Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the United States, and I did want to take a bit of time to let you know how grateful I am for everyone who reads this e-zine, subscribes to The Professional Quilter, has joined the International Association of Professional Quilters or has taken our classes. I’m honored that you’ve allowed me to contribute in some small way to your business growth. It’s truly rewarding for me.

Does your family have any gratitude traditions with Thanksgiving? In my family, we all go around the table and share something we are grateful for about those at the table. I remember years ago, one of my sisters shared that she was grateful that I sewed. I probably took my sewing somewhat for granted, and I was grateful on my part to be reminded that it’s a special skill that not everyone has. Her gratitude really made an impression on me.

If you are celebrating tomorrow, I hope your day is filled with blessings of gratitude. I know my day will be.

I also wanted to share just a few of my favorite quotes on gratitude:

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent.
Cicero

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
Marcel Proust

Feeling grateful or appreciative of someone or something in your life actually attracts more of the things that you appreciate and value into your life.
Christiane Northrup

See you next week and Happy Thanksgiving!

Fuse It and Be Done!
Barbara Campbell and Yolanda Fundora
Krause; $24.99

Who knew you could find so many fusible products? Barbara Campbell and Yolanda Fundora tested an exhaustive list of 20 fusibles from fusible web to Angelina® fibers. This project-oriented book features more than two dozen “no-sew” projects and ideas. A plus is the disk with 47 design templates for 16 of the projects. If you have questions about which fusible to use and how to use it, this is a good place to start.

Here’s a link if you’d like to add it to your library.

I got back on Sunday evening from Las Vegas where I attended Ali Brown‘s SHINE conference. I went with specific goals in mind and certainly made headway on them.

One of my goals was to start to create a plan for 2010. Before I can do that, though, I need to take a look at where I am now and how I got there. One of my favorite resources for this is Your Best Year Yet by Jinny S. Ditzler.  I’ve been using this little book for years. It offers a framework to define your personal values, identify the various roles you play and create goals for those roles. Here are some of Jinny’s questions plus a couple of my own:

1. What did I accomplish?
2. What were my biggest disappointments?
3. What did I learn?
4. How do I limit myself and how can I stop?
5. What are my goals for next year?
6. Where do I need to education or support to get there?
7. How can I make sure I achieve my top goals?

I find one of the most empowering aspects of Jinny’s system is the look at the successes of the year. It let’s you focus on my successes not get weighed down by what didn’t work. It also lets you get off the treadmill of working on my business to see if you really are on course.

So take some time this week to start planning for 2010 by looking back at 2009. Ask and answer these questions. Let me know how this system works for you.

The Fall issue of The Professional Quilter includes a profile of Shelly Stokes, owner of Cedar Canyon Textiles, distributor of Shiva Paintstiks and related products. Here’s an excerpt from the profile in Shelly’s own words:

The Shiva paint company attempted to bring the paintstiks into the quilting world in the 1980s. However, the rotary cutter hit the market at the same time, and everyone wanted to strip-piece quilts rather than paint fabric, at least here in the United States; the fiber artists in the United Kingdom started working with paintstiks around that time and so have more years of experience with them.

After working with paintstiks for a while, I decided to write a book – the right product at the right time. I think it’s fair to say that I have done much of the work to make the product visible in the quilting market in the last few years, particularly here in the United States, but I am certainly not the first one to “discover” the product and its wonderful application on fabric.

Before I started working on the book in earnest, I went to visit Jack Richeson and Company to make sure that their wonderful paintstiks would be readily available to my customers. The Richesons supported my idea, and in 2004, Cedar Canyon Textiles became an official distributor for the paintstik products.

It took almost nine months of hard work, but my book was ready in May of 2005. Once a good set of instructions was available, the market for paint expanded dramatically. As it became clear that the paint was going to dominate our business, I had a hard choice to make: grow a business or continue to teach and create art. Because I had been away from the day-to-day job market for ten years, the business was very appealing. I’ll get back to more of my own quilting in my next round of “retirement.” We did the last of our retail shows in 2005 and made the transition to our new identity as the Paintstik Place.

In life and in business, one thing leads to another. As the fiber art and quilting world embraced the paintstiks, we saw the opportunity to venture into accessory products. In 2006, we manufactured four sets of rubbing plates for use with the paintstiks and started a pattern line in 2007.

To read more of Shelly’s story along with her business tips in Issue 109 of The Professional Quilter, your subscription or membership in the IAPQ must be current. Learn about all the benefits of IAPQ membership here

Do you have systems in your business? Maybe you haven’t given much thought to what systems can do for you. Here are just three benefits: They can give you more time to be creative. You’ll have time to work on your business rather than just in your business. And, they will let you grow your business.

