Busy as a Bee!

Nisie has gone through my undies again. She loves to eat them. She doesn't touch D's undies just mine. She also isn't picky because she loves dirty, clean and brand spankin' new. I think it's the texture of the rayon she loves the feel of.

When I change in the evening into my nightie, I put the clothes I wore on the quilt rack to be put away the following morning. Her new trick is to pull on a piece of garment (pant leg, sleeve of blouse, etc) and pull everything down. That means the undies I wore come tumbling down.

Yesterday I had some banking to do so I stopped by Target to buy some. I'm a panty snob. I don't like anything that binds, leaves lines or feels like I'm wearing undies.

I've spent $18 on a pair of panties in search for comfort. Vasserette used to have a style I liked but the store discontinued them and I can't find them on V's site.

I found these panties at Target a month ago. I bought 1 package and decided I love them. They're like not wearing anything and have a cotton insert in the crotch. I like the ones with the surged edges but the flat edges are also comfortable. They're called Gilligan & O'Malley. Best part is they're 3 pair for $10.

This is the new baby of the family. No not that little monster in the chair...the Acer 22" monitor in the middle. I've been digitizing on a 17" laptop and find I'm craning my neck in terrible positions to see it.

Since I'm used to the 24" Mac, I thought I'd see if I could find a 22" monitor to attach to the laptop. I struck gold on CL. I was searching last weekend and everything was across the bay or San Jose or Santa Rosa. Just when I started whining out loud I saw this ad in the Danville/San Ramon area. I sent an email and mentioned where I lived in hopes of being bumped to the top of the list. It worked. The guy called and said he lived 5 minutes down the road and since I lived so close he called me first.

It was a screaming deal. The monitor is a year old and he wanted $100 for it. I checked everything out before contacting him and the cheapest price I could find was $395. The colors are darker and much easier to see when digitizing. I'm in love.

I personalized 18 sackpacks for a soccer team the other day. Normally it would have taken a couple of days to do the work but I got it all done in one day. I worked until I was exhausted but wanted to make a great impression. The sew outs and trims were done by 10:00 in the evening and it took me another hour to put all the tags back on and wrap each one in it's original package.

The woman was surprised I'd finished the job so quickly. When I originally talked to her she was stressed out because she needed them by Sunday. I know the other shops were giving her a 2 to 3 week turnaround time.

She told me the shops she spoke with were sending out the work! I've heard there were some of those around here. Those aren't embroidery shops if they don't do the work themselves. Anyway, she was thrilled to get my call Thursday morning and kept saying she was going to tell everyone about me. Let's hope that's true. LOL!

D came to me at 9 yesterday morning with a drawing and said he wanted a pumpkin with an embroidered face put on a hat. I told him after I finished banking I'd see if I could come up with something. I asked him to make me a simple leaf to sew and this is what he came up with. DUH! Can you imagine trying to sew and turn a bunch of these?

Needless to say, I sent him back to the drawing board for a simple leaf.

Anyway, after two tries at making a pattern and sewing it out. This is what I came up with.

D drew out the face design for me so I could scan and then digitize it. I think it's hilarious. There was a bit of whining about how heavy the hat got. I warned him the bigger the pumpkin, the more batting it took. With enough batting anything will get heavy.

At 10:30 last night my back was killing me, I had a neck ache and was just getting tired and cranky. I was going to baste the design to the hat but took my quilt tacker and stuck it on that way. D wasn't all that thrilled with the result so he took a needle and thread and basted it on himself. He finished sometime after 11:00 and was pleased as punch with his job.

This morning with his lunch box in one hand and pumpkin hat in the other, he headed off to work.

I'm going to spend the day cleaning up my messy house. I've neglected it the past week or so. It's time to play catch up. I regained control of 3 out of 4 of the kitchen counters before 8 this morning. I've got sewing stuff spread around 4 rooms to round up and put away. Then there's the everyday catch up stuff to do. I might even see if I can find that new fangled contraption that sucks up dirt. I figure if I stare at it long enough I might remember where the on switch is. Yep....time to play catch up while his lordship is working.

