I had the good fortune to attend a three day workshop with Elizabeth Barton in Denver last weekend. What a joy. It was wonderful to hear her talk about her artistic process, her thoughts about composition, and her views on judging exhibits. Thanks to the Front Range Contemporary Quilters organization that made this workshop possible and affordable!
Tomorrow I will be filming my “Stitch & Slash” class for Craftsy.com. I can’t wait. It’s always so much fun to work with this talented and fun group of people. The same team that filmed my “Stupendous Stitching” class will be filming this one so it will be less stress for everyone.
This time we are filming at their new headquarters in the Highland area of Denver.
I asked an “indi designer”, Pat Fitzpatrick, to take two of my Stitch & Slash fabrics and design a purse using them and this is what she came up with. Beautiful! I will be featuring her purse in my course but I wanted to give my readers a sneak preview. She will be posting the pattern in the Pattern section of the Craftsy website soon.
The first photo is the “Stitch & Slash” fabric and the second one, she made from the “Leftover” fabric. I love them both!
I was very surprised to receive a wonderful selection of thread from Valdani last week, thanking me for recommending their threads to my Stupendous Stitching students. First of all, I LOVE this company’s thread — no paid endorsement here. This is a Canadian company that has (in my opinion) the best hand-dyed threads available. I ordered a selection of their pearl cottons and hand-dyed variegated cotton thread when I was writing the article for Machine Quilting Unlimited (March 2012 issue) called “Selecting the Right Thread” and used it to create some of my Stupendous Stitching pieces — including the sample piece I did for my Craftsy class.
The folks at Valdani asked me if I was interested in putting together a “Stupendous Stitching” sample thread kit that contained the types and colors of thread that would work well for my students and I said “YES!” I get so many emails asking me where they can buy this wonderful thread locally and it’s not always available so I thought it would be a good idea to just sell it myself — in my classes and on my website.
So Valdani and I are working on coming up with just the right assortment for helping my students build up their thread stash. I will keep you posted on our progress since we are trying to get everything done by Spring Market (the industry quilting/sewing show) so maybe we can convince your local quilt shops to carry my new book as well as my new sample kit from Valdani.
What do you think about this idea?
Once in a while, you get the perfect match between an organization needing financial support and your art.
That’s what happened when my sister, Marilyn Bouldin, told me about The Salida Circus fund-raising event this year. This non-profit organization offers circus training to children and adults in Colorado as a personal development and community-building tool. Every year, they serve more than 300 people aged 6 months to 89 years. Loved that idea!
So I decided to donate a major piece from my collection to help their cause – “Send in the Clowns”. This piece has won numerous awards and was recently featured at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts during Denver Arts Week in 2012.
I had a lot of fun making it, hope it finds a good home and raises money for a good cause.
For the past several months, I’ve been working on my Stupendous Stitching book. Because I spent my first career in “publishing” it wasn’t hard to figure out what I needed to do and how much $ I would need invest to get my book in print. My first thought was to publish with an established publisher but their contract was so onerous, I decided to go it alone. I had self-published many books before (but not on fiber art!) so I knew what I was giving up in distribution and fulfillment, I would make back in profits!
After writing my first draft and making l sure I had high-quality photos of all my work and any other photos that needed to be included, I set about finding a free-lance developmental editor. This type of editor helps you think about your book, make sure it’s organized correctly, that you have included all the necessary information and that your writing is clear and easy to read and understand. I found a wonderful person, thanks to a recommendation from another fiber artist. My editor is Janice Brewster and she has been invaluable. She doesn’t have a website yet but if you want to contact her, email me and I’ll give you her contact information.
Janice found a graphic designer to create the interior of the book as well as the cover, according to my printers specs, and I am seeing final proofs now. It’s going to be gorgeous!
Once the final PDF’s are ready to print, I will print 200 copies for my immediate use (2 week delivery) using a print on demand system and 3,000 copies for an estimated 2-3 year inventory (4 week delivery) on an offset printer.
After the book is finalized, Janice and I will be talking about how to change the format of the book to accommodate the E-readers out in the market as well as looking at other electronic distribution avenues. It’s an exciting and changing world in electronic publishing and I look forward to learning more every day.
All in all, this will be a major investment in my time and money but I think in the end, it will be well worth it. After all, my ultimate personal goal is to encourage the creative spirit of sewers and quilters and be an inspiration to them. Teaching gives me lots of pleasure and now that I’m teaching online at www.craftsy.com, I’m able to reach thousands of students worldwide. But having a book is part of that experience as well. Some people (like me!) just love to read.
I’ll keep you posted a this adventure continues….