If you are like most of our readers, you’re a small business owner or solopreneur. At some point you’ll discover you can’t do it all. That’s the time to get started with systems, if you haven’t already.

How do you go about creating systems? I’m actually in the process of creating systems for some of the processes I do. My goal is to hire someone to handle some of our processes so I can devote my time to creating new products. To that end, I am writing down step-by-step how each process is handled. Yes, it is taking me extra time, but I know in the end it will pay off.

Here are just three ideas that you might try for your business:

Handling Fabric. After our last teleclass on organizing, one of our listeners contacted me about how she would start the year with her fabric organized and then the studio would quickly become unmanageable. It was something she repeated on a frequent basis. I suggested she write down her process for storing her fabric, i.e, develop a system for storing her fabric, and then hire a high school girl to come in a couple of times a week to get it back in order. This lets this quilter focus on what we could call her genius or brilliance.

Teaching or Media Requests. Do you scramble looking for all the materials to send when you get a request to teach or promote your business? Create a system to keep all those materials easily accessible. You could create folders on your computer or in your physical file cabinet to include photos, short and long bio, résumé, your brochure, anything that you are ever asked for. By keeping everything in one place, it will be easy to find. That means less stress looking for it or less time having to recreate something you find shortly thereafter.

Online Marketing. Are you sending out e-zines or updating your blog? Do you need to update your Facebook page or Tweet? Do you use a shopping cart and autoresponders? I have a couple of suggestions here. Create a schedule for doing this. For example, on Friday set aside several hours to write your newsletter, a few blog posts, and updates to Facebook and tweets. Many of these can be scheduled ahead of time. An assistant or virtual assistant can also be valuable setting up and maintaining these for you. That allows you time to work on activities that add to the bottom line of your business.

And, a big plus for creating and working the systems is you have lots of energy. And, when you have more energy, you’ll work at a higher level in your brilliance.

What ideas do you have for systems?

The Professional Quilter includes articles to help you create success with your quilt business. If your subscription is not current and you need to renew, or you want to start a new subscription, here’s a link to our order page

I’m really excited to announce that The Professional Quilter is becoming part of the International Association of Professional Quilters.

Over the last few years most of you have noticed that we’ve harnessed the power of the Internet to offer more information to help you, the serious quilter, create business success. We publish this e-zine with business tips, tools and techniques to help you build your business. We regularly sponsor teleclasses and longer teleseminars all geared to guide you as you grow your business.

As I talked with subscribers and participants in our programs and looked at what we offered, I knew the best way to help you uplevel your business was to package these products together, along with some other goodies. Members of the IAPQ will receive:

• The Professional Quilter, our quarterly business journal;
• access to monthly teleclasses with experts both in and outside the quilt world;
• access to a monthly tele-networking/ mastermind event;
• a free consultation with an intellectual property attorney;
• an IAPQ lapel pin designed by our art director, Kim Bartko;
• discounts on our books and other resources;
• and more.

The actual value of these benefits easily exceeds $700; the value of these benefits to you is priceless as you build and grow your business. You can see complete details of the benefits on our redesigned Web site.

If you are a subscriber to The Professional Quilter, I know that you are interested in how your current subscription converts to IAPQ membership. Effective immediately, we will no longer accept single subscriptions. The regular price of the IAPQ membership is $137. Through December 31, 2009, we are offering an introductory price of $97 for the first year. We will never offer a special at this rate again. When you convert your subscription online and input the expiration date shown on your address label, you will be credited for the amount remaining on your subscription, in most cases $7.49 an issue. Details are on the Join Page on our site.

I know that networking with other professional quilters is important. Please join me on our new IAPQ Facebook group page where you can interact with like-minded quilters. Here’s the quick link.

I look forward to helping you uplevel your quilt business. Our mission at the IAPQ is to provide the resources to educate and empower you to create your own success in our industry. Whether you’ve been in business for years or you’re just starting out, you’ll find the resources you need to create your own success at the IAPQ.

Learn about all the benefits of IAPQ membership here.

In the current issue of The Professional Quilter, Scott Murkin discussed the need for quilt judges to maintain currency as quilters add new surface techniques to their work. Here is an excerpt from that article:

An increasing number of formally trained artists have moved into quilting and textiles as their primary medium. At the same time a large number of quilters who started in a more traditional vein are exploring new techniques in their work. Because of these trends, quilt show judges are faced with a wide and varied selection of surface design techniques that they must evaluate on the judging floor. Learning the fundamentals of these techniques and how they are assessed has become one of the ever-expanding tools in the quilt show judge’s toolbox.

