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Narrow Your Marketing Focus When Everything Feels Urgent: Live Coaching
Your inbox is full of marketing advice. Your feed is full of new trends. Every platform has a tip, every course has a must-do, and you still don’t know what to work on this week. Pattern designer Leanne Parsons of Devoted Quilter came to a live coaching session on the Hey Tori! podcast.

Tori McElwain
4 days ago4 min read


What's New in Social Media This Month (October 2026): Quilting Business Edition
Welcome to your October 2026 social media update! If you're running a quilting business, whether selling patterns, teaching classes, or offering longarm services, staying on top of platform changes helps you reach more quilters, spark engagement, and turn followers into customers. Here's what's new this month across major platforms.

Tori McElwain
Oct 278 min read


Do You Actually Need a Coach? Check Your Readiness First
Not sure you need a coach? Learn how to check your readiness, find your business gap, and test whether a coach fits before you spend money.

Tori McElwain
Oct 236 min read


Welcome Emails for Quilters: A Live Coaching Walkthrough
You finally get someone to sign up for your free pattern. The download arrives, and then nothing. No hello, no next step, no reason to open the next email. Or the opposite happens: three sign-up paths, three welcome sequences, and a subscriber who gets six emails in one week and unsubscribes.

Tori McElwain
Oct 165 min read


How Do I Make Time for Big Projects When Life Is Full?
Your next launch, pattern, or book feels bigger than the time you have to give it, and the calendar fills up a little more every week. If you're staring at a busy season and wondering how it's all going to fit, this post is for you.

Tori McElwain
Oct 145 min read


How Do You Reuse a Blog Post? Get Your Archive Out of the Closet
Years of blog posts sitting in the archive? Use five steps to repurpose old blog content into pins, emails, and social posts, one post a week.

Tori McElwain
Oct 137 min read


All About Email Marketing for Pattern Designers with Ashleigh Wempe
You know you should be emailing your list. You have the freebie, the signup form, maybe a few hundred people who raised their hand. But every time you sit down to write, you wonder whether once a week is too much. You don’t know what to say besides “new pattern!” And the second you hit send, you’re refreshing the app and watching the unsubscribes tick up. If that sounds like your inbox, this episode is for you.

Tori McElwain
Oct 26 min read


What's New in Social Media This Month (September 2026): Quilting Business Edition
Updates for quilt pattern designers, quilting teachers, and longarm service providers. Welcome to your September 2026 social media update!

Tori McElwain
Sep 308 min read


From Hobbyist to Professional: Tech Editing, Books, and Taking Up Space in Your Industry
You've designed patterns. Maybe you've even sold a few. But somewhere between that first design and now, you started wondering: Am I doing this right? Is my pattern actually good, or am I just getting lucky? And if I'm going to do this seriously—if I'm going to take my business seriously—what does that actually look like? Today, I'm talking with Whitney Steen, a knit pattern tech editor and graphic designer who works inside the Self-Publishing Incubator. Whitney spent years i

Tori McElwain
Sep 187 min read


A Pattern Drafter's Hidden Expertise and What Finally Made It Visible: An Interview with Saremy Duffy
Saremy wrote a 480-page book in secret. What helped her cross the finish line—and what you need if you're ready to publish yours.

Tori McElwain
Sep 158 min read


How to Build Trust and Authority That Lasts (Spoiler: A Book!)
Hey Tori! Answering Your Digital Marketing Questions for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast I have dyslexia. I struggled to read and write for years. I still struggle with spelling—if you see a typo in my work, you'll know it came from me, not an AI (haha). For the longest time, I was convinced that I would never be able to write a book. That was for real writers. For people who loved writing from the start. Not for someone like me. And then one day, sitting at my desk trying to

Tori McElwain
Sep 126 min read


What to Do After You Launch: A Live Coaching Conversation with Rhonda Canning
You launched a quilt pattern, you sent the emails, and you showed up on social media. Your audience responded! And then you're standing there, pattern out in the world, wondering: what happens next?
That's where Rhonda Canning of Primetime Quilt Co was after she launched her pattern, Twilight.

Tori McElwain
Sep 47 min read


What's New in Social Media This Month (August 2026): Quilting Business Edition
Updates for quilt pattern designers, quilting teachers, and longarm service providers Welcome to your August 2026 social media update! If you're running a quilting business — whether selling patterns, teaching classes, or offering longarm services — staying on top of platform changes helps you reach more quilters, spark engagement, and turn followers into customers. Here's what's new this month across major platforms. This report is generated for our Digital Marketing Magic C

Tori McElwain
Aug 266 min read


How to Reach New People Without Ads: Strategic Collaborations for Creative Businesses
Your email list. Your Instagram followers. Your Facebook group. The same people, every time.
So you start wondering: How do I reach new people without spending a ton on ads? And is it really worth the time to try?

Tori McElwain
Aug 256 min read


How to Plan Your Marketing for a Week in Just One Hour for Quilting and Crafting Business Owners
Forty-five minutes later, you've reorganized your Canva folders, watched three reels about hooks, opened a blank email draft and closed it, and posted absolutely nothing.
Or maybe this is you: you panic and post three things that have nothing to do with each other. A finished quilt photo on Monday, something funny on Wednesday, a new pattern on Saturday. No thread connecting them. Just three separate first impressions. I'd love to show you how I would plan your marketing for

Tori McElwain
Aug 146 min read


Stop Scrambling: Build a Promotion Calendar That Works With Your Life
Tired of scrambling? Learn the proven 4-step promotion calendar I use with DMMC members to organize launches, set your content strategy, and build in rest.

Tori McElwain
Aug 86 min read


Launching an Offer: What's the Difference Between Launching and Announcing?
You finished it. The pattern is written, the PDF is uploaded, the photos are edited, and your sales page looks gorgeous. Tuesday morning you posted a picture, typed “It's available now — link in bio,” and then you refreshed that page about forty times. And it was quiet. Not nothing — a couple of sales from the same handful of people who always buy from you. But quiet.

Tori McElwain
Jul 316 min read


What's New in Social Media This Month (July 2026): Quilting Business Edition
Welcome to your July 2026 social media update! If you're running a quilting business — whether selling patterns, teaching classes, or offering longarm services — staying on top of platform changes helps you reach more quilters, spark engagement, and turn followers into customers.

Tori McElwain
Jul 299 min read


Do I Need Another Class? Why You Keep Buying Marketing Classes and Still Aren’t Marketing
You have four classes on email marketing. A Pinterest course you never finished. A Reels workshop from last spring — you watched two of the eight videos. Last week you signed up for another one, and this time you’re really excited about it.
You’ve been in business five years. Seven, maybe. Your email list has 41 people on it, and you haven’t sent them anything in months.
And the thought that keeps circling is: I just need to learn a little more before I start. What’s wr

Tori McElwain
Jul 2412 min read


From Hobby to Business: How One Quilter Started Teaching Quilting in Just Five Years
Krista didn't set out to become a quilter. In the summer of 2021, she and her husband marked their cotton anniversary and she wanted to make napkins from their wedding colors. She couldn't find anyone to make them for her, so she did what a lot of people do: she Googled where to buy a sewing machine.

Tori McElwain
Jul 177 min read
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