Monday August 31, 2009 at 7:40am saw me sitting on  a plane leaving  Phoenix, AZ and flying to Cleveland, OH. Why? To tape a 10 minute segment for Quilting Arts TV!

The last few weeks have been spent preparing for this major life event. I’ve never been on TV before, and despite watching shows from the previous series, I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting myself into!

My brief – to demonstrate how to do embroidered applique. The best bit – I got to do it on one of the new Bernina 830 embroidery machines using the ever so large Jumbo hoop.

My plane landed at Cleveland Hopkins airport on time at about 20 minutes past 2pm. Down to the baggage claim to see my suitcase full of quilts sitting waiting for me. What a relief!

Since it hadn’t occurred to me until about 9pm on Sunday that I would need to find a way to get myself from the airport to the studio, and the shuttle was fully booked, I found myself taking a taxi – which turned out to be cheaper!

4pm found me arriving at the Beachwood Studio, met at the front door by Katherine Lamancusa, assistant to the producer and person to turn to if you needed just about anything. Then into the Green Room – which really is very green!

Close to the end of the day, everyone there had already done their thing, so the atmosphere was cheerful and relaxed. Jeanie Sumrall-Ajero was a familiar face, and also rushing out the door so not much time to do anything other than say “Hi! Bye!”. It did mean that she freed up a table, so I got to empty all my stuff out and start to get organized. That’s my green suitcase in the center of the pic, with my table in the back right hand corner.

Jeanne Delpit from Bernina USA was also a familiar face and voice, and had a friendly hug to welcome me. Getting busy turned out to be a really good thing, so after unpacking I turned my attention to preparing fabric for the project I was going to demo on TV.

I had decided to use the designs from my newest embroidered applique collection, the Hearts CD, stitched out on Silk Dupioni with Aurifil Cotton Mako 50 weight thread.

I hadn’t decided what colors I was going to use, but finally chose  turquoise silk for the background, pink silk for the heart, with lime green, turquoise, orange and magenta for the thread.

Everything was finally cut, stabilized and ready! Time to stitch out a complete heart so that it would be “finished” and waiting in the jumbo hoop, for the end of my demonstration.

Pokey Bolton, the host of Quilting Arts TV was finally done with her part of filming for the day, and was also busy in the Green Room, working on a project. And borrowing my rotary cutter!

Everything finally finished and ready, time to go to the hotel. Teri Harris Lucas was also there a day early, and she had a car, and she was staying in the same hotel! So off we went together, enjoying a quiet dinner together at PF Chang’s across the street from the hotel.

Tuesday morning at 8am saw me in makeup getting ready to go on TV! I was the first guest of the day, but Pokey had been hard at work already, taping all the intros and exits for the series. She wears a different outfit for each show, so it seemed like she was back in the Green room every few minutes for a change of clothes.

And then it was my turn!

First to get the Bernina 830 onto the set. Jeanne took the sewing machine, Katherine was in charge of the embroidery module. It really is a big machine – especially when you have to move it!

Have you ever noticed that the people who are usually behind the camera don’t like to have their photo taken? Ray was the camera guy filming to the right of the set – at least from my perspective of being on the set! Billy is the floor director, equally shy when it came to having his photo taken!

Jeanne set up the 830 while Katherine helped me to bring all of my “stuff” onto the set. Where to put everything was the big question of the moment! I’m very glad that I had way too much stuff to show off. A lot of it didn’t appear – but Kathie Stull, the producer, helped us to choose the things that would show off best.

I was surprised how dark the rest of the studio is, and also how quiet! I think there were two camera guys, Ray off to the right of the set, and another guy straight in front doing all the closeups – from above! Billy, the floor director, was off to the left with a monitor to show what was being filmed. I think there was someone lurking at the back of the room, but have no idea what they were doing. A sound guy appeared a couple of times – first to get me hooked up with a mic, and then after we started filming to adjust the sound so that I could be heard!

Pokey was wonderful – very cool, calm and collected! Always there with the perfect question to move the demo along. All in all, this was about the fastest 10 minutes I have ever experienced – apart from the eternity it took for the machine to stitch out the placement line for the heart. Was it enough to give people a good view of what I do? Time will tell! Given that I have a lot to say about how to do embroidered applique, I don’t think I’ve ever been so tongue-tied before. Maybe there will be a next time – in which case now I know what to do – and it wasn’t quite so scary after all!