Surface design refers to anything the artist does to change the fabric either before or after the quilt is constructed, but is also sometimes expanded to include things added onto the surface, such as threadwork, couched fibers and sewn-on objects. Each of these will be addressed in turn.

A variety of paints can be applied to fabric with nearly infinite techniques and widely differing results, depending on decisions made by the artist. There are paints made specifically for textiles, but many traditional artists’ paints, such as acrylics and oil paint sticks, can be successfully adapted for use on fabric. While not technically paints, even the pigments from crayons can be transferred to fabric and made permanent. Paint can be brushed on, splashed on, applied through a stencil, stamped on with commercial or home-made stamps or found objects, or applied by screen-printing, among other techniques. Many artists are also using inks and thickened dyes in many of the same ways that paints are used. Paint can be applied to fabric before any sewing begins; it can be applied to a pieced or appliquéd quilt top; or it can be applied to the finished quilt, often exaggerating the effect of the texture of the quilting stitches.

When judging the painted quilt surface, the judge is primarily considering issues of design, deciding if the artist has used the paint as an effective accent or the primary design element. The formal principles of design, such as unity, variety, balance, contrast, proportion, scale and rhythm are evaluated, as well as the emotional impact of the image.

You can read Scott’s complete article in Issue 108 of The Professional Quilter. If your subscription is not current and you need to renew, or you want to start a new subscription, here’s a link to our order page

Valori Wells & Carolyn Spencer
C&T Publishing; $22.95

In keeping with my organizing theme of the month, Oh Sew Easy Life Style has some terrific ideas to help you organize your life and personalize your home. Several organizers feature a hanging background fabric with large pockets handy for storage. One is geared to recipes, one to office papers and one to kids. Baskets are popular for organizing and Valori Wells and Carolyn Spencer show you how to make basket liners for square, rectangular and round baskets. On the functional side, you’ll find sassy aprons and a picnic cloth. And what life style book would be complete without a few tote patterns? Valori and Carolyn include a diaper bag and a slumber party backpack. In total the book offers ideas and patterns for 20 fun and stylish projects, as well as basic sewing techniques. You’re sure to find something to make for yourself or give as a gift.

Here’s a link if you’d like to add it to your library.

During our PQ Café Business Series call last month with Debbie LaChusa, we talked a bit about taking inspired action. Debbie said this is where the magic happens. You need to be open to inspired ideas and taking inspired actions as a result.

Some years back I read The Attractor Factor by Joe Vitale, and he also wrote about inspired action. He said it was “any action that you take based on an inside nudge.” In a sense, it’s acting on your intuition or that little voice inside that’s talking to you. We all have those experiences.

So where do you find these inspired ideas? Debbie said she gets hers on her daily run. I often come up with ideas – great and not so great – during my morning walk or when I take a break in the afternoon with a cup of tea away from my office or when I walk to the mailbox and back. (It’s a very long driveway!) You might find yours soaking in the tub after a long day or hiking in the woods or gardening, in other words, someplace that’s not your office or studio. I think Julia Cameron’s artist date can do this for you, too. It takes you outside your normal surroundings.

One tip, here, keep a pad or a digital recorder handy, if possible. I find I often need to make a quick note of the idea, in case I’m distracted. I can’t count the numbers of great ideas that disappeared.

When the idea comes to you, what do you do with it? Sometimes you just move forward, trusting it’s the right the thing to do. Other times it’s important to ask if the idea will move your toward your goal or vision or intention. If the answer is yes, then get to work – take inspired action.

As I said, we all have those “inside nudges” prompting us to take action. Problem is we can talk ourselves out of them – too little time, too little money, too little whatever. I call it self-sabotage. I think we need to learn to trust that inner voice a bit more.

The Professional Quilter includes articles to help you create success with your quilt business. If your subscription is not current and you need to renew, or you want to start a new subscription, here’s a link to our order page.

Quilt Challenge
Sharyn Craig and Pamela Mostek
Martingale & Co.; $21.95

Everyone loves a challenge, and that’s the premise that started Sharyn Craig and Pam Mostek on this book. Pam made a set of Wonky Log Cabin blocks and challenged Sharyn to see what she could do. And, the magic began. From there they set up eight challenges and each completed a block with specific design and color guidelines. They were joined by other quilters in each challenge. Some of the challenges include Black, White, and Red Allover, which uses black, white and red as the color and the basic Nine Patch as the block; and The Color Purple, which uses the same purple fabric in all the quilts and the Rail Fence block. The variety of quilts is wonderful. Pam and Sharyn also include tips and techniques.

Here’s a link if you’d like to add it to your library.