Top Three Wins This Week

• I found out I’m not earning enough to continue as I am. Why is this a win? Because I now know the exact number I’m short by.

• I do not currently have cervical cancer (that I know of). First round of biopsies came back negative!

• Taught seven workshops this week and I am not dead.

Beabyrne.com Business

• I’ve started working with a financial coach (Christine Lane - tell her I sent you) who specializes in people with ADHD. I have never been good at tracking money and, even after minimizing every expense, I knew that even after almost 3 years building my business I still wasn’t making enough. Which is very annoying when you work 6-day weeks that frequently involve 14 hour days. Now I know the exact numbers and am on track to learn better tracking habits. Still pondering the future of BeaCorp.

• I taught 6 workshops in the last 6 days and have a 7th tomorrow. 3 UV Resin, a DIY Selfcare, and a Corporate Father’s Day workshop making Organic Aftershave and Shaving Gel. I am truly a multi-hyphenate creative! My calendar is here. Hire me!

• Austin Kleon’s new book is largely based on lessons he learned from playing and making with his kids. I don’t have any kids and nor does anyone in my network apart from my sister, who’s in a different country. This week I taught a UV Resin workshop at a Summer Camp and met “Weapon S” and “Weapon J” who had just decided to call themselves that. They both made these amazing necklaces out of the resin (actually they made the letters and I made the necklaces). Everything good that happened was described by Weapon S as “aura”, aka “That’s so aura man!”. Kids are fascinating. Occasionally.

Globalquiltconnection.com Business

• Slow week as I’ve been teaching so much.

• I’m wondering if rather than paying to move to another platform entirely, I can just hobble along with absolutely awful Zenler, but pay for email separately. I’m already running Zoom and Thrivecart for event registrations separately because Zenler is so utterly unreliable. See here for my issues with Zenler. I haven’t even added the issues from May and June yet.

• I taught my 6-hour Sew Together Bag workshop on Tuesday as a bonus from the All Star Platter event after attendees helped us get to 500 subscribers on our YouTube channel. Well, actually more than 750! Slowly working towards monetizing it but now we can already help our Teachers by “collaborating” on content which helps them grow too.

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Personal

• I was thrilled to read on the BBC news “Young women now have ‘close to zero’ risk of cervical cancer death after HPV jab”. Sadly no one offered me the vaccine (it cuts off at 45 in the USA and I’m 47) but I have somehow ended up with HPV. Still a lowish risk on its own BUT the treatment I had for breast cancer had a side-effect of increasing your risk of cervical cancer so I’ve been fairly freaked out recently. First round of tests were negative BUT (again) my age means a further procedure is ready and there’s a delay of a month so I’m sitting here trying not to freak out.

• Fortunately (depending on your perspective) my therapist is a big fan of The Secret and after months encouraging me to watch the documentary or read the book I finally did (it’s free on YouTube). I am not a fan of or believer in woo BUT (again, again) yesterday I pulled into a thrift store parking lot where the parking was really limited and I thought “There is going to be a parking space for me” and… there was. So now you know it is all 100% true. At the same time, I did some introspecting while driving back from the aftershave party, and thinking positively about the future…or simply thinking about the future rather than constantly thinking “Shit, I need to only do things that make money, I don’t have time for anything else, Geez I’m tired”, doesn’t seem like a bad idea.

• I have finally, after more than 20 years, made the decision to buy a hammock for my living room. It’s a big, weird shaped room, so this will work. I will lay in it and think about the future, and Charlotte will join me and dream cat dreams.

Links & Info

• My workshops & lectures for quilt guilds are here

• My workshops for everyone else are here

• 1-1 sewing lessons - book here (in person or via zoom)

• These are my on demand workshops that you can sign up for right now! But…the cathedral window one might just be free during the Quilters Life summit.

• This is my store. Many a random thing plus a number of freebies.

• This is where I’m teaching in the next month or so.

• Join the globalquiltconnection.com newsletter list to hear about events for teachers, guilds and individual quilters.

• Subscribe to this substack to get updates twice a month from me.

Subscribe now

Bea’s Bright Idea

Feel like designing your own next project, but not sure where to start? Keep it super simple with some graph paper. You can print it one sheet at a time or buy a pad.

1. Decide on the finished size you want.

2. Decide what one box of graph paper is going to represent. It might be two inches, 10 inches, 20 centimeters or whatever suits you best.

