social media icons are all pointing to the right place, and I made sure to update the Facebook account to the Designer page that I’m keeping.

The primary thing that I want people to “get” right away – they can see my work, get information on long arming, access my pricing, understand what workshops I offer, and know where to buy things that I sell.  There’s also a handy link to my blog, because I post to this thing several times a week.

I debated for a while about whether the menu was too long – should the price list be under the long arm quilting?  Yes and no.  It is accessible when you click on long arm quilting, and it’s accessible from multiple places, but in practical terms, whenever a client calls me for a quote, or they are at the local quilt shop wanting information, I think it should be at our fingertips.

For lectures & workshops, initially I had been listing those over at Quilt Possible, but now that I have a few workshops under my belt, I am realizing that no one will ever book me for a workshop in that way.  Workshops tend to involve contracts, and no one is really going to “add it to cart” under those circumstances.  Also, I have some ideas around other workshops that aren’t die-cutting related; while they die cutting workshops aren’t out of place on LBS, long arm workshops would look strange on QP.  I want QP to be optimized for eCommerce, and workshops just don’t fit that model.

Also, I found and eliminated almost all references to custom quilts on the site, which meant getting rid of the functionality that allowed people to make down payments.  Over the past 18 months, I’ve used that feature once, and I could just have easily have done a PayPal invoice instead of doing it the old way.  Hooray for simplification!

By far the most significant thing I did today was upload & organize over 40 quilting designs! I went through all of the quilts that I’ve done since Darcy came into the studio, and categorized all the designs so you can filter them by size, type, or style. You can see what pantographs I have & freehand designs that I do, and best of all, you can see them stitched out on actual quilts.  You can find this under Long Arm Quilting, but here’s a quick link.

I also created a thread chart, and updated the price list & quilting schedule.

I’m sure you’re probably sick of the word “also”, but I took time today to organize my Flickr photos into sets & collections, and that allowed me to also organize my Gallery so that everything there is current & organized by year. I got a little pick-me-up too by realizing that I have done more quilting this year than I thought. 

Some things you probably won’t really notice or care about, but I still managed to do today, was create a Privacy Policy (scary, huh!) and updated my Terms of Service. There’s a cool site out there where you can create a free Privacy Policy for one website, but since I have so many sites, I got the upgrade. I eliminated plugins & content I didn’t need, consolidated some functionality, organized the footer, and I also ran site backups for QP, BTDF, and LBS, and then upgraded QP and BTDF to the latest versions of WordPress.  *PHEW*!!! (I haven’t done this site yet because I couldn’t get the backup working, and if you know anything at all about computers or systems, you never, ever upgrade until you’re sure you can recover if something goes wrong.) 

So now that I have totally exhausted you (and honestly I don’t know how you guys put up with my ramblings), it’s time for me to go to bed!  What do you think of the changes?  Do you see anything else that could be better organized or more accessible?

An idea has been buzzing around my head all day, and I couldn’t wait to get home to put it into action.

When I originally envisioned Blocks to Die For, the magazine I publish for fabric die cutting enthusiasts, it was simply a magazine meant to help people convert rotary cut blocks into something they could die-cut.  First, I wanted to see if there was interest in the idea, so I posted a free issue over on my Quilt Possible blog, just to see what would happen.  In the first 36 hours, it had been downloaded over 1,000 times.

My mistake in giving away that free issue is that I didn’t require email addresses in order to sign up, so when I launched the magazine for real, I had to earn those folks all over again.  It wasn’t enough to have BTDF just sitting off to the side of Quilt Possible; I needed to figure out how to make it more visible & not make the same mistake twice.

I created the website in one weekend and got the subscription piece up and running so that people would be able to buy & download the magazine.  I thought the website looked kind of empty with only one link on it for the magazine, so I got this idea that to add value to the magazine, I would have a bunch of web extras to go along with it.  A friend of mine was going to help me publish content, so with her help, we came up with all these ideas for categories & things that could appear on the site, and it didn’t seem like that much to do.

Within a couple of weeks, just before the official launch, my friend had to pull out completely to address some family matters.  That was fine, but it led to my next mistake, which was continuing ahead with the same plan.  I didn’t adjust for the increased workload & demands on my time.

So when the site launched, it looked like this:

Seven primary categories requiring regular content.  It looked pretty amazing, and I ran out of room on the menu bar!  Awesome right?  Not really, because that didn’t count the subcategories that also required attention.  Sure, not every category needs content every day, or even every week, but it’s still a lot of content for one person to generate on her own.

