A fruitful week!

It’s been a productive week but I don’t have a lot in the way of visuals to document the week. I have some Really Big News that I can’t talk about yet that I’m both pumped and terrified of (it has something to do with the Houston Quilt Festival). I’ll write about it as soon as I can.

I had a fabulous experience this week that lifted a HUGE weight off of my shoulders. I had a total of 14 videos that needed editing, videos that ranged from 3 – 11 minutes. They needed some bits snipped out, a bunch of bits double timed, a caption or two and a beginning and ending image.

Ugh. I tried, I really tried. I found “the best and easiest” free software but it was excruciating for me to work with it. I spent hours trying to get the basics down – watching YouTube videos and the like. I made a few short cuts after hours of work. Ugh.

I saw that MJ Kinman was offering her services as a video editor. Yesssss! I wrote her, praying that she wasn’t going to charge zillions to edit. She only charged me $175 for tons and tons of editing (simple stuff) of my videos and she turned it around in days. I was so. relieved!!!

I taught my live online class on RaNae Merrill’s site on Tuesday and it went without a hitch. I was so proud of my professional videos. I have chosen to pre-record my quilting. I can control the sound, lighting and shooting angle perfectly when I pre-record.

My classes are process classes so there are 3 main stations: talking, drawing and quilting. It goes so much more smoothly when I’m alternating between only 2 stations. I’m tickled to have such professional looking videos and I didn’t have to edit them myself. That is money well spent.

I call this type of thing “the epidural”. You know, how in childbirth they give you an epidural and you magically pass a baby, as opposed to wanting to kill everyone in the room? Yeah, I wanted the epidural and I got it. I sat at home eating bonbons, sent my videos to MJ and they magically appeared days later, all pretty and gussied up. Love it!

I also scored on the SAQA Benefit Auction. Lookie what I scored:

It is divine in person! The colors are so fabulous, the details and stitching are lovely and the lighter stitching around the leaf makes it pop when it’s on the wall. It will join my growing group of 13 SAQA 12″ x 12″ works in my hall.

Even the packaging was a class act – it looks like something I got from Tiffany’s! I am feeling very proud to be an active SAQA member at the moment. It’s a wonderful organization that robustly supports the art quilt. There are still quilts available here!

I had a great first class with my students at liveonlinequiltclass.com. I was thrilled with the set up and having a trained professional Moderator to help me. I think I’m well set up for teaching live online now:

Whew! That was quite the investment in time and money but I feel good about my layout and equipment. I think we’re in this for the long-term with online classes and lectures, so I’m settling in. I had students from coast-to-coast in my Fills and Frills class so that was kind of fun. I haven’t figured out how to screen-shot my classes yet so I don’t have a class photo. It was fun!

I am now on the Board for the Northern California Quilt Council. We “facilitate communication between quilt guilds, teachers, and others in the quilting industry”. I do feel passionate about supporting them because most of my gigs have come through that connection.

We will be having a Teacher’s Roundtable on Oct 23d and I’ll be presenting on “Breaking into Publishing: Books & Magazines”. I’ll be sharing responsibilities with Kevin Kosbab at Feed Dog Designs. Kevin will cover magazines and I will cover books. It’s been a very interesting process to research, as much has changed since I wrote my book. I’ll be sharing my findings in a future blog post. Stay tuned for that one.

Another note: there is one more session of the Global Quilt Connection‘s Meet the Teacher event on Oct 7. This is the best place to find teachers or classes that you want to hire or take virtual classes from.

My calendar is filling and I believe the biggest reason is from my pitch on the GQC’ Meet the Teacher event. I’m thrilled!

So it’s been a fruitful week, just not one full of photos! I’ll post on Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday!