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Diane Neil is an artist who creates luscious hand-painted ad hand-dyed fabrics.  We – that is GloDerWorks – had the pleasure of creating her new website, Cloth Candy Hand Dyes. Diane sent me some treats in the mail, including a beautiful selection of her painted fabrics, as a generous  thank you for the work we did.

Diane also makes the cutest pin cushions, hand beaded and embroidered.  This was another gift!  I just love this.  It’s by my sewing machine, and I use it constantly.

If that’s not enough, I recently received yet another gift from Diane!  This beautiful bracelet.  She tells me at one time she created jewelry and sold it at various venues.  Today, however, she is concentrating on her fabrics and gift items (which, who knows, may one day again include jewelry).  Yes, I am totally bias, but check out what Diane offers.  Her fabrics are top quality, beautiful, and very reasonably priced.  And check out the pin cushions! I love ‘em and can attest that they make a wonderful gift!

When in San Francisco this past January attending MacWorld, Derry and I both got cards from the company behind Hear Planet. They had a tour bus parked outside of the Moscone, offering free mini-tours of the City while promoting their app for the iPhone/iPod. We kept meaning to take advantage of the the tour and the app, but I didn’t until recently.

Hear Planet is such a cool app.  Their tag line is “Bring the World to your Ears.”  The app contains over 250,000 points of interest from around the world, including interactive maps with audio and text descriptions. When you first launch the app, it asks if you’d like it to set your location. When you do, it then comes up with a listing of places  in your area; for example, in my area one item was Albert Einstein’s home on Mercer Street in Princeton. Clicking on it brings up informative text and an option to listen to that text. Clicking  on the link for Princeton Borough bring up a list of more information, such as the geography, education, government, and even notable residents.

I’m also big on Google Earth.  I love putting a destination in, watching the globe spin and then bring me to that place, zooming in and out, clicking the links to read about the place,  view images.  These two apps – well, okay, I also love the Wiki app, makes the iPhone feel like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Earth.  Can the Bable Fish be far behind?

There are a lot of online color tools.  And while researching an article on color-related websites for an upcoming article for the National Quilting Association’s quarterly journal, I discovered one called Color Sphere that I enjoyed and wanted to share. To quote, “Sphere uses basic color theory in order to automatically provide you with visually appealing colors.”  They also call it “an online color theory visualizer.”

By selecting one of the formulas, such as complementary or split-complementary or even clash, you can see how a selected color or colors will interact.

The tool also allows you to select a formula and simulate how the colors will look under different forms of colorblindness.

You can view the full spectrum, web smart, or web safe colors.  The above is the web safe palette.  While you cannot control the size of the swatch or mix colors such as a pastel with a heavily saturated color, it’s an interesting tool.

I was happy to learn that this tool, created by Mudcube and minus the sliders, is also available as a free Macintosh widget to download and add to your Dashboard tools.
Click here to download the Dashboard Widget from Apple.

ColorSchemer, Design in Harmony, also offers a free application for Windows users called ColorPix and another widget for Mac users called Galleria. Windows users can also download Just Color Picker from Anny Studio.  It that allows you to select a particular pixel under your mouse and transform it into different color formats and then select different color harmonies.

I learned of an Irvine, California company called scanmyphotos.com while reading an article called  “Your Photos, Off the Shelf at Last,” by  David Pogue in the August 13th edition of The New York Times.  This company sounds too good to be true – but apparently they are and it is.  I suspect if others react to what this company offers as I did, the company is going to be flooded with work.

Here’s what they offer:  Scanning 1,000 photos, burning them to a DVD, and charing you $50 for it!  Is that the deal of the year?  The decade?   There are requirements — things like the images need to be between 3×3 to 11×14, bundled together in like sizes, cannot scan from a photo album, and so on.   They also scan slides, negatives, VHS to DVD (ooh … that comes in handy).

Is it just me?  Or are you now adding another item to the “to do” list

“To bring an idea to image you need first to have an idea.  Cultivating and enhancing your awareness of yourself and your world are essential.  Finding the things that make your heart sing and the ideas that rouse your passion is part of the journey of creativity.”

So starts Laura Cater-Woods’ new self-published book, “Idea to Image: Tempting Your Muse – a Guided Studio Workbook.” This 42 page book is not a how-to book, but rather a guide book, designed to be “dipped in and out of, begin at any point and tracked backwards.”  It gently directs you to follow your unique journey to see what makes your creativity tick.  She encourages the use of a journal, or multiple journals, to record snippets of ideas, big and small.  She explains design elements and principals while encouraging your awareness of them.  She flows into learning to be in the moment, if even only for certain periods during the day.  A variety of exercises are included.  The book includes several photos of Laura’s soothing and beautiful work, which seems to echo the calm and quiet encouragement to slow down and take in the world around you.  It also includes quotes — food for additional thought.

“The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting the first one.” – Mark Twain

Personally … my muse is often stubborn, and it needs a good kick in the pants to show some life.  Then again, I often need a good kick to chill.  To relax.  To slow down.  I’ve admired Laura’s work for a long time, and I like curling up in my favorite LaZBoy chair to read and absorb her words and to look at her soothing work.  The chair happens to be in my office, and happens to face my computers, ever on and temping me to come over and work just a bit more.  Laura’s book is now on top of one of my journals near my favorite chair.  At the end of the day, I’m on my chair, putting my feet up on my other favorite chair, and I’m paging through her book.  Then I’m reflecting, sketching, writing, and, can it be?  Relaxing?  Experiencing a semi-state of happy?   Good job, Laura!

Visit Laura’s site to purchase the book.  While there, sign up for her free newsletter.

