Quilt As You Go, Simply Done

Simply Done

Reading and Writing

Favorite Books & Authors

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I’m an avid reader. I prefer contemporary fiction, but read anything that strikes my fancy.I can’t remember all of the authors I’ve read, but I’ll start by listing those I’ve binge-read, working my way back through the years, starting with the ones whose books I reread: M.M. Kaye (everything, multiple times), Colleen McCullough (everything), Mary Stewart (everything, multiple times), Rosamund Pilcher (September is my favorite, The Shell Seekers is a close second and I read them both every few years), Elizabeth Gilbert (everything, several times). Barbara Kinglsolver’s books fascinate me, especially the saga of “Turtle”. I loved Andy Weir’s The Martian and Hail Mary (read that one twice, watch The Martian movie regularly). Wool was an outstanding book but I haven’t seen the series.

I was really taken with the movie Me Before You, and wanted to read the book, which was exactly like the movie, something I didn’t expect. But Jojo Moyes followed that book up with two more, following the same character, and I couldn’t read them fast enough. I enjoyed Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies, and read a few more of her books.

I’m not a Book Club follower; I prefer recommendations, or browsing the library shelves (in person and digitally).

I read so much that I don’t have a TBR pile or list. Genres I don’t read: fantasy, fan fic, historical, memoirs (except for Elizabeth Gilbert), gritty reality (lived it, don’t need to read it). Biggest pet peeve: books written in first person. Most authors, in my opinion, don’t write it well. When I get sick of how many times they start a sentence with “I _____”, the book is closed and never opened again. I much prefer third-person-deep.

What are your reading preferences? Favorite authors? Genre preferences? Best book you’ve read in years?

Please Sign Up for Our Newsletter

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I’ll start off by saying that I have only the barest idea of what I am doing here, but I’ve created an account at MailChimp to begin sending out newsletters.

As a blog reader, web surfer and email addict, the one thing that I like most is content that I’ve asked to receive, right in my in-box. I don’t have to remember to visit anyone’s blog or website, and email newsletters are getting prettier and prettier all the time! So, I thought I’d set one up for you, if you’d like, and I’ll use it to show you new quilts, new projects, and of course, our newest books.

My intent isn’t to send one out very regularly, or to push any products, but more to let you know if there’s an update to a technique that we use and to show you, or link to, pictures of quilts we make and pictures of quilts that YOU send us!

I’d love it if you would sign up – you can click here –

Sign up for our free newsletter!

But you don’t have to sign up. You will still find pics and updates here, but if you life is getting busier and you want to be sure that you don’t miss out on anything important, please sign up 🙂

I find that I am very much enjoying writing and designing books, for print and for the Kindle Fire, and I’d like to try designing a pretty newsletter too.

I am in Seward, Alaska (freezing, as usual) working on some new quilt designs and a new book, and Sarah is in Anchorage, busily settling into her new home, a house that she and her husband have wanted to buy for years. They have just moved in and are still unpacking and getting their old house ready to go on the market. Tom’s busy modifying a boat, and the saddest of news is that our sweet bunny is no longer with us. I miss his companionship a lot, so Sarah let me borrow her bun (Maizy) while their home is being sorted out.

Using Kindle Fire to Read Quilt Books

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I’ve been working on two new quilt books for a year. One is done and available as a print book and as a Kindle Book, specifically formatted for the Kindle Fire. While testing the book on the Fire, I found out how to make the photos bigger so I made a video about it. The official announcement for the book is here. I’ll be posting photos of quilts from the book soon. Sending Happy Holiday Wishes to all, Marguerita

Sew & Quilt in Comfort

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Just Released!

Introducing my newest book – a work of love! You may have read some of my posts, or seen the photos, of my “Custom Sewing Table”, which I’ve also called my “Cheap Sewing Table”, well, now it’s a book.