Digitizing is a Blast!

I'm rapidly becoming a digitizing junkie. Believe it or not, these are pretty simple designs. I had a pow wow with D and we made some edits on the drawing to bring them into scale. He made really good suggestions that were very helpful.

I did the piston yesterday morning. It took me quite a bit of time but I'll get faster and perfect my techniques as I grow. I didn't like the out line on the bottom of the bolt heads (bottom right and left of piston) after I saw the sew out. I made it a point to immediately correct that so I wouldn't forget later.

I had the base design of the spark plug finished a couple of days ago. I got stumped and needed a conference with D about what goes where. Anyway, yesterday after I finished the piston I brought up the spark plug and finished it within an hour. The main part of the body looked blah to me and D said that's where the identifying info was always printed. Since this will go on the boy child's Christmas stocking, we decided to use his initials and the engine size of the Chevelle. It personalized the design and turned out pretty cute. Don't tell S I called it cute.

I'm not happy with how thin the thread layer is between the raised threads in cream on the left of the spark plug. When I finish this, I'll pull it back up and edit it to add more stitches. Yep, I figured out how to do that too. Wahoooo!

I've got a new customer coming in about 2 hours. She's bringing me 18 backpacks. She wants the last names of the kids on the soccer team to be embroidered on each of them. She wants them by Friday, so I'll be very busy the next few days.

I'd like to get them done by Thursday and impress her. It'll be pushing it but I really need the positive word of mouth publicity. She's already impressed that I'd get them done by Friday. I know if she's called anyone else they told her it'll be 2 to 3 weeks and the cost would be more than my quote per backpack.

Well, off to sew out a few samples of fonts for her then the spark plug and then hopefully a new design to digitize. I want to try a couple of the free samples from a really cool embroidery design site Nana recommended.

12 days.....

Day before yesterday I swore I was going to figure out why the Kodak printer I bought in April won't work. I think it's printed no more than 3 pages in the months I've had it. When cleaning the sewing closet the other day I found the installation disk. I uninstalled (twice!) and reinstalled. Nothing.

I got out the original paperwork and pretended I just took it out of the box and was starting fresh. That did it.

When I first brought it home I was going to set up with WiFi. When they asked me the first question I was stumped. So I figured I'd just set it up directly to the router with the cat5 which was another installation option. That didn't work. But I remember being frustrated and telling myself, "I'll do this later". Well, later came 6 months later.

It took me awhile to realize I had the cat5 cable attached and not USB. DUH! Once that dawned on me I went in search of a USB cable. Now I know we have a gazillion of them around here but had cable overload when I opened the drawer.

Having the attention span of an ameba, I forgot about finding the cable and instead headed to the kitchen for Ziploc bags. Then I proceeded to lay out all of the cables, put them in bags and label them. D came by the room to say something to me, looked at my mess and said, "Uhhh...I'll come back later." LOL! Maybe he thought I had stuff at hand to strangle him with. Hahahahahaha!

Anyway, I did get the printer working.....Kinda! Turns out my ink dried up so I had to replace the cartridges. I had an extra black so put that in. I ordered more of all colors from one of my ink sites then tried to print up my receipt in black ink. Nope.....got the message, "replace color cartridge".

Last night on the way home from seeing dad and mom, I stopped by Wally World and picked up color ink. Yes, it irked me because I bought it cheaper on line but that didn't help me at the moment.

Now the printer is kinda working. It's not printing everything on the page, just portions of it. I'm thinking I'll work on it next week. Oye! I thought technology was suppose to make our lives easier and save us time.

On the upside, I resisted going in the office and pulling out the 3 huge boxes of cables hidden in there and organizing them. See......the attention span of an ameba.

