Stop and Smell the Roses

Well it is back to work around the studio. Quilt market is two weeks away and we have a few more quilts and projects to finish up. We also have another show "Sewing and Craft Festival" next week in Tucson, AZ if anyone wants to stop by. We have everything on sale, including fabrics on the bolt, patterns and fabric kits.

I have been busy working on designing email newsletters to send to our customers. With the drop in business and rise in printing and postage costs, we have to come up with a better way to reach out to our customers. So I have decided to use technology to keep in touch. If you have signed up for our mailing list in the past, I recommend you do it again. I cannot tell if we got all the emails from our customers from the past or not. But the software we are using is smart enough to kick out any duplicates. Sometimes I think the software is smarter than me.

Well today Kathy and I need to finish our next magazine quilt called "Duck, Duck, Goose", make 400 small flowers to string through garlands for someone's booth and 180 leaves that need to be glued onto the 120 fabric flowers I made for a market booth. Every market we get one strange project and this market was to design and make 3-D flowers. These projects are always both fun and challenging. I have first figure out the quickest and easiest way to create the items and still have them look finished and and neat. I have posted the four flowers I came up with here. I think it will be stunning to see all 120 flowers together at market.

Back Home Again

Hello all. It has been awhile. Welcome to anyone who has just joined us from San Mateo, CA. We have just gotten back from doing a show in beautiful Northern CA. It has been an amazingly busy six weeks, even for me. Here at the studio we have been working on show samples for Fall Quilt Market and designing many exciting projects for upcoming magazine features. I have also been taking a class on wire jewelry from Ann Turpin Thayer who is an amazing wire artist who has been very giving with her knowledge and skills. I will post some photos of the pieces I have made as soon as I take them. Anyone who has an interest in wire jewelry should check her local or online classes.

I have also been working on four wool applique projects for our product line. We unveiled them at the San Mateo show and I am posting the photos here. I created these using hand dyed wool from Wooleyladys and Presensia Pearl Cotton. The patterns and kits are now available on our website, www.TheWhimsicalWorkshop.com. I have always loved working with wool but if you look at my designs you can see I am not a country or primative girl and had to add my own spin on wool applique.

Until next time......

The Muse is calling

Our business, like the rest of the country has slowed down a bit and I find myself with some extra time on my hands. Not alot of time but just enough to get myself in trouble again. As some of you may already know I have written a new book with Krause publications on creating elegant jewelry and beads using fabrics and fibers. I was lucky enough to work with Nancy Zeiman Productions to also create a how-to CD to go along with the book. I finished the book in March and it is in the editing stage now. It is due to come out in January 2010.

I had to design and make twenty different piece of jewelry for this project. Though most people know me for my work in the quilting world, most of you may not realize making jewelry has slowly become a passion for me. Having written several other books, I have to say writing this one was such a joy. I loved every step and was sad when it ended. But once I was done I cleaned up my studio and put away my jewelry making supplies and got back to business. I would occasionally pull out some beads and think about what I would do with them only to have them end up back in the drawer. This has gone on since April. Now one of my dreams is to make and sell my finished pieces to people. This dream will not happen if I never create the ideas in my head. It is always easier to make excuses than to make progress.

Now if you have read my last Blog "Where did July go?" you can see how it is easy to say I am too busy to sit down and make jewelry. But a funny thing happened last month in the middle of all the craziness, my jewelry muse came a knocking. I tried to ignore the banging but finally I let her in. Since that day I have stolen a few minutes everyday and a few hours on some of those days to please my muse and play with my jewelry. I realized part of my problem was I had to keep cleaning everything up after each time and sometimes it was too much effort to pull everything out just to work for a few minutes. So to solve this problem I set up a table in my spare room and created a work area just for my jewelry making. I can now walk away and leave it out so when I have a few minutes, I can stop by the table and work immediately. The nice thing about jewelry making is it is so small it does not take up much space. Here is a photo of my new workbench and some pieces I have made in the last couple of weeks.

What happened to July????

July went by in a whirlwind. Starting with getting ready for the Denver sew and craft show. I spent the first week of the month getting ready to go and making sure I was caught up in the design department before leaving. We drove to Denver from Phoenix, a 15 hour drive through the lovely state of New Mexico. It was a very long trip. Once we arrived in Denver we spent a day setting up the booth and three days visiting with the very nice people of Denver. On the last day we torn down and packed up the booth and then drove to New Mexico for the night. On Sunday we made the long drive home. If it wasn't for Kathy I think I might have gone mad with boredom in the car. She is always great company on these long trips. I did fell sorry for my father-in-law, Jerry who had to drive the u-haul by himself in front of us.