3. Draw the outline of your project on the graph paper.

4. Start filling in the middle.

Here’s how I’ve used this when planning my next Cathedral Windows quilt. This helped me work out how much fabric I would need and compare it to the precuts I had. Now I know I have a choice. Make the quilt smaller, or buy another layer cake!

Two printable graph paper sources:

• For square grids: https://print-graph-paper.com/

• For triangles: https://incompetech.com/graphpaper/triangle/ (I use this all the time for EPP hexagon planning)

And if you like Cathedral Windows, check out my “Cathedral Windows Made Easy” workshop for just $9!

From the Studio

I am still sweating away on this bad boy, following an improv workshop earlier in the year with Claudia Shearer. I had a bit of a revelation while trying to make the blocks work. I’ve talked on a podcast recently about exploring destruction and chaos in my quilts. I have one I am about to set fire to! But with this one I kept finding that the block I wanted to use just didn’t work unless it was backwards. So I thought…why do the seams need to be on the inside? There is plenty of deconstructed clothing in fashion where the seams are visible. So that’s what I did. I’m still trying to get the blocks in their final layout and I’ve resewn two of them since the above layout, but I’m almost there.

What do you think I should call it? I have zero ideas right now and would appreciate your input!

Leave a comment

Join Me on Tuesday

My next virtual workshop is one of my favorites! On June 16th at 10am PST (1pm EST) I am teaching my Sew Together Bag workshop for the Global Quilt Connection as a YouTube livestream. SUPER easy to watch - no logging in, no passwords. Just click the link at the start time and away you go. I have more than 320 people from GQC signed up already so I figure there is room for one or two more!

This 6-hour workshop is usually at least $49 (and is available at that price as an on-demand workshop in case you want to buy now). But for my newsletter subscribers you can join the livestream for 50% off, just $24! You get the workshop on June 15th live and then also get to watch the recording for one-week afterwards.

Register Now

Needless to say, paid subscribers of my newsletter/blog get the workshop for FREE. Subscribing is $9/month or $90 for the year and someone who subscribed in January would so far have received $60 of free workshops…

Learn With Me

My teaching calendar is updated for anyone in the California Bay Area, but I also have a few spots available for Guild lectures and workshops in September! Let me know if you’d like me to visit.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Bea

Links & Info

• These are my on demand workshops that you can sign up for right now! But…the cathedral window one might just be free during the Quilters Life summit.

• This is my store. Many a random thing plus a number of freebies.

• My workshops & lectures for quilt guilds are here

• My workshops for everyone else are here

• 1-1 sewing lessons - book here (in person or via zoom)

• This is where I’m teaching in the next month or so.

• Join the globalquiltconnection.com newsletter list to hear about events for teachers, guilds and individual quilters.

• Subscribe to this substack to get updates twice a month from me.

Subscribe now

Bea’s Bright Idea

I have previously mentioned that I took over Global Quilt Connection at the end of 2025. It was just a few weeks ago that I got the chance to film a demo for GQC by Carol Wilhoit, an amazing quilter and teacher, who was showing different finishing methods. I recommend the whole video (a mere 22 minutes) but if you’re pressed for time click here to start just where she’s talking about how she gets around an issue I have often come up against.

You know when you’re sewing two right sides together all the way around and you leave a gap so that you can then turn the whole thing inside out? I always ended up with a wobbly line where I then tried to sew the seam shut. Carol had a great tip about ironing the seam BEFORE you turn it inside out, not after like I have always done. So clever…so simple!

I love that I am always learning from other quilters and creatives.

From the Studio

When I do have a gap to close and can only see the right (outer) side, I will use Ladder Stitch to get it done. This happened on the EPP (English Paper Pieced) quilt I’m currently hand quilting, where two shapes had started coming apart.

What I do:

1. Thread a small sharps needle with a 50/60wt thread in a color that will blend with the two sides the best.

2. Use my “four stitches” start (image below - it’s 4 stitches on top of each other) about a 1/4” from where the hole starts to ensure it doesn’t come undone any further.

3. Use a ladder stitch to close the gap.

4. Finish with the same four stitches at the end, as much inside or parallel to the seam as possible so it remains almost invisible.

5. Trim the thread at the surface of the fabric.

I teach the 4-stitches start/finish at my Mending & Hemming classes and people are always skeptical about it being secure enough. But trust me, it really is!

Join Me

My next virtual workshop is one of my favorites! On June 16th at 10am PST (1pm EST) I am teaching my Sew Together Bag workshop for the Global Quilt Connection as a YouTube livestream. SUPER easy to watch - no logging in, no passwords. Just click the link at the start time and away you go. I have almost 300 people from GQC signed up already so I figure there is room for one or two more!