I got the 12 days finished. So I've posted the latest ones. Some need a little more trimming but I'm not feeling very good today. I want to go to bed but I'm waiting for another customer to come by at 3:00. I have a feeling once they're gone, I'll be headed to the warmth and comfort of my bed.

Anyway, hope you like the quilt squares.

I'll probably spend the next couple of weeks laying out pieces of fabric until I decide what to use for the boarders and inner panels.

Burst of Energy....

I think the phrase should be "Survival of the alertist. Not Survival of the Fitist." My husband was a bit amorous this morning. You'd think with his years of experience he'd be able to stay awake after love making. NOPE!

While he was sleeping, I made pancakes and sausage for breakfast. While the pancakes were cooking, I washed last nights dishes, folded the three loads of laundry I washed yesterday and did the morning dishes. During this time he was napping from 'exertion'.

I thought...how did man survive? If every time he had whoopie with a female he fell asleep, why didn't a dinosaur eat him? Wouldn't it make sense the guy who stayed awake after whoopie should survive? Which means....it's not the strongest who survives, it's the guy who can keep his eyelids open. Hahahahahaha! Just a woman's meandering thinking.

I've been listening to my intelligent niece who said to do short snipits of chores. I've been embroidering like a mad woman. The other day my long counter looked like this.

I heard her voice in my head saying, "Aunt Pat, get off your butt and clean that counter. It'll take a few short minutes." Yep, it took 15 minutes to fold and put everything away. I just didn't have the time between sewing out designs, trimming them and dititizing more. It piles up fast!

Thank you beautiful niece of mine. You got this old bird off her butt.

I've had one machine going constantly for over a week. I'm surprised I'm not deaf by now. I finished the last 12 Days of Christmas square at 4 yesterday. Instead of enjoying the quiet, I pulled all my catalogs out of the closet and went through them. What you can't see in this picture is there are 5 tall stacks of catalogs on the floor at the bottom of this picture.

I should throw away the old catalog when the new one comes but I'm usually busy so I just shove it in the closet. I'm going to promise myself the new catalog doesn't go in the closet until I remove the old one. Yep...that sounds like a plan to me. LOL!

I was working and IMing my friend in Australia last night. All of the sudden I sent him "OMG....my desk is OAK!" He just started laughing and making fun of me.

I try to be good about keeping the desk clean but sometimes I'm so busy with sew outs, it gets put on the back burner. I've been trying to get back into my banking mode where my desk has to be clean each night at quitting time.

The only problem is, quitting time for me can be 9 in the evening when I'm too tired to file and put stuff away.

The closet before was overflowing with catalogs. Now it's nice and neat. I can actually grab my Staton catalog in a flash. What a difference.

This is all I have left for filing. It's a small stack and mostly goes into my expense files. Hidden in this stack is the install disk for my Kodak printer. It's never worked right. I end up emailing stuff to myself. Then I go on D's computer and print it on his printer. Not convenient!

Today, I'm going to keep the machines quiet, turn on Ray Price and Patsy Cline in my iTunes and work on the printer and file this little itty bitty stash of papers. Then I'm going to throw in a digitizing training lesson and try and add to my education.

Oh yeah....gotta call mom.

Nothing but wet all around!

Yesterday was some of the hardest rain, we've had in years. It's hard to tell in this picture but it's coming down thick, hard and fast.

The rain was so forceful and fast, the water on the roof skipped the rain gutters at the corners where the V flashings are and ran right over the edges. I'm standing under the Portico and still getting wet while taking these pictures.

The difference between men and women? I stayed in the house where it was warm and dry. D spent the day in his shed doing 'guy' stuff.

I hope we continue to have dry spells between the storms so the ground dries out a bit. This is water from yesterday's storm and the storm of a few days ago. That's a lot of water for two storms.

Now me....this is where I belong when it's cold and rainy. Yep, that fire screams, "Why go outside when I can keep you warm inside?"