We got home late Sunday and I had two days to get caught up from being gone for a week before my sister and niece came for a visit from Atlanta. On top of all this my tenet moved out of our rental home and I had to get the house ready to show. Needless to say it was a crazy couple on weeks.

I did have a wonderful visit with my family and got the chance to take my niece to see Santa Clause. Poor Santa was all dressed for winter and sitting in a little shop in Glendale AZ when it was 115º outside. Even he said he was ready to quit and go back to the North Pole. My sister and I also spent every night down in my studio working on little projects and had a blast making things and catching up after Miss Violet went off to dreamland.

Sooo now that July has come to an end, I can look back and say I got to visit two states I have never been to, New Mexico and Colorado. I got to see my sister and niece for a nice long visit. I also got to visit with our cousin Sarah who cam e to visit before going off to her freshman year at college. I have our rental home settled and rented again. Finally I spent the last week of the month catching my breath and looking forward to the full and adventurous Fall.

August has already started out with a bang celebrating Matthew (my Husband's birthday) this weekend and getting ready to go to Sedona this week for a short escape from reality. SO until next time.....

Upcoming Features and Projects!

It has been a busy couple of weeks here. I knew we had a small amount of time between the Prescott show the first week in June and next show for Denver. In these short weeks, We have managed to design four upcoming magazine features and finish one that was started before we left, design my next line of fabric, design four upcoming wool projects and find time to design some jewelry. I also designed four digital quilts for various fabric companies and wrote about eleven instructions. And lets not forget my fight with technology that is still ongoing while my desktop computer is out have a new hard drive installed. So here is a quick run down of upcoming magazine features:

*Witch's Brew MCCalls Quick Quilts November issue dropping in August

*Spinning Circles Quick Quilts Fall issue dropping in August

*Birthday-Go-Round remake McCalls Special issue dropping in August

*Ghosties on Posties The Quilter Novemeber Issue dropping in September

*Welcome to the Poles McCall's Quick Quilts January Issue dropping in October

*Rock Legend McCall's Quick Quilts January Issue dropping in October

*Winter Wonderland The Quilter December Issue dropping in October

*Art Deco Wool Pendents McCalls Quilting Holiday Issue dropping in October

*Pop Flowers Fabric Trends Fall Issue dropping in October

Love Bugs McCalls Quick Quilts March issue dropping in December

*Hoppy Easter-3 ways Quiltmaker March/ April issue dropping in February

3-D Bead necklace Bead Unique Spring issue dropping in January

Newton's Lullaby McCalls's Quick Quilts Septemeber Issue dropping in July

Cool Cats Fons and Porter- Spring

The features marked with an * are all finished and out the door. As you can see we work way in advance of the magazine print date.

I also just finished the free project sheet to go with my new Polar Opposites collection. I am posting the quilts here. Blank should have the pattern available soon. We have all the fabric on order and will add to our website most likely in August once it comes in. I designed one quilt and used the polar bears on one and the penguins on the other. I wanted to keep them separate due to the fact that polar bears live at the north pole and penguins live at the south pole. The quilt we designed for McCall's using this collection I put the penguins at the bottom of the quilt and the polar bears at the top of the quilt. I hope you like our newest collection. Well back to painting today. So until next time....

Heidi vs. Technology

Wow what a week! I got in a fight with technology and we are still waiting to see who is declared the winner.

I am usually embrace technology. It is how I run my business. I do most of my communicating with our different clients via email. I talk to you through my blog and emails. I am always surfing the net for ideas and reference. I do all my designing on the computer, write instructions, run the business and so much more on my computer. So when my internet goes down as it did last Sunday & Monday, I have lost half of my resources. Now when I got the internet working again on Monday, my desktop computer started to have major issues and then my backup files got corrupt in the process of trying to fix the desktop. All in all a disaster week for me and technology. I think there were gremlins in my office last week.

