I’ve spent the last several days getting the new website up. I just talked to Register.com and http://www.pieceocake.com should soon connect to the new site that looks like this:

I gotta say that I should have done this a very long time ago. I think everyone, including me, is going to find the new site easier to use. That said, I’m still tweaking. In fact, I just realized I have not set up the About page. Sigh.

Once it’s up, if you click through and find problems, please do let me know. I’ve edited each of the 467 products at least 4 times. In some cases more. I suspect that there are errors. With your help I hope to find and correct them.

Soon, very soon, this task will be off my plate and I can quilt again! I just can hardly wait.

The opposite of being fluid is to be rigid. Sometimes being rigid is good and sometimes it’s not. In web design, rigidity is bad.

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted much lately. That’s because I found out that on April 21 Google will no longer include ‘rigid’ web sites in their searches. My site, pieceocake.com, is rigid. My oh-shit-o-meter nearly cracked under the strain.

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, it’s this: Web sites used to be only viewed on a computer screen so you could design a site to look great at that size. That’s what I did when I built the Piece O’ Cake site. It doesn’t feel like that long ago but it was probably 10 years or more. I’ve tweaked it a lot since then, but have not changed the underlying structure of the site.

During those 10 years, phones got smarter and tablets arrived. Their screens are smaller. New websites started to be built on a ‘fluid’ base, meaning that they would change how they looked depending on the size of the screen. This is a good thing and I knew I needed to upgrade but I kept putting it off in favor of spending time with family…

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

…and making quilts, and writing books, and teaching, and on and on. You know what it’s like because you all are busy too. Side note: we are ALL way too busy.

So, it two weeks ago I found out that I had to re-write the entire Piece O’ Cake site. I spent 2 days trying to figure out how to do it myself, learning more html, setting up a MAMP server (really, you don’t want to know what that is), until I came to the realization that that is not what I want to spend time doing.

The next step was to look at WordPress business sites. I really thought that was going to work. In fact, after 2 solid weeks of work, I was ready to go live when I found out that the shopping cart service I had chosen was not going to work the way I needed it to at checkout. Deep, deep sigh—then I moved on.

I am now rebuilding the site (3rd time’s the charm, right?) on Shopify. I am going to use one of their templates because I am not going to learn any more html. I want to go back to making quilts! The new site will be up before April 21. It will look different but I think it is actually going to be way better.

Today I am not working on the site. I am going to teach a workshop and give a lecture for the Coastal Prairie Quilt Guild in Sugarland, TX! It’s going to be nice to spend a day with quilters!

Today (Friday) I’m in Denver where I filmed a segment of The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims. I have had the pleasure of being on their show before and it was just as much fun today. They are both wonderful people, excellent quilters, and hosts who know how to put a guest at ease.

I filmed early so arrived at 8:00 AM, along with the audience. These fine quilters went one way to learn what to do while I went another way to do what I had to do. Eventually we all ended up in the studio.

Lilo was in charge of making sure my scarf was artfully arranged. The nice man on the right took care of getting me ‘miked’. (FYI: I’m wearing that Eileen Fisher shirt that I shopped for especially for this show.)

Shelly kept us on track, following a loose script. It’s not really a ‘script’, she just gave us reminders of what we ought to be talking about in each of the three segments. Justin works more with the audience members and he is a real stitch!

Various folks took these photos with my cell phone while I was doing what you see me doing. It is really nice to have them now, to post! We talked about the new color book, and more.

There are efficient camera-persons and more other people on the set. They were so good that they were practically invisible. The cameras are huge and closer to you than you would think. There are TV screens with live feed so that the audience can see what the cameras are looking at, when they weren’t focused us.

As always, this was great fun! I’ll let you know when the episode is up and running. Until then, you ought to consider subscribing to The Quilt Show if you haven’t already. You are likely to learn a new thing in each episode!

Finding the models that we’ll be talking about…

Me, explaining what I brought to talk about…

Alex and me, smiling at something…

Me and Ricky, talking about something that was surely important…

Wrapping it up…