Goodbye Beautiful Boy

We awoke this morning to find that our beautiful boy had gone outside on daybreak and had passed away. We thought he was little unwell last night but obviously had suffered a heart attack or similar. He was still eating his 12 meals a day up until last night. He was such a rascal. We are heartbroken.

Floral Sketches Block 4

Today has been a productive one. Not that I finished cleaning my sewing room but have done Block 4 of Floral Sketches BOM and sent out that lesson to those who are doing that quilt. Just a reminder that we are using Floral Sketches Set 2 from Hatched in Africa. I am also going to do another quilt with Floral Sketches Set 1 down the track. It is a challenge doing two different embroidery sized quilts at once. For those with the larger hoop they will be able to pick and choose which block size they do as all blocks are 16 inches square. This is going to be a quilt to fit a queen sized bed. I will put a pic up tomorrow of Row 1 to date.

Floral Sketches 2 BOM Block 4 with 6x10 designs

Floral Sketches 2 BOM Block 4 with 5x7 designs

A lovely sunny day

Isn't the sun wonderful, how it makes you feel so much better when you see it. It seems to give you an added boost of energy.

 

I have sent out three more Crazy quilt blocks blocks today That brings to an end all of the green toned blocks. We are now starting on 15 blue blocks followed by 13 purple. Tomorrow it is hopefully back to Floral Sketches and also a table runner (10 minute table runner version) using the Martha Pullen IEC designs.

Crazy Quilt Block 19

Crazy Quilt Block20

 

Crazy Quilt Block 21

 

Another coat hanger using one of our special purchases

I have made a coat hanger using the same pattern as the previous ones but stitched out a design from the Ageless Embroidery Heirloom Roses design that was on special for  $1 a few weeks ago. I bought it at the time thinking that one of the designs would be ideal for a coat hanger cover like this. I used design R2400457 from the set and split off one of the roses, copied it and added it to the end of the original design. The design will fit into the 5x7 hoop rotated as discussed in the tutorial.

Covered Coat hanger Tutorial Finished

I have finished all 5 of my covered coat hangers in different colourways , written up the tutorial and sent it out to those who are doing the Martha Pullen Internet Embroidery (IEC) club projects with me.

Project 10 IEC

 

 

It has been a bleak and miserable day here today and these are days that I will not like being retired but a bright note to my day was talking to my friend Carolyn from Canada on  Skype for an hour this morning. I have shared some of Carolyn's lovely photography with you before and she sent this most glorious shot this morning of a chipmunk up close.

Carolyn's chipmunk

Make sure you click on his pic so that you can see his gorgeous little face in a larger image.

New project using IEC

Designs in Machine Embroidery have a free trial digital edition of their Summer Special  issue. You can find the download details here. It is a file of about 70mb in size to download.

I am working on a new little project using the Martha Pullen IEC designs. The designs I am using are bonus ones released this month. They come as part of your membership for the year. This time it is a padded covered wooden coat hanger. This is my first attempt and prototype. It is just a matter now of making another couple in some other colour ways to get the pattern exactly correct and then I will write up the instructions and send them out to people in my group who are receiving them. These hanger covers are just perfect to use all of those trimmings of bating from your quilt. This coat hanger used all the rimmings from the owl quilt I have just finished.

Also further to my post about there being an update for  Embird apparently there has been another hot on the heels of the one a couple of days ago. I would wait for a while before updating. 

Hints and Tips 9 - Applique and Pull Compensation with Embird

One of the most valuable features of using Embird is the Pull Compensation feature. Pull compensation is the feature that allows for stitches to cover a certain area taking into account the fabric pulling in etc.

Pull compensation is most valuable when stitching out a digitized applique design. How many times have we finished stitching out an applique design only to see it pull away when finished.

While a design may look fine on your computer it may not always sew out as you thought it would, especially the satin stitch around an applique. Increasing the Pull Compensation tells the program to spread your stitching out more when it is sewing.

I am going to use a  free retired set from Bunnycup designs called Just Ducky so that you can download it and have a play like I am.

 

Open your design in Editor and then select it by clicking on it

Go to Edit-Pull compensation and choose a new setting. It is right down the bottom of the column so you might have to click on the arrow for it to come up. (Also use SHIFT-CTRL-N)

A default setting of 0.4 will come up but generally I use about 0.9

 

Click OK. 

This will increase the overall size of your design by a small amount.

You can check

Just be aware that the if you change the Pull Compensation it will stay on that value until you exit Embird for the session you are in.

Don't forget you can download this in print friendly pdf.