The short backstory is that when our book proposal (Crazy Shortcut Quilts) was accepted in 2006, I needed to make eight quilts in about two months. I struggled with comfort, stitching distortions, the weight of the quilts and more and I started innovating. Through much trial and error, I settled on a design that I still use to this day – in fact, I just set up another custom sewing table for temporary use just a few days ago.

For anyone who has seen the videos (there are three so far) or read the Squidoo Lens or even seen my old blog posts – you don’t really need the book unless there’s something about the reasoning, design or adaptations you don’t understand.

Who I wrote this book for is all the people who are not online, who don’t watch video on the computer, who are still in pain or struggling with their quilting and need that extra, printed, hold-it-in-your-hand and look at all the pictures (35 of them) in order to get motivated to create their own custom area.

I found out just how valuable this information is to other quilters by accident, sort of. That’s a whole other story.

My online friend, Margie Wallace, reached through the internet and twisted my arm to make her point about the usefulness of video. I’ll be in her debt forever.

She convinced me to make a video, any video, but make it about something I was passionate about.

Well, I’m passionate about comfort while quilting – I harp on it to anyone who will listen. I made a short video as a learning experiment. It’s a hit. It has been watched over 50,000 times and I get comments on it regularly. Comments like “brilliant!” or “I went from beginner quilter to advanced machine quilter in hours because of your design”. I even got an email that someone took my information and wrote it up in a magazine article!

The rest of the story is long, but the condensed version is that I’ve studied self publishing information for the past two years, recently quit my job, moved, bought publishing software and learned to use it, and I made this book my first self publishing effort. It’s not perfect – nothing I do is perfect – and there are changes I want to make already, but it’s out there, ready to help anyone who needs it.

If you know of anyone who is might benefit from the information in the book, I would be grateful if you would let them know about it. I’ve had too many friends need surgery because of a bad quilt-room, sewing or cutting arrangement when all they needed was some ergonomic intervention. Please help your friends and yourself quilt in comfort today – book or no book – it’s really important to be comfortable and kind to our bodies.

Thank you,

Inspiration!

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I love inspiration! I get it from quilt shows, group chats and PEOPLE! I meet a lot of people online and I love that so much – I *love* getting emails from new and old friends 🙂

I also read a lot of books (paper and and electronic). I’ve read Jack Canfield’s books The Aladdin Factor, Goals, The Success Principles. They gave me great inspiration and I re-read them regularly, but on the recommendation of a friend, I bought Book Yourself Solid.

I am hoping to do some traveling and teaching in the future and this book is helping me in that goal as well as sparking some great ideas! (I’m also reading online A Brief Guide to World Domination.)

Alaskans in my area are keeping a weather eye on our erupting volcano, Mt. Redoubt. This is a webcam aimed at the building lava dome.

Redoubt is a pain in the neck. She’s disrupting air travel and making everyone up here nervous about ash and winds and more ash. {I was very tempted to call her a pain in the ash!} But, I never argue with Mother Nature, she gives me the best inspiration of all! What inspires you? What do you read for inspiration?

My little writing secret

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I wrote a quilt book (with my daughter as co-author). That’s not the secret 🙂 I have also written a novel, and after letting it sit for several months and re-reading, I realize it’s crappy. BUT! I can do better! This summer, if all goes well (knock on a fat quarter) I will write a second novel (and try to write better). I already have the outline. But that’s not the secret either.

The secret is: I have always wanted to write a screenplay. I figured that writing a non-fiction book, like a quilt book, would be a good start to writing (it was) and I read a lot about the process of writing and the discipline it takes but I know almost zip about writing a screenplay, so I don’t feel like I am ready for it yet- -I put myself in the “I am still learning how” category.

So, here’s one way I am trying to learn. I make videos on YouTube. Now, I used to think that people just stood in front of their cameras, yapped a bit, uploaded and *boom* they are YouTube stars. Not so – at least not the good videos (and I am not talking about vloggers here – – the whole point of vlogging is to be spontaneous).