I tried getting other people to contribute content, figuring that if they kept the tutorials on their site, I could just link to them, but it takes a lot of time to find GOOD content, and on top of that finding GOOD die-cutting content, and then writing to each one of those bloggers to ask for permission to swipe a photo off their site, then following up if there was no response, and on and on.  By the time I got content posted, it was weeks or months old.

I also have lots of good content on my own Quilt Possible site, but it seemed a little silly to cross-post my own stuff on another website I owned.  It also is nearly as time consuming as asking other bloggers for content, because I still had to figure out what was best, and format the content to fit the subscription site I had built.

I spent so much time trying to find & create content for BTDF that I was not able to continue creating content for Quilt Possible, not to mention the severe quilting backlog here at LoveBug Studios.  Last fall, I was such a mess.  It’s so maddening sometimes to think of myself as a “revenue-generating content creator” rather than as the quilter & designer that I want to be.  There’s very little quilting & designing going on when you’re busy “generating content” to support a website.  It seems that when I rebelled against making custom quilts anymore because I felt like a sweat shop worker, I careened too far in the other direction by removing myself from the process almost completely.  I want this coming summer & fall to be different; more balanced.

I don’t think any of those words show up on my post-it note wall, but I think all this focus is paying off.  When I got home today, I sat down at the computer and listed everything out that’s on the current menu, and with simplicity in mind, tried to view it a different way.  In my current way of thinking, the magazine should be front & center.  Why bury it in a menu somewhere?  And if the magazine is the main goal, anything else I do on top of that, is extra.  So here’s the new line up:

You might be asking yourself where the other items went!  Well right now, they are grouped under other categories.  I don’t necessarily want to delete good content, just make it easier for me to manage.

For example, Tips & Tutes and Two Cents are considered “Extras” – so they appear under that menu.  Similarly, Empty Wallet and Cheeky Views are part of “The Scoop” – they are just different categories of news.  Maybe this is just another mind-trick, but already I feel less pressure to produce-produce-produce.

It’s almost a prioritization of responsibilities: my main responsibility is to write the magazine, followed by maintenance of the back catalog, then to publish any “Extras” if I want to, and finally to publish anything noteworthy under “The Scoop.”  (I don’t worry so much about The Gallery – this is reader-submitted content.)  When I think of the site as it was before, having all the categories listed up front always felt like a group of ANDs (do this AND do that AND do that too).  Now, it feels like a group of ORs (write a product review OR write about shopping.)

I got further validation for this approach when I went searching for a back issue of Machine Quilting Unlimited on their website (one of my quilts appeared in the May 2010 issue and I only have one copy!)

See how simple their menu is?  I felt better about my decision once I saw their site.  Do what works, and stop doing what doesn’t.

I do still have a ton of work to do on the site behind the scenes, namely rethinking my subscription model to make sure it’s the best one, and the simplest to implement.  For example – I’m on a yearly subscription cycle, and it may be better to have monthly or bi-monthly billing instead.  I think it’s actually more of a commitment for people to say yes month after month, because they have to consciously make a decision to continue – rather than resigning themselves to the idea that since they already paid for it, they might as well stick around.  That’s for another night though. 

The way I tackle a big problem involves not focusing on the problem at all.  That might seem counter-intuitive, but you’d be amazed at how your brain comes up with amazing insights if you leave it alone to think.  I leave my brain alone by creating.

The whole point of writing things on sticky notes isn’t so much about the organization of thoughts as it is a way to trick the brain into thinking you’ve taken some action.  It can help to calm your worries, and get your brain to skip out of the endless cycle of having a huge problem to deal with and no forseeable solution.  It’s like distracting a toddler in a way; give it something else to focus on.  The coolest thing about our brains is their ability to multitask; while I’ve been sewing, my brain has also been working on the sticky-note problem on the side.  First, let me show you what I’ve been working on.

This fat quarter packet has been sitting in my studio for at least a year, if not longer, and it’s time that it got cut up.  In a funny twist, it turns out this collection is by Kate Spain (of the Fabric Copyright Debacle of 2012.)  I’m going to make a project with it for a workshop, but it’s going to be an example shown during the workshop, not the primary focus.  I don’t much like using all fabrics from one line of prints anyway; the resulting quilts I usually find to be muddy and uninteresting.

The workshop is going to be offered on-line in June; it will be my first on-line workshop, and I hope it goes well, because then I can teach a lot more people faster than I could traveling around the country.  I selected 8 prints from this pack, and it didn’t make much of a dent!

This is the resulting project, or rather, the blocks to be included in the resulting project.  I really want to do something interesting with sashing, and I’m not sure if I’ll end up putting on borders or not.

I had to label the layout; I’m still only completely sure about row 1 & row 4; I think I have to swap the first block in row 3 with the last block in row 2.  This is why I don’t like working with one line; even though the prints are different, because their values are the same, they tend to merge into each other in a complete quilt, even with tiny pieces such as these.