Years back I was a faithful Bernina user. I never considered switching until the Janome 6500 came out. When the 6600 came out, the even feed system got my attention. I sold the 6500, bought the 6600, and haven’t regretted the decision.I’ve been very satisfied with my machine quilting. However, it was after learning that certain things do make a difference. They are:

• Hold the thread on the top of the machine while threading through the tension disks and leave the need in the up position;
• use the plastic cap thingy to hold the sewing machine thread in place;
• clean out the bobbin case regularly to remove lint; and
• periodically add a drop of oil on the wick within the bobbin case.

I visited my local sewing store because my quilting foot was squeaking like crazy. He told me to put a drop of oil on it.

But he also quickly added that he had “the new free motion foot” and the new “free motion bobbin case.” He raved about them — smoother, quieter, better stitches, and so on — but I wasn’t interested. Once home, however, I started thinking about it. I do like the idea of it being quieter and better stitches sounds good. A few weeks later (I can be slow) I purchased them.

My old foot is on the right. I used a heavy scissor to clip out a hunk of the plastic making it easier for me to see what I was doing (yes, I realize these are being sold but it wasn’t available when I was looking to buy). The new foot doesn’t have a front opening (and I’m not using scissors on it <g>), but it does have a screw adjustment above the spring. By turning the screw, you can adjust how high or low the foot sits off the fabric.

The bobbin case has a blue dot on it to distinguish it from the regular bobbin case which is marked with a red dot. I suspect the case is just about identical to the one with the red dot except that its tension is different. Anyone comfortable with adjusting their lower tension probably doesn’t need the case.

Knowing that I will not remember what color is for what, on the back of the sewing plate I wrote B=Q, meaning blue equals quilting.

After threading and starting, I snapped a needle! User error. I didn’t have the foot tightened.

After doing a lot of experimental stitching using various combinations of new foot and new case, new foot and old case, old foot and new case, I concluded that the front and back looked nearly identical to my eye. However, it was quieter and it felt better. The foot seemed to glide a bit better and it did seem smoother. I suspect this was due to me adjusting the space between the foot and the fabric, moving the foot up a bit. I also was surprised that for whatever reason I had no problem seeing where I was going and what I was doing. Generally when I use metal free motion feet, there is a small blind spot that bugs me.

I have read that many excellent machine quilters go full throttle on the presser foot. Not me. I tend to use a medium speed or even medium to slowish. Doing so helps me to get good tension front and back, and I get better control. With this set up, however, I was able to push the speed while still maintaining control and not having any problem with the back tension.

Even so, being that I didn’t see a difference in the quality of the sewing (drats!), was it worth that $50 plus for both? Several times I went back and forth, trying to determine if there was a difference that I was missing. Nothing jumped out at me. I will add that I only experimented with a rayon thread on the top, cotton on the bottom. It could be that if I do more experiments with difference types of thread that the differences could be more obvious.

In any event, I do recommend the foot. While I didn’t see any difference in stitch quality, it is quieter and you can adjust how high it sits off the fabric, making it glide better — totally worth the approximate $20 price.

For those who can adjust the bobbin case tension with no fears (like my sister-in-law, Sarah, who is brilliant with all things mechanical and has yet to meet a sewing machine that she wasn’t able to fix), the case may be a waste. However, for those who can afford the approximate $30 price, it certainly can’t hurt to give it a try.

(6-16 update:  I heard from Pamela Allen, famed Canadian quiltmaker, and she tells me that the bobbin case made a very noticeable difference in her tension and that’s it’s very forgiving with mixing threads.  So there you go — a great endorsement and reason to get both!)

I have a new top that I will hopefully be quilting soon. I’ll use both the foot and the new case with it. Generally, problems I have are all user errors (as in I messed something up). Even so, I’m curious. I hope it doesn’t fall into the “if it’s not broke don’t fix it” category but instead (like the 6500 to the 6600) goes into the “while that was good, this is better” box.

In the Feb/March 2008 issues of Quilting Arts Magazine, fiber artist Lyric Kinard has a very information article on framing textiles. Lyric has also posted expanded directions, with photos, on her website here. She covers work mounted on matboard and framed, mounted on stretcher bars, mounted on Plexiglas, mounted on a gallery wrapped canvas, and matted and framed. Thank you Lyric!

I’ve been quilting and quilting on my Blushing Triangles 3 quilt. It measures approximately 41″ square, and it is heavily machine stitched. I started the quilting on this in April, and it’s been slow going. Here’s a close up of a section of the quilt.

A big help for my eyes while working on this project is the neatest gadget which is now attached to my sewing machine. It’s a light – called the “Bendable Bright Light” that was one of my best finds while at the Houston Quilt Festival. It attaches to the machine and points a white beam of light directly where it is needed. My aging eyes is in love with this light. It makes a huge difference.

At $50, it isn’t inexpensive; however, I find it worth every penny. I have no affiliation with this company, just a very happy user. You can find more information about it at the Bendable Bright Light page.

I was flipping through the TV channels and Rachael Ray was on. There was a woman showing gift wrapping using a type of “Mottainai Furoshiki,” which is a symbol of the Japanese culture to reduce waste. Furoshiki is “a Japanese traditional wrapping cloth which is used repeatedly in a stylish way.” “Mottainai” means “it’s a shame for something to go to waste without having made use of its potential in full.” Together, they are folding and wrapping ideas to use with a scarf for wrapping presents (instead of using paper or plastic). Some of them are really nifty, like warpping two books into what looks like a purse of sorts to hold the books. The technique is further explained as putting “an accent on taking care of things and avoiding wastes.”

To get directions, you follow a bunch of links on her site to eventually get to the Ministry of the Environment site. To save you time, here is the site with the directions.

At times I wrap gifts for friends in fabric that I painted, and this will be such a cool way to do it.