One thing I can say about 2022 is that it was not a dull year! We have all been enjoying a little more freedom and social interaction with less threat of Covid in our daily lives so that was good. My sister and I decided to splurge and planned a trip together to Cancun—our first time to Mexico! Had to obtain a passport and all the proper beach clothing! I chose February because in my opinion that is the best month to get out of Montana! All-inclusive resort with buffets and entertainment, warm beaches, sunny skies, snorkeling and relaxation here we come!
The trip was great but choppy seas and a long snorkeling excursion wreaked havoc on my neck and I had to visit my doctor when I got home. She sent me to get an MRI and called within a couple hours to say I needed to see a neurosurgeon! He said no choice but surgery—sooner the better, so in April I had ACDF surgery to replace two herniated disks. This meant 12 weeks in a stiff neck brace—6 weeks 24 hours/day and then weeks wearing it whenever I needed to look down—cooking, doing dishes, using ipad, designing quilts and most of the time I was working in my studio! Not fun, not comfortable, but it went ok and I lived through it.
So, I need to backtrack to February. Right before I left for Mexico I received an email from Susan Brubaker Knapp—host of Quilting Arts TV on PBS. She wanted to know if I would be interested in being on the new season of QATV that they would be filming in July. Did I hesitate, did I need to think about it, did I have any reservations about saying yes? NO! I got right back to her and said a resounding yes and what do you need from me?! Artists usually film 3 segments so they asked me to submit some ideas for them to approve. I submitted several and they ended up choosing 4 of them!
I spent the next 4 months preparing for the segments complicated, of course, by the neck surgery recovery and brace wearing! Narrowing down my knowledge of a topic into a 10-12 minute segment was very challenging and then I had to make all the samples/examples to show the topics the best way I could. For an artist who never makes the same thing twice, making step-outs showing all the steps of a process is just not easy! I really only did it for one segment and for the others I showed a variety of different examples. It was just more me!
I had deadlines to meet along the way including writing up a step by step of each technique with supply lists. These would be published on the website as free EBook downloads and are available now: https://www.quiltingdaily.com/quilting-arts-tv-quilting-daily/
In July my follow-up appointment with the surgeon went well and I was all set to fly to Golden, Colorado to the Golden Peaks Media studio to film my four segments for Series 2900 of Quilting Arts TV. How exciting! I will give details on the experience in another post, but one thing that happened was that Vivika Hansen DeNegre, Editor of Quilting Arts Magazine, selected one of my segments to become an article in Quilting Arts magazine. That article will be in the upcoming Winter 2023 issue: “The Perfect Pair” about combining free motion machine quilting and hand embroidery in art quilts. The TV segment on this topic is going to be moved into next year’s release, Series 3000.
The current 2900 series of QATV with my other 3 segments is now available as a download on the website and started airing on PBS stations across the country on November 14–but they will pick it up at different times based on their programming so check with your local PBS stations. Here in Montana it will likely air after the first of the year—around the first of February according to the person I contacted at Montana PBS. I am in Episodes 1, 12 and 13.
I hope you like them!