Between working on PAW's stuff, I've been trying to sew out the 12 Days of Christmas for a wall quilt. If I can get the squares done this year maybe I can get the quilt put together next year.

The squares will alternate between white then cream fabric for the background. I toyed with putting these designs on black or dark blue fabric but decided on lighter colors. I'll put lots of color on the boarder. I've been toying with a ribbon boarder. I've never done one before so it would be a challenge.

These are designs I bought from Amazing Designs. They do beautiful work but I'm very disappointed how they come out of registration here and there. With the price of the designs, they should be perfect in any format.

You can see where it's out of registration here on the tip of the right side of the banner. See where the background fabric is showing through between the green of the banner and the black of the outline edging? It's not suppose to do that.

Normally you do a sample sew out and go in and fix it. These designs take up a ton of thread and lots of time to sew them out. Since it's a quilt for myself, I'll just live with the flaw.

I couldn't do these designs to sell already embroidered because it would be too expensive. The Partridge is 35,000 stitches, the French Hen is 27,000, the Goose is 34,000 and the Maid is 36,000 at $1 per thousand stitches that's 132,000 stitches for 4 squares. Nobody is going to pay that sum for anything. These patterns are for people to buy and sew them out for themselves.

These four designs have taken me 3 days to convert the thread, get everything ready and sew them out.

I'm hoping I can get two designs a day done between my other embroidery work. Today I'm working on Ladies Dancing and Piper's Pipping between my other stuff.

Beautiful Tess....

This post is a thank you to the beautiful Tess who touched all our hearts. She had a gentle temperment and was easy to love.

You will be greatly missed.

Hats....ewwww....

Okay, my least favorite things to embroider are hats. Hooping them hurts the fingers (yes really!) and up until now, I didn't have the knowhow to create the foundation stitching and move the stitching order where I need it.

You know that seam in the front center of your hat? Well, you have to fill that up with stitches before you can do a design. If not your design gets sucked into that groove and disappears.

Anyway, another thing about hats is....you have to dismantle your machine to put on the hat hooping dohickie. See the arms on the left and right side of the machine connected with the long plate in the back? Well, that has to come off.

This medieval looking monster is hooked to the embroidery stand in the kitchen. I don't have room for it in the sewing room right now. I'm proud that it's the only thing that has sneaked into the non business portion of the house.

Anyway, you slip the hat on that, cinch down bill and front. Then remove it and put it on the dohickie that replaced the arms of the machine.

This thingamadoo. It's tricky to put on because you don't want to damage your needles. It's like watching a ballet as I try and slip it on.

See that junk? That's the underlay before I stitch the design. It helps flatten and stabilize where the design is going to sew out. I made it a little too big and had to do some gentle stitch removal from the finished design.

The underlayment didn't show up on my practiced sew out but did on the actual hat sew out. That's another live and learn thing.

I think a goal for me would be to have one machine always set up for hats. I don't want to get into doing them because they're hard on my arthritic fingers but it sure would be nice to have a dedicated machine for them.

Most embroidery shops set aside one or two days a week just for hats. My machine is actually very easy to convert to doing hats. The Brother 9 & 12 needle machines are a major chore. I hated doing the switchover when I worked at EM.

Here are the finished bags and hat I did for a business called Garlic Gold. The bag in the middle and on the right are in the original design format of the business. Nana came up with the design on the left with the black garlic overlapped by the yellow g of the gold. I think it's much nicer than the current logo. I had to adjust the name on the hat. It was spaced way too far apart and wouldn't fit. I like the wording with a smaller space and moved closer to the mortar and pestle.

Answer for Wudas

In answer to Wudas question. This is the heart Terri wanted but without the flames going through the center of it.

I don't think she understands the limitations working with thread poses. Most people don't. They think if you can draw it, it can be embroidered.

Rainy Day Session....

Whenever things are tough, I always try and remember there's someone out there with worse problems than I have.