This 6-hour workshop is usually at least $49 (and is available at that price as an on-demand workshop in case you want to buy now). But for my newsletter subscribers you can join the livestream for 50% off, just $24! You get the workshop on June 15th live and then also get to watch the recording for one-week afterwards.

REGISTER NOW

Needless to say, paid subscribers of my newsletter/blog get the workshop for FREE. Subscribing is $9/month or $90 for the year and someone who subscribed in January would so far have received $60 of free workshops…

Worth Having

I always have a hand sewing project on the go for the evening times. The much discussed Charlotte (my immortal cat) likes to sit on the end of the quilt I’m not working on while I sew the other end.

This week I have been using a water-erasable fabric marker and a stencil to mark a traditional fan or waves pattern before doing some hand quilting. I can stencil a chunk at a time and then sew that chunk before moving on. This is what I’ve been using:

• Water erasable fabric markers (you can use a chalk pencil as well but I’m always worried about it rubbing off, especially with Charlotte’s cute bottom wiggles being seemingly intended to gently rub chalk off fabric)

• Sashiko stencils

Have a wonderful day!

Bea

PS: Don’t forget to sign up for that Sew Together Bag workshop here.

Links & Info

• Join the globalquiltconnection.com newsletter list to hear about events for teachers, guilds and individual quilters.

• My workshops & lectures for quilt guilds are here

• My workshops for everyone else are here

• 1-1 sewing lessons - book here (in person or via zoom)

• These are my on demand workshops that you can sign up for right now!

• This is my store. Many a random thing plus a number of freebies.

• This is where I’m teaching in the next month or so.

• Subscribe to this substack to get updates twice a month from me.

Subscribe now

I flew to Chicago for the creative H&H Trade Show and somehow my water bottle opened in my bag. My laptop sat stewing for maybe 4 hours before I realized. It’s definitely an expense I didn’t need right now!

The Trade Show was a delight. I was there for Global Quilt Connection - my “other” business - but it was amazing to see all the people and products available. Here is a snapshot of just a few.

• Patchwork Kicks - this is going to be huge and I am definitely planning to teach it!

• Huge patchwork bow from Brooklyn Dawn Quilt Company

• Sewing machine stuffie from Summit St Shop

• Strawberry Shortcake fabric collection from Riley Blake - take my money…

This weekend was the All Star Sampler Platter with Global Quilt Connection. It went swimmingly and 18 teachers gave excellent demos of techniques and showing off heir skills. The next one will be October 24/25 so if you don’t want to miss out make sure you are signed up for the GQC newsletter!

I had a snafu with the terrible Zenler platform I use for my websites last week which meant no one could join the Totes to Baskets workshop. The good news is that we’re having a do’over tomorrow so if you aren’t signed up there is still time - plus you get the recording for a year afterwards!

MORE DETAILS

If you already have registered, check your inbox for details. Or Paid Subscribers get this and future workshops for FREE!

I taught a new-to-me workshop this week too, although I need a better name for it. I called it “Charm Hoops”, which makes it sound like earrings. Briefly, you get a load of bling and some alphabet beads, and sew it to fabric in an embroidery hoop. So much fun and people LOVED it.

I’ll be adding this to my regular rotation of classes. Let me know if you’d like me to bring it to a group near you!

I have to dash as my cat’s toes need tickling and I have a round robin quilt border to finish.

Be good, or goodish,

Bea

Enjoyed this newsletter? Buy me a coffee!

Links & Info

• Join the globalquiltconnection.com newsletter list to hear about events for teachers, guilds and individual quilters.

• My workshops & lectures for quilt guilds are here

• My workshops for everyone else are here

• 1-1 sewing lessons - book here (in person or via zoom)

• These are my on demand workshops that you can sign up for right now!

• This is my store. Crafty candles, t-shirts, supplies, plus a number of freebies.

• This is where I’m teaching in the next month or so.

• Subscribe to this substack to get updates twice a month from me.

Subscribe now

• First Trade Show for Global Quilt Connection is in the bag. Survived H&H in Chicago last week.

• Charm Hoop workshop in San Francisco was a huge success.

• UV Resin and Shibori workshops I taught went really well this week.

Beabyrne.com Business

• FUCKING ZENLER!!!! Honest to god if I could ever deliver a Stone Cold Stunner to someone, it would be that company. Hand me two beers and I’ll do it. This week they sent a broken link to my Totes to Baskets workshop to all the registrants so no one could get in. Had to reschedule for next Tuesday. Am 100% moving to another platform this summer. Here is my post about the issues I’ve had with them.

