Friday, January 8, 2021

A Long Time Coming / Beauties Pageant 111

Hello and happy new year! I hope you are doing well and staying healthy and finding some time to create at your sewing machine these days.

I’m starting to plot out my sewing goals for the the next few months, and it feels good to plan. I intend to finish my Gypsy Wife quilt (finally). I am going to design and sew new window treatments for my kitchen (not fun, but necessary). And I will release my Love Boldly pattern (see some pics here). That last one is imminent. After all, a quilt featuring stripey hearts needs to be sent into the world in time for Valentine’s Day sewing!

When I first decided to write and sell patterns, I thought the process would be pretty straightforward. It would probably go something like this: design a quilt, make the quilt, write and design the pattern, release the pattern. That should take just a month or two, right?

Love Boldly’s journey has been much longer. It was more like this:

* Summer 2019: I design and make a quilt for a QuiltCon challenge.

* February 2020: That quilt is shown at QuiltCon Austin.

* March 2020: The world shuts down, and I pretend to have an education degree for my two elementary-age kids. This continues through June. It isn’t pretty.

* July 2020: I start writing the pattern and then stop because I can’t think or write coherently with my children in the house. 

* September 2020: I start writing again and realize I need to learn a vector-graphic program. I teach myself said program.

* October 2020: Life comes to a stop as my family gets sick because even a simple cold isn’t simple during Covid.

* November 2020: I design a bonus block to include with the main Love Boldly pattern. (See the picture at the top of the post.)

* December 2020: I finish the pattern and send it off for editing and testing. (Amen! Alleluia!)

Now, that’s much longer than a month or two, but I think the lengthy timeline will make the pattern release that much sweeter. 

Update: Love Boldly is now available in my Etsy shop! Thanks for all the love for the design and encouragement to wrap up the pattern!

What have you been up to? We would love to see your finishes from the past month. Go ahead, post one, two, three—whatever you’ve squared away in the past month!

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10 comments:

  1. I so much relate to your pattern -writing odyssey! Good luck finishing the pattern for that very cute heart. Hopefully all your little distractions will be back to school soon.

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  2. Your process was longer than expected, but you made it! The vector-graphic comment took me on a rabbit trail to learn about using those programs. I may need to utilize one at some point.

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  3. The pattern is adorable, very unique. I hope it is widely received and I suspect it will be! I have never thought pattern writing would be simple - I think there are so many details to attend to. Congrats on a project (nearly) finished!!

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  4. Love your patriotic heart pattern - very creative! May I ask what vector graphic program you learned?

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    1. I use Inkscape on a PC. (I've read that the Mac version is buggy.) Inkscape is free open-source software. There are plenty of tutorials online to help me do what I need to with it, and I can export designs from EQ7 into Inkscape. Honestly, tackling the illustrations in my patterns is perhaps my biggest win of 2020 -- woo hoo!

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  5. I love your shadow heart! What is a vector graphic program?

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  6. Hi, Nancy! A vector-graphic program produces images that can be enlarged and edited without sacrificing quality. Vector graphics are different from raster graphics -- including JPGs and GIFs -- which are created by a series of dots, or pixels. That's why when you enlarge a JPG, it gets all pixel-y. (I'm pretty pixel-y is the technical term -- ha!)

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  7. The alternate block is wonderful, congratulations on the imminent release. :) I think you are very wise to recognize when you need to put something on pause, even when you very badly want to be able to do it.

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  8. Congrats on the new pattern. I think everything now takes longer than anticipated...........

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  9. Congrats on the pattern release! And its perfect timing...you had this plan all along I know!! Love the flag heart...couldn't come at a better time.

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