New Ideas are so Exciting!

 It has been a very long time since I've been able to spend the time on new quilt idea, let alone work on it until it becomes a pattern that I can release.   Things are finally shifting in that direction and this past week while sewing with a group of friends, I was able to start working on my first new design in literally years.

I love the feeling of anticipation that I have when I get to start with a drawing and then see it slowly come to life in fabric.   I'm working through the process, looking for the most direct way to put the block together that I can turn into instructions.  One of the best parts of working on this while I was with friends, is that there was a lot of input on the pattern - from the overall design, to how it would best flow as a written pattern.

This coming week I should be able to finish the first version of the quilt along with the first draft of the instructions, then I will turn it over to some trusted friends for them to see if what I've written makes sense.    Since all my patterns now are pdfs that are downloaded, I can finally include the number of photos that I want to include, rather than being limited by number of pages and printing costs.  Yes, it's been that long since I have had a solid pattern in the works.  I get to learn all kinds of new stuff for doing the pdf layout, which is rather funny to me given that my last blog post was a rant about how annoying technology is.  No matter my opinion on it, technology is here to stay and I must say it is a whole lot easier to draft instructions on a computer, than it would be to type them out on a typewriter and tape actual photographs and diagrams onto the page - there's a reason things are called "cut" and "paste" in most programs now.  I will not have to invest in a case of scotch tape these days.

I'm excited about the prospects, and I've been going back through my computer looking for other designs that I started doodling with in Electric Quilt to see how I feel about making any of those into patterns.   This is going to be so much fun.  Somebody please remind me I said that when I start griping about technology again.

Ain't Technology Grand?

 For years, I have followed the basic idea that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.   Well that doesn't apply to technology at all.  If it works but it is more than 6 months old, it needs to change just for the sake of changing and make sure that everybody has to keep up with what is going on.  On top of that, periodically they decide that things need to be paid for on a subscription basis.  That's a topic for another post (don't get me started on that now).   Blog/website/email stuff is no exception to this rule.    I am finding a trend where at the start, something is easy to find and setup, then the changes start.   They archive stuff.  They improve stuff.   Next thing I know, I'm being told that doesn't exist on my plan but if I upgrade, I can get it back easily.   

For a while, back in the late teens, I had things setup so that if I posted on my blog, the lovely 29 people who follow me, would get an email to tell them there was something new.  It was pretty easy to setup and it worked pretty well.   Then things started to change.   If I changed the day I posted to the blog, the email would still say Wednesday.   Then it got to the point that it didn't work at all.  I saw a couple of articles that said RSS feeds were going away completely in the internet (turns out that was incorrect).  I didn't see how they could go away because they are pretty spiffy little things that let one program know when another program has done something. RSS is Really Simple Syndication, and in the beginning it was really simple.  

Since I decided to move my blog back to a hosting site that makes things easy for me, it means that a lot of stuff happens under the covers, and that means that it's not easy for me to find a lot of things.   For some reason, Blogger has decided that letting me find the RSS feed url for my own blog should be something even more secure than the UN.  So I have to guess.   Then I go over to MailChimp, and they keep pushing me to upgrade to a paid subscription in order to get RSS feed support in an email campaign, despite the fact that their own help files say I can do it easily on the plan I'm on.  So after several hours of beating my head against a wall and reading the same articles over and over, I think I have it setup now.  The key word being think.  I guess we will all find out on thursday morning if I did it right.

This really isn't what I want to spend my time doing.  I wish there were an easier way to do this, but I apparently don't have enough hours in the day to find out what that is.  That's one of the big reasons I switched away from WordPress.  I want to spend my time writing and quilting, not keeping things on my blog and website up to date, yet here we are again.   I guess I have to file this one under There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.   I promise the next post will be about quilting.  This one is mainly just to find out if my RSS feed email campaign will work or not.

A reboot of sorts and here we go!

I am primarily a quilting and quilt design business.   I can manage my own technology but that's not what I'm in business to do, it's a necessary part of keeping an internet presence.   I have gone back and forth I don't know how many times about how I want my blog to be setup,  and how I want to manage that blog and those posts.  I have come to the conclusion that I want easier, not harder, so I'm making a break from WordPress and coming back to good old Blogger.   This interface is so easy to use, and while it doesn't have unlimited customization, it also doesn't have unlimited ways to suck up my time to keep things functioning correctly on all pages of the blog.

 

If you are still here and still reading, welcome!   This is where I hope to drop my various observations, ideas, obsessions and in general, take you along on this crazy ride.  I hope you at least get some enjoyment, if you also get some inspiration or some help with your own quilting journey, well that is an added bonus.   Welcome to the party, and by party I mean fabric and pets and quilting and going to bed at 9pm without any shame whatsoever!