Anyway, while I was working on these blocks, which are really just a million HSTs and a few squares, I was playing some music on my iPhone stereo dock.  The problem with that is that I can’t take photos while the phone is docked, and it’s annoying to cut the music off to take a photo every 3 minutes.  Second problem is that I don’t like carrying my iPhone around, or sitting on it after shoving it in my pocket.  The obvious solution was to make a portable case.

When I finish a project and have leftover parts, I try to use those to make mug rugs.  The entire left side of my design wall is filled with mug rug tops.  It seemed like the perfect size to make a case.

I fused some fleece to the back side of this, and quilted it with a variegated Aurifil 28 wt.  It’s a fun thread, and I probably should have played more, but the goal was a finished case, not a masterpiece.

From my handbag making days, I also have tons of webbing and snaps, so it was no big deal to make a belt loop for it.

I can’t show the phone in the case, because the phone is taking the photo, but it fits pretty well and I like how it swings out of the way when I sit down.  I also wear this on one of the back side loops – easier to access, and doesn’t get in the way when I lean on the cutting table.  I can definitely see some future improvements in the design when I make another one; the strap should be moved further down the case (it’s almost impossible to stitch a straight line along the top with the webbing in the way), and I should have a top closure to keep the phone from falling out, and maybe a pocket on the back to store headphones.

You know what’s funny about writing gigs?  How they usually lead to other writing gigs.  It may not sound funny to you, but it’s easier to find other work when you are already working, and this week proved that out.  I’m going to be writing a series of articles for AccuQuilt starting in a couple of months, and one of the goals I’ve set for myself is to show people projects & alternative uses for dies.

Last fall, my guild had a retreat and one of the women showed us how to make these really cute & fast tissue covers.  I decided to figure out if I could die cut them even faster, and it turns out that you can.

So look for that tutorial to come out soon.  I was actually tickled at how closely this pattern lined up – that was completely by accident!

The last project I whipped out this week was a dress for the daughter of a really close friend.  I can be such a terrible friend sometimes, and in this case, I have yet to set eyes on the kid other than through photos.  She’s three now, so there’s still some time to redeem myself, and since we’re getting up to summer, I thought a little dress would be cute.

I know absolutely nothing about dressing children, so I hunted through some online tutorials, got some basic ideas, and then made this dress:

I guess it’s what you might call a pillowcase dress, but it didn’t start out that way. 

The fabric is glorious Robert Kaufman Kona in Crocus, the pocket is from an orphan quilt block I found in a drawer, and the ribbons have been in my stash for quite some time.  Start to finish, the dress took about 3 hours, but considering that I was pattern drafting as I went & stopped to eat dinner, that’s not too bad. The seams are completely finished on the inside (gotta love having a serger) and it wasn’t too bad for my first attempt.  I am a little rusty though on my garment construction skills.

I’ve already got some improvements planned for my next one, but I think I’ll wait to find out if the dress fits first & whether she (and her mom) like it.  I think I like making clothes for little kids; the whole point is that they NOT fit, so they can be worn for more than one season. 

By keeping my hands busy and my brain occupied with sorting out what steps to do in what order, I was able to work out at least one concrete decision about my numerous post-it notes.

I currently have 5 Facebook business pages, which is far too many to maintain for one person.  After looking at each page & what it has to offer, I’ve decided to keep only one.  The real debate came down to whether I would keep my “Ebony Love – Designer” page, or the “LoveBug Studios” page.

When I look back over the post-its, there area few that really stick out for me:

• HUMAN
• Identity
• YOU are the brand
• Interact
• Focus

When I look at the LBS page, there’s nothing interactive about it; 99% of what gets posted is auto-fed from my blog or email campaigns.  That’s not interactive, that’s just advertising.  Bottom line, that page is no fun.  If it’s not fun, it has to go. (I am going to hide it though rather than delete it outright – one day I may have a staff of folks who can keep it lively and interesting!)

 The main issue with consolidation is getting people to move over.  I’ve already gone onto each website and changed the social media links to point only to my Designer page, so that should prevent people from liking the wrong page.  Quiltspirations was the first casualty, and since it has the least number of fans, it should have the least impact to remove.  That page will close on May 15th.  Since Quilt Possible has the most fans, I’ve asked people there to switch to my Designer page too; I’m hoping to close that one on June 1.

I’m going to wait about a week, and then start the closure of BTDF and LBS, also targeting those for June 1.  I have a lot of overlapping fans, and I am trying not to flood them with seemingly the same request over and over.  We’ll see how it goes!  I also have what I think is more workable for the magazine too – more to come!