In the Longarm League membership, we published an interview with Jenae Alves of Vintage Stitch by Jenae. 

This was one of those times that as soon as we hung up, I couldn't wait to share the Zoom call with the membership because it was packed with lots of useful tidbits about business. Plus, it's just so interesting to hear how other quilters in our specialized, little realm  do things! 

Jenae has grown her reach on Instagram by over 10k followers in the last year! She attributes a lot of her growth to effectively using video on the platform.

Let's start by talking about setup, shall we? 


TIP #1:

It may surprise you to learn that in order to record a video of her longarm stitching a digital pantograph, she simply holds her iPhone in her hands as steadily as possible. How is that for a low-tech solution? I love the simplicity! 

 

 

 

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Having a thorough quilting intake form can cut down on a lot of back and forth communication with your client, making the process clear for both parties and your workflow more efficient.

I found that whether I was serving a neighbor from across the street or a mail-in client I'd never met, it was easier for me to stay organized to direct all requests through the same channel -- the "Book A Quilt" form on my website.

Having an online quilting form on my website made it really easy to send people a link to my form through direct messages on Instagram. This happened too many times to count! You could also link your "Book A Quilt" page in your Instagram or other social media bio links.

The page on which the form appears should have clear instructions for how to work with you. In my opinion, your whole website should serve to facilitate work flowing into your queue. Place a link to your "Book A Quilt" form on every page. Link it in a...

Geoglyph is a large 120" wide x 12" tall extended-width design. Watch the video above for just one example of how to use this design file. I think you'll see how many permutations are possible!

For more information about extended-width designs, check out our blog post here.

You'll see this in the video, but when I imported the design, it was resized by Intelliquilter to have a row height of about 7". I scaled to 100% for the row height of 12" before I began placing the blocks. Make sure to maintain the ratio of the design to avoid distortion and clip or trim away the part of the design that's not needed when you actually quilt it out.

To give you an idea of the density of the designs at 12", the spacing of the lines ranged from 1/2" to 1", so there is room to scale up or down depending on the density you'd like to accomplish. The wholecloth baby quilt I stitched out shown above is roughly 43" x 53".

There's no backtracking and blocks do not have to be placed...