This is one of the down sides of running your own business, unless you are blessed with computer specialist in your family, when something breaks it is up to you (or me) to fix it or find someone who can fix it. After twelve years on my own, I have learned alot about apple computers and can fix several issues on my own but there are still challenges especially if hardware is involved. So the most important advice I can give you is if you purchase an apple product, spend the extra money for the 3 year Apple Care protection plan. For me this is my personal IT department. If I cannot figure out the problem, I can call these guys free and they can walk me through fixing it. Not only is it free, but by them walking me through it, I learn how to fix different problems if (or when) they happen again. I never wanted to know so much about computers but it has come in handy with keeping everything running. Just another perk of owning your own company. Another piece of advice is to have two computers with the same programs and power (if financially possible). I like to have a desktop and laptop so I have one to travel with and one at home if something happens to the laptop on the road. I was able to take my desktop in store and still had my laptop I could continue my work on. This will not help you with the time it takes to try a sort out the computer issues (for me, several days were lost) and get everything running again. But it will get you back on track with your other work that much faster.

So after getting the internet up and running, re-formatting and re-installing my programs on my desktop and finally having to cry uncle and take the monster into the apple store to figure out what was wrong (It was a Broken Graphics Card), I am happily back on track with technology for next week. So until next time.......

Creativity Burn Out- Oh my!

Hello again sorry it is taking me so long to post again. I have had one of those weeks. I have posted a photo of Cleo, my dog whose look reflected how I felt this week. (Though she looks this way all the time) Sometime after I take a trip, I get so tired that I get in a funk. Though Prescott was a short trip (only four days). I think is because it was just a week and half after my last trip back east (8 day trip), everything just caught up with me. I came back to work on Monday ready to go and get a bunch of designs done, as well as instructions and planning, but by Wed. I was so burned out and tired, I just lost my groove. This may come a surprise to some, but any artist can get creativity burn out. This usually happens at the busiest time when it is not recommended to just stop and take a break. Though I have learned over the years, that stopping and stepping away for a bit is a better way to deal with burn out, than trying to bang your head against the wall and push through the burn out. I have figured out if I take a break and step away I am usually twice as productive when I come back to the drawing table.

So how did I get burned out this week, Kathy and I started the week with six projects going at one time and they were all at different stages of production, laying around the studio. I also was thinking about several upcoming projects as well as the overall direction our studio is moving in. Add in the everyday headaches of life and being overtired from traveling without having a weekend to rest up and you have classic burn out. So enough of whining about how I got in this condition that I am sure we can all relate to, let me tell you how I counter this condition.

Sometimes, like this week, I took an hour to just clean up the studio. By cleaning up the studio I feel like I am cleaning out my head. Most of the time I get burned out by trying to do too many projects at one time, just like this week. I looked at each project and decided what had to be done to complete each project.  I made a list of projects in order of fastest to complete to the projects that still had a lot of work on them finish. Once Kathy got to the studio she and I finished up the couple of the projects that were almost done. Then we prioritized what was left by their deadlines. I cleaned up anything that was just lying around the studio that did not have anything to do with what we were working on this week. This only takes a small amount of time because I keep the studio pretty organized on a day-to-day basis seeing how others have to come into my space and work too. (Now if you work better in chaos these tips may not help.) Once I had my space organized, I start making lists, I love lists. Most of the time I do not even follow the lists, but by creating them I am getting all the chaotic thoughts out of my head and down on paper in an organized manner. Again I prioritize items by easiest to complete and by deadline. I like to do several easy projects in between projects that take longer. I gives me a sense of completion that keeps me motivated to move on to the next task. When I do too many long projects back to back I feel like I am never going to finish anything and start to burn out. Another trick I am learning is when I do have several large projects going at once is to break each project down into several smaller tasks. Tackle each smaller task over time and before you know it the large job is done. Now the next step to recovery is to take time away from the studio and look at the rest of my life, if that part is in chaos then it is harder to do my work in the studio. Today I spent the day just running around taking care of things that have nothing to do with work. Though it is hard sometimes to take time away to do things like take the dog to the vet or get my car fixed, once these things are taken care of I can again focus on my work. Now the most important step to burnout recovery is to take a day or an afternoon off as soon as the deadlines make it possible. Do something as simple as lay on the couch and read a book or go to lunch with your family. Don't worry everything will be waiting for you when you are done relaxing and back to full form. I know it is hard to justify taking a break when the world is weighing down on you with tasks and problems, but remember it is easier to handle anything once you have regained your strength and energy and there is only one way to do that. Take a Break! So until next time......