Keeping Busy

In the fastlane of business, there has been a resounding message that appears with every sentence, comment and marketeer I encounter lately. Use the internet and use it wisely. Once you give birth to online, nuture it. And I think what that means is once you begin an internet relationship, keep it up!

So we are here. I remember when we were redoing our website; I was speaking to Mark Lipinski about his blog and blogging. Don't do it. Those were his words. Don't do it, honey! Once you start, you gotta keep it up. And boy did he know what he was talking about!

Oh, so much to share! But first, Issue 6 is out and the website should be updated in the next 24 hours! Christmas is here at Irish Quilting!

Issue 6 really brings in the yuletide. We worked hard on the issue, even creating Christmas early. At homebase we are fortunate to have a good quilting friend who is the craft and creator of all things warm and festive. Her cheerful husband was a good sport coming home to Santa, bells and boughs of holly in July.

Our templates are back to bother us! Have I ever shared that I despise templates? Well, for the time being anyway. Each production, we agonise over the templates. The large foldouts found in many quilting magazines cost a good 25% of the overall print cost, so until we can fully fund that, we provide them in smaller size--to be enlarged. This is not the problem, except that there was an oversight with templates in Issue 6, in the Twas the Night pattern--a few were missing. So pass the word. We are sorry! We have all the templates, in actual size and reduced size on the website.

Issue 2 and Issue 1 are on the cutting room floor. Ohhh! Wait til you see Issue 1 cover. It is a dandy. That is even too little an adjective to describe its immense beauty.

We've a new panel for Volume II, and already we met last weekend. We gather quilters of different strengths and interests and ask them to review the magazine. This year we are including a guest panel member who brings a new perspective, not necessarily a quilting eye. So that was good. Read all about it in Issue 1.

Terri our creative director is busy in design mode. We are working with a famous Irish potter of goregous designs, to create a stunning quilt! How exciting is that?

Our circle of Irish designers have grown tremendously since this time last year. We are excited to bring some really fresh and innovative designs from all parts of Ireland. Brought by popular request, we are featuring more lifestyle of us and what we do here in Ireland.

This moment, our lands are being hit by wet storms everywhere. In the south and the west, there are many families evacuated from their homes due to the flooding.

Stay tuned as we hope to roll our some quilting remedy to these folks soon.
Details to come

Sew for now,
Sherry

Bithday Time!

We are here at the Dublin RDS, our last day of the birthday celebration!
Issue 6 rolled off the press on Thursday and anyone who can't come to our party this weekend will be seeing the magazine first thing this next week. If you're a suscriber, it'll be on its way in this week's mail. If you're not a subscriber, what are you waiting for? Sign up!

The show started Thursday and it has been great. Yesterday the rain appeared, so I hope our last day still brings a crowd! The stands are great. There are a good few businesses that are not on the craft page per say, but folks, I spoke to the organisers as well as the ladies from the Craft Council of Ireland, and this show will only improve year to year! They together have exciting plans to bring in some wonderful crafting for the future RDS Knitting and Stitching Shows. So that is very good news. All in all, it is a great buzz.

We've been on the map a year now! Wow! What a journey. A few quilters and I started this magazine in our minds as a dream. There's been a few moments of awe over the weekend, just thinking back to the work, sweat and tears (oh yes! there's been tears!). But one year in our back pocket and this show brings our work to light. Or rather, talking to the people here does. The ladies(and men!) have much to say, very much positive about the magazine. And, anything critical, well, we want to hear it! Like the show, we will only improve from here on. We are ready and onward on Vol II!

Also on our stand is the fabulous Nikki Foley from County Kerry. She is a great designer who has teamed up with us for all of Volume II with a great celtic creation (all her creation, our promotion!) in her Celtic Designs. They are the Signs of the Year in true Celtic history. She's done blocks in wonderful dyed fabrics and is selling the kits--so you can dye you're own blocks! Don't forget to use each issue in Volume II to find the pattern. I don't think I captured her on the camera yet, but today's bound to be the best day.

We've had birthday cake every day at 1-2. I think our stand neighbor thought we had serious sweet tooths, but now he knows we are just bonkers for a celebration! Each cake each day reveals a different mag cover from Volume 1. We have balloons and at 4pm we giveaway a big birthday present along with the goodies going to ever re-newal and new subscriber with €20+ purchases. Fat quarters and thread, food for the quilter's soul.

Today will be the party. We even have face painting. I would ordinarily preface it with kids' face painting, but hey our paints work on anyone. We'll keep the camera out for this one. As a mom, on the Halloween weekend, it was the best I could do to include my daughters--they arrive from the babysitter in time to see the afternoon antics at the show.

PEOPLE, it's all about the kids, if we don't feed them cake and paint their faces silly, who else is going to carry on the wonky blocks of our quilting world??


Happy Birthday,
Sherry