The Future of Prairie Moon Quilts

I have a tentative plan for how I’ll be showing up moving forward.

I don’t want to disappear altogether, and I love hearing from all of you, so I don’t want to just say goodbye and drop off the ol’ interweb. But as you know if you’ve been following along for awhile (and some of you have — thanks so much!), I’m trying to downsize, simplify, and spend my time doing the things I love most about this business, and dropping the rest. In other words, I’m trying to make future retirement not sound so bad, because if I were to completely retire, what would I do with myself???

I’m gonna be quilting anyway, so I’m keeping the business going as long as I feel like it. And I hope you’ll continue to join me.

So I have a plan, and it may still evolve over time, but for now, here’s how it’s gonna work . . .

I’m still on Instagram @prairiemoonquilts.

I’m still on FaceBook as Prairie Moon Quilts (but I don’t post to my personal Shelly Pagliai account, so don’t bother looking for me there).

But the main way I think I’ve communicated with all of you over the past years has been my blog. And I would still love to write inspirational posts, host the Studio Organizing Challenges, give you the latest News From the Ranch and Studio, show you what I’m working on, offer some free patterns and tutorials, tell you about any new patterns I have coming out, and let’s not forget The Final Countdown!!!

So the main place I’ll be doing that moving forward is on a platform called Substack. You may have heard of it. It’s like a “blog with superpowers”, as they like to call it. It’s very much a writer’s platform, and I’ve been exploring it for the last few months.

I can choose to take you with me over there, so instead of getting the emails from me in the format you get them now, the emails will look a little different, but this way you can still read the articles I publish (because they’ll just show up in your email inbox). I’m still trying to figure out how to do that, but hopefully it’s coming soon.

However, and here’s the catch:

If you want to comment on a post, or interact with me over there, you have to create an account of your own. Which is not difficult, and it’s all free, but I know, I know, it’s one more thing. One more account with a password to have to keep track of. Uff! I hear you.

So it’s completely optional. You can still read along by email only, or you can get the full experience by creating a Substack account of your own. You can go check it out and see what it’s like for yourself: Substack. You can search for Prairie Moon Quilts and find me (I’m in the Home and Garden category). If you don’t want to go along with me over there automatically, then I urge you to unsubscribe from the email you’ll get with this post right now, so you don’t have to hear from me again in either place.

Right now, I’m moving a few of my old posts over there, along with some of the free patterns, and things are slowly disappearing from this website. My longarm quilting schedule and pricing information have been moved over there already. Once I get all set up over there, I’m gonna start posting new things, and one of the first things I’ll be starting back up will be the Studio Organizing Challenges.

I’m planning to slowly migrate the recipes over to The Life of Hazel Ilene blog, since most of them are recipes from my mother and grandmother anyway. And speaking of that blog, I’m planning a major cleanup and update for it, because I’m hoping to wrap up several loose ends over there and continue to host some more free Quilt-Alongs in the future, and I’ll be announcing those on Substack.

So … that’s the tentative plan for now. I’m still working on getting it all set up to work the way I want it.

Here are your options for keeping up with me as I restructure:

• • Follow me on Instagram @prairiemoonquilts and/or
• • Follow me on FaceBook at Prairie Moon Quilts and/or
• • If you don’t want to continue following, unsubscribe from the email you see this newsletter in (at the bottom) within the next week
• • If you still want to read my posts, do nothing, and you should still get emails when I post something (they’ll just look a little different)
• • If you want to get the posts AND still interact with me, such as chat or leave comments, create a free Substack account of your own and find me HERE.
• • And my patterns are still available in my Etsy shop.

I’ll be back in a few days with one last post to announce a final shutdown date for this site, and any other things I may have forgotten to tell you. In the meantime, you still have a week or so to download any free patterns or print off any recipes you want to keep. And if you have any questions at all, leave me a comment or email me, and we’ll take care of it, so we don’t lose track of each other!

And if you’re choosing to unsubscribe now, please know that I have certainly appreciated you reading my blog over the years, and I wish you all the best in your own quilting adventures in the future. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.