For a loooooooong time I have wanted to teach a few things and I would like to reach a wide audience, so I chose YouTube. I have a few vids up and have learned quite a bit along the way and gotten some good feedback from great people who take the time to tell me what they think would make my videos better – – and I listen very closely to every one who emails me. I learn as I go.

For weeks I’ve been planning a video just on doing Stitch in the Ditch quilting. It sounds easy – -but it is quite a challenge!! Writing the script! There is *so much* to remember!! Yikes! If you watch my videos, I hope that you will consider giving me your impression and telling me what I should have done differently. I really, really appreciate every single person who emails me and listen closely to what they have to say. Now I am off to work on that SID script some more 🙂

Let me know if you want the “behind the scenes details” or if you just want to see the film version when it’s released – – LOL 🙂 {I want to know – – are you a writer with a secret dream?}

Sharing Expertise on Squidoo.com

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I love to share info and trade tricks and tips with sewers and quilters, so when Seth Godin posted on his blog about Squidoo and described its function, I went a built a few lens’s. Here’s one of my lenses (that’s what they call the pages at Squidoo) on how I built my cheap quilting table and I recently inserted my new You Tube videos there too, for a really good tutorial.

A couple of things attracted me to Squidoo. First, it’s a static page, not like a blog where after a while posts are archived. This lens is always up, front and center, for anyone to see. Second, it generates money for charity. The folks at Squidoo put ads on pages, relevant to the page content, and the lens writer can choose to get a cut of the money or donate their share to charity. Mine goes to charity and it says so right on the page.

I believe that millions of people have valuable experience or talents and that many of us like to share information and help others. If you have a subject near and dear to your heart but don’t want to start a blog just to get the word out, try Squidoo and see if you like how it looks and works, and if you need some help building your lens just email me and I’d be happy to lend a hand.

Also, Seth’s blog is one of very few that I consider a daily “must read”.

WordPress

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I’ve been playing with ones and zeros again. While in Portland I was desperate to go to Powells Bookstore, for both the experience and for a book on HTML. I found a book that I liked but I’ve only read 1 chapter. Why? Because I have discovered WordPress.

WP intimidated me when I first started blogging – so I went with simple and easy (and I like Google a lot) but WordPress has enticed me. I was frustrated at first, not understanding the differences between WP.com and WP.org and WPmu (WordPress multiple user) so I did what I always do, went looking for a book. I like to read Amazon.com reviews on books and I found that the book WordPress for Dummies (I have never liked the “for dummies” titles just on basic principle – I’m not a dummy) but this book had much better reviews than all others, so I bought it. It lives up to it’s reviews.

I’ve practiced blogging in WP, and importing my blogs from blogger to WP and I am coming to like it more and more. And now, at the end of the book, is a section about using WP as a web platform – hallelujah!! I hate my web software with a passion (Front Page and Web Expressions) and I can’t wait to try WordPress for my website. I’ll keep you posted 🙂

Blog Ring – update

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I have created a new blog ring for quilt designers and I invite every quilt designer, pattern designer, quilt book author and anyone in the business of quilting (who blogs) to join the ring and have some fun!

Go here and put in your blog address and then install the code in your sidebar and Whoopeee!!! We’re surfing again!

Sharing Information on Squidoo.com

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I am, at times, overwhelmed with what is available for free on the internet. Squidoo is interesting to me because they give you a nicely formatted place to share information on subjects that you are passionate about – and they give you a choice of donating any profits from the page you create to charity.

I am pretty passionate about some aspects of quilting and I like to share information for free and I am a firm believer in helping others. Squidoo.com looks like a good fit for me. Unlike a blog, where after about a week a post is lost in Label/Archive limbo – my topic is always there, easy to find and always available for anyone looking for it. That’s kind of neat 🙂

If you are passionate about a subject and you want to share it with the internet world, head on over there and create what they call a ‘lens’. Here’s mine on different machine quilting systems.