Happy Birthday to Me Giveaway with Daily Craft TV! - Review of "Unique Ideas and Innovative Designs for your Quilts"

Believe it or not, EPQD is eight years old. I know. Even I was surprised when I found out, which was when I got a business license renewal notice from my town hall, and I'm the mother. I considered for a moment baking a cake to make it up to EPQD, but then realized that probably wouldn't fool it into thinking I had actually remembered, as when my older babies turned eight, I didn't have the right candles and this is what the cake looked like:

5 plus 3 equals 8. Deal with it. And no commentary on the cake. We all have our talents. I'll challenge a cake decorator to a quiltoff anytime.

Sadly, we'd have to do the same thing for EPQD, and aside from paying for therapy for my actual children, I didn't want to have to pay for it for my business as well. So the day came and went with the only celebration being the writing of a check to the Town of Pepperell to make us legal once again.

Mental note: Buy an eight candle before Greta's birthday next year.

So no cake was had, no happy birthday sung. But lucky for me AND for you, on that same day I was in the process of completing a trade agreement with Fons and Porter's newest venture, Daily Craft TV, to try out a class and let you hotties know how I liked it, then they would let me give away any one class to one lucky winner. Well, how could I refuse? It's my birthday and Fons and Porter remembered! How sweet!

So here's the scoop, hotties - Daily Craft TV is a cool site that bills itself as "a community showing new craft ideas & projects with online webinar videos." There are classes in sewing, quilting, scrapbooking, knitting, crocheting, even photo editing. All classes are quite reasonably priced (most seem to range from $4.99 to $9.99) and the videos run anywhere from 30 minutes to about 90 minutes in length. Some videos are technique and tip style classes, and some are actual project classes. All videos are yours to love and cherish forever and ever once you buy them. It's quite a deal, really. I can't imagine that for $4.99 you could get Pat Sloan to come to your house and teach you a private class even once, nevermind over and over again, but with Daily Craft TV you actually do just that. Beat that deal.

Being the always unique and innovative quilter that I am, I decided to try out the webinar "Unique Ideas and Innovative Designs for Your Quilts," which was kind of a compilation video, a mix tape if you will, from several different teachers showing variety of tips and techniques for ways to add a little unique touch to your quilts. The actual retail price is $4.99. I figure I got about ten times that out of it in ideas; Bargain of the Century!

First up was Angie Hodapp, managing editor at CK Media, who showed us all why we should go sleeveless (but not shirtless, please. This is a family video.) when hanging a small quilt. I had seen a similar technique before, but have not yet tried it, and this was a good reminder to get off my butt and do it soon. Now I have the video in my arsenal and have no excuses. Angie had such a kind and encouraging way about her; I could have listened to her all day.

Next I got all excited to see the lovely Carolyn Beam of Quiltmaker magazine. I sort of have a girl crush on her because we had such a fun conversation in my booth at Quilt Market in Portland, which I am certain she doesn't remember at all, but I have 200ish blog followers and she and Quiltmaker have like a bazillion so that is to be expected. In any case, Carolyn showed us how to add piecing inside of log cabin blocks and within the rows. Definitely something I had never thought of before. So fun! So different! Yay Carolyn - you go girl! I promise I'm really not stalking you.

Next up was Heather Thomas, an art quilter from Colorado, who talked a little about analogous color groups and how they can work in your fabric selections. If you, like me, get all shaky and nauseated when someone whips out the color wheel, be forewarned: Heather is a color wheel whipper outer. But she explained everything in terms that made sense even to me. Bravo to you, Heather. I still don't think I can go so far as to OWN a color wheel, but yours didn't scare me so much. Plus your quilts were lovely.

OOOOOOO! Scary! But not so much anymore.

Sherri Driver is a woman after my own heart. You can tell by listening to her that she is very "PIO" (Perfection is Overrated) in attitude, as evidenced by the notes I took, quoting her as saying "No one will know" and "it doesn't matter if you go off the line" and "who can tell what line it is on this fabric anyway!" You know she won me over with all that alone. Sherri showed me how to "quilt upside down," using the designs on the backing fabric to guide some of the quilting patterns for allover quilting. Very cool; I definitely get bogged down in meandering and am always looking to try something new, but then I get all stressed out about it and go back to an old standard. Or hand it off to a machine quilter and quilt by check and be done with it. But Sherri made it all look very easy, so I plan to give it a go ASAP.

My apologies to the other ladies, but the next two were hands down my favorite part of this video. Joli Sayasane and Laura Roberts could not have been more entertaining, although I almost don't want to write that as I am not sure that was the intent, but there you go. I loved them. The two of them are obviously good friends, but in the opposites attract manner for sure. They started out by basically announcing that they never agree on anything which was kind of good to know because otherwise I might have thought they were about to start throwing things at each other at certain moments, but mostly it set the tone that they were going to be respectful and admiring of each others' ideas but unchanging of their own ways in the long run. Honestly, that is really a great lesson for quilters when there are so many sects out there: The Prewashers, The Handquilters, The Cutters, The Steamers, The Color Wheelers, etc and none of us are all right or all wrong and we should just learn to respect and love one another and sing Kumbaya around the campfire. There was eyerolling, there was laughing, there were cutting remarks about each others' pet choices, but above all there was a fun sense of comaradarie that was just far too much fun to watch. And special note to Joli - I saw the look Laura gave you when you admitted you have no stash and I'll out myself as a Minimal Stasher too. Because I too am "over it" by the time I am done with my project and I'm with you....I'm not making matching pillowcases for my quilts when I am done. Minimal Stashers Unite! But good for you, Laura. You were truly both delightful. This video is worth the $4.99 just for this segment, IMO. Oh, and they gave some great thread storage advice, too!

Heather Thomas came back once more with some fascinating tips on hand beading. It almost made me swear off Jewel it. We all know that will never happen, but I do vow to give some of her techniques a try; she made it all look so easy. I LOVED the beaded wire hanger and will definitely use that idea.

Lastly, Kelly Smith gave a mini class on Celtic Knots. She was adorable, and her teaching methods are very thorough and extremely easy to follow, but I will admit this just reconfirmed for me that Celtic Knots are not in my future. However, she showed a product that I have not heard of that I really want to look into trying, and that was way worth watching it for me.

So, you made it through the review, and now you are clearly chomping at the bit to get your very own video. How do you enter? The usual way. Comment below telling me something you'd love to learn a bit more about in this art or other crafts - I promise I won't make you learn it or give you homework or anything, but sometimes it's good to get it out there so we remember we want to learn something - and you are entered. Make sure you leave a way for me to find you if you are my winner; ie, if you are a no-reply blogger, leave an email for me. For an extra entry, become a blog follower so I can start closing that 200 vs a bazillion gap between Quiltmaker and myself.

Winner will be drawn 9/24/13 at noon EST, and will be given a code to download the free class of their choice from Daily Craft TV. The class does not have to be a quilting class, so tell your other crafty friends to enter too!