• Seeing bookings from Guilds come in after taking part in the Northern California Quilt Guilds meet-the-teacher event.

• I need a better name for this workshop - but did it for Make It Market this week. People LOVED it. I called it Charm Hoops, but you basically attach letter beads to make a phrase then add a load of bling around it.

• One downer - my laptop stopped working and so I had to get a new one, and then go through all the setting up and sorting out which that entails. Wiped out my savings. You know what would really help? If a few people took out paid subscriptions…or click that buy me a coffee button at the bottom.

Globalquiltconnection.com Business

• This weekend is the All Star Sampler Platter, with 18 quilt teachers talking to thousands of quilters worldwide. Still time to sign up and replays are available for a week afterwards.

• H&H went really well. Here is our booth (video below - yes that’s me!) and I did a load of instagram posts about it including going live for the first time.

• There is SO MUCH follow up to do from the trade show. Pfft.

Personal

• According to the internet, 90% of men and 75% of women will have HPV at some point in their lives. In women it can cause cervical cancer and other issues, hence Pap Smears. Plus now they vaccinate kids against it which is awesome (go vaccines!). Strain 16 is the really nasty one. Guess what…and it’s not like my first sweet 16 was anything to get excited about. I thought with the end of my breast cancer treatment a few months back I’d be on easy street. Over the last 5 years I must have had more than a dozen biopsies for various things because once you’ve had cancer, everything else that goes wrong might be cancer, and so that needs to be ruled out. After at least 2 months of cancer-free living, back I go to be biopsied again at the start of June.

• My apartment is a MESS. I’m either working or recovering from working. There is hope in sight though - I have a week off at the end of May. Can not wait!

• I’m in relationship heaven. So at least there’s that.

OK that’s it. Thanks for reading!

Bea

Links & Info

• Join the globalquiltconnection.com newsletter list to hear about events for teachers, guilds and individual quilters.

• My workshops & lectures for quilt guilds are here

• My workshops for everyone else are here

• 1-1 sewing lessons - book here (in person or via zoom)

• These are my on demand workshops that you can sign up for right now! But…the cathedral window one might just be free during the Quilters Life summit.

• This is my store. Many a random thing plus a number of freebies.

• This is where I’m teaching in the next month or so.

• Buy me a coffee - thank you!

• Subscribe to this substack to get updates twice a month from me.

Subscribe now

Making Zen

I’ve praised Making Zen in previous newsletters but I do love their events. I’ve come across all sorts of new people to follow. Last summer Rebecca Desnos was someone …

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My Cathedral Windows Made Easy workshop is scheduled for 10.30am on Thursday but, as always, if you splash just $39 o…

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• Built a bot/GPT for ChatGPT and listed it on Etsy (but paid subscribers to this newsletter get it free)

• Attended a Meet the Teacher event and got two bookings while there

• Recognized that I was NOT WELL and cancelled a class - but also realize I should have acted sooner.

Beabyrne.com Business

• Craftcation was last week and it went rea…

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Top Three Wins This Week

• Booked a Summer load of classes for local Libraries on UV Resin, Block printing and Mending

• Global Quilt Connection opened registration for the All Star Sampler Platter

• I decided to start living in my apartment properly

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I am a pretty hardcore volunteerer, so no…

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Bea’s News

There has been so much going on - and you can read about a lot of it in my wee…

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Top Three Wins This Week

• Santa Clara Libraries - taught in two this week and they are excited about a new workshop for their America 250 celebrations.

• Global Quilt Connection held an amazing session “Building a Healthy Quilt Guild” with Guild Leaders worldwide.

• Held my first 1-1 sewing lesson at my Studio

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Bea’s News

The 100 days project is ticking along and this is day 3. You can absolutely …

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Top Three Wins This Week

1. Officially cancer free after five years - no more Tamoxifen!

2. Three word of mouth people contacted me about delivering workshops for them, and one has already booked.

3. Debuted my “Then They Came for the Quilters” quilt.

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You want to teach quilting online - awesome! You’ve taught in person and know how to structure your workshop. You’re ready to move to teaching over Zoom or recording your own workshops. Great! Let’s get you started.

Establishing Who You Are

People need to be able to find out that you are a teacher, which means having an online presence. As a minimum you’r…

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I have been doing a series of interviews with the ideal customers for the Quilt n Learn events, having come to terms with the idea that it is not eight thousand …

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