We went to SJ yesterday to pick up some parts D bought off CL to make a panel saw for his new work shop. A few doors down from where we were stopping this is what we saw.

This poor guy is really going to be surprised when he gets out of bed and sees this. Can you imagine calling in to work and saying, "Uhhh...I'm gonna be a little late today. I have to get the tree off my car first." LOL!

I'm hoping he'll look at it as being lucky. He might have a dent or two on the roof and trunk but the glass is in tact and the engine isn't crushed.

See???? Every cloud has a silver lining.

When we got home it was so stormy and dark. I holed up in the sewing room and worked on designs.

Here's a name design I came up with for D's other apron. It was a ready made hammer but the original was really cheap and dorky. I used the outline of the original to redraw and digitize the entire thing all over again. Okay, I kept the outline stitching because I thought it was pretty good.

D's becoming a great critic. He's no longer going....."That's nice!" Now he's pointing out the good and bad. He loved the satin stitch on the head of the hammer giving it dimension. Go figure.

I think Terri was a little disappointed in her heart. I got the impression she wanted huge flames coming out of the top. I started out that way but it was so out of proportion I cut them back. I do like the red instead of the orange I had in the first sew out at the bottom of the flames.

I figure since I did this free, she couldn't complain much. Henry loved his Transformers apron. He even went into a discussion on whether or not one of the Transformers is really a Decepticon and not an Autobot spy. Hahahahahaha! How old is this guy? Hahahaha!

My friend in Australia has a new business called Garlic Gold. His logo was very intricate, so big sis (Nana) drew out a new mortar and pestle for me so I could digitize it. This is my second try at digitizing it from scratch.

I'm sure in 6 months I'll look at this design and say, "Hmmmm....that's off....that's wrong....I should redo that....etc." but for now, I like it. I'll be putting it, along with some edits Nana made last night with the wording on some bags for Pete. We're shipping the T Bird to Australia Friday, so I want to make sure everything is done and in the trunk before it starts its journey.

Slowly Catching On...

I'm slowly catching on to this digitizing thing. I've probably got about 1/1000th of the knowledge needed to do my own designs....which makes me dangerous.

Henry is one of my repeat customers. He works for HD with D. I offered to put his name on his apron for free if he'll be advertising for me. He said, "Sure, I'd love to be your billboard!"

He's heavy into Transformers so I came up with this simple design for him. I pulled the autobot and decepticon logos out of a alphabet font I have. They turned out pretty cool.

Terri is Henry's girlfriend. She also works at HD with D. She along with Henry has volunteered to be advertising for me. She wanted a heart with flames coming out of the top.

I created the heart and outline all by my little lonesome. I cut the flames from a design I bought, messed with them to get them to fit and came up with this. I don't like it. Two hours down the drain. Oh well, it's all part of learning.

I couldn't find any ready made flames to insert into the heart so I took a deep breath and said, "Oh....give it a try!" It took me three tries before I settled down and quit trying to be perfect. I loosened up and came up with this. Originally all the flames were one color and I tried using variegated thread (see below) for effect. It didn't light my fire. Hahahahahaha!

I went back to the drawing board and put in a second layer of smaller flames with different shapes and I really like this affect. This only took me two tries. In the final sew out I'll change the orange in the flames to red. It'll show up better on the orange apron.

I did learn not to delete anything right away. I dumped the Terri and inside of the heart and came up with a nice outline I can use in the future. I can see a monogram inside this. I think the variegated thread looks better on the simple outline rather than the original design.

Henry and Terri should be bringing their aprons by anytime so I can get these designs done for them. People flipped over D's name on his apron. I embroidered a sample of 6 fonts for him to show his coworkers. So far the ones who had the wife of another HD employee embroider their names are really unhappy now that they've compared professional embroidery to the hobby quality she's putting on the aprons.

Here's hoping Henry and Terri will help bring me some more business.