Building confidence on your quilting journey

I'll just start off this email with a bang to let you know that the prices of all my courses have gone up -

BUT since you're on my email list you get special friend treatment :)

You can still get Master Your Machine at the old price of $26 through the end of June with this coupon - JUNE2025

If you were planning to purchase my Learn to Use a Sewing Machine course or my Fabric to Finished (beginner quilting) course and the price has suddenly increased on you, let me know before the end of June and we will work something out :)

The Learn to Use a Sewing Machine course now has a couple beginning sewing projects added in as well. If you know anyone who wants to learn to use a sewing machine over the summer this is a great start! It is appropriate for supervised children as well as adults.

New Videos

I've recently posted a group of three videos on YouTube with things to think about when buying a new sewing machine.

You can see them all in this post How to Buy a Sewing Machine.

The most important thing is to check how easy, or hard, it is to maintain your machine.

For example, does your throat plate come off easily? Or are there some really fiddly screws? I know that I clean my machine much more often just because it's really easy to pop off my throat plate to brush out that lint (you can see it in the video here).

The cleaner you keep your machine, the fewer 'strange' problems you will have with your machine.

I know I don't like to be interrupted in my creative process to figure out why my machine is acting up!

If you want to just chill and relax while you sew, think seriously about how often you get stressed out with machine problems.

Stressing about your machine does not have to be part of sewing - that's why I created Master Your Machine in the first place!

Let's quilt!

I'm SO ready to do more videos specifically about quilting. Not sure where I will start, so if there's something that you're struggling with let me know (email me! I love answering emails!).

I will be also be releasing a wallhanging/tablerunner pattern/course later this year. It's a Valentine's theme. I may even make it a quilt-a-long experience.

It's called Tumble Into Love.

I'm thinking it really would be good as a throw too.

Do you like smaller projects or bigger projects? Really, email me and let me know!

Apparently I'm a little desperate for emails LOL

In my studio

I finished my Irish Chain variation top.

My first thought was that I want to make another, but with wider chains. But this one has nice spaces for some fancy quilting.

It's currently on my longarm. I'm practicing ruler quilting on it - so it might take a bit, plus the empty spaces for fancy quilting are actually creating chaos in my brain.

Remember to enjoy yourself

I had a bit of a snafu while piecing that I didn't realize until I looked at the 'final' pictures I took -

It's amazing what you suddenly see when you're looking at a picture instead of the real thing. I did not see this snafu until I looked at the picture!

Now I will remember to be better at taking and studying interim pictures.

Remember it's all about happy sewing!

P.S. I've got one more thing to say about knowing how to fix your machine. A large percentage of the people who buy my Master Your Machine course have male names. Now that's fine, I'm super happy when anyone learns to sew. But considering my audience is overwhelmingly women, I wonder if some internal stereotyping is holding some women back from believing that they can learn how to maintain and troubleshoot their sewing machine on their own. If this is you...if you think it's beyond you...you are exactly who I created this course for. Just sayin.