Friday, July 1, 2016

Moderately Productive

I am on vacation and I shall be productive.  Those were the words I said when I started my vacation.  Then I sat down and talked to myself about how silly that sounded.  What?  Work hard on a vacation?  What kind of a vacation would I have if I tried to be productive throughout the whole time?  Didn't I hear that one should do things in moderation?  Well then I shall be moderately productive.  And that, my readers, is what I have accomplished.

My list of of accomplishments so far has been:

Bought an ice cream maker and tried it out  - yumm (no not the maker, the ice cream sillies)

Finished up two test projects for The Quilt Pattern Magazine - the report will be sent to them in the next day or two

Will finish up putting binding on a co-workers first lap quilt.  I certainly wouldn't have had the ladies in the church group start out with mixed fabric (she has satin, cotton, polyester on front; flannel on back, no batting) and told them to buy the prebought binding.  It's too slippery for her to stitch so I m doing it for her.  It also appears that she didn't tell them to even up the top fabric and the bottom fabric.  BUT it is her first attempt and used material that had been donated (perhaps I should clear out some of my stash and donate) and she has every right to be proud of it.  She incorporated a Chinese Komono from her Grandmother which was nice.

I will start to look through two stacks of t-shirts since I have been asked to make a t-shirt quilt (for $$) and two t-shirt wall hangings (for $$).  I can already see a problem.  The designs on the t-shirts are very large.  They need to be done by November so I have some time to do them.  When the man came to me to ask if I could do it I quoted him my cost and he didn't flinch.  I must quote a higher number next time.  LOL.  Actually it will be higher because I quoted him for a 12" finished block and these designs won't fit in a 12" finished block without cutting off part of it.  I also just noticed that he didn't only include t-shirts.  There are some polo's and dress shirts as well.  Sigh.  I must think on this.

I am deciding if I need to unstitch my 1,000+ cross stitches for The Guardian by Theresa Wentzler and put it on a larger canvas or just adjust when it is done and deal with a small unstitched border.  I think I will only have 1 1/2" of unstitched canvas.  Of course I could just restart the project.

Speaking of cross stitch, I received a new pattern today.  It came from Orenco Originals.

http://www.orencooriginals.net/collections

The one that I got was "Holy Grail Detail (left) from Arts and Crafts Artist William Morris.


The finished size is 10" by 14" and designed for 14 count fabric.  When I first opened up the package I gasped.  I was thinking "Oh my!  No way I can do this chart without blowing it up more so than usual."


Then I realized that there were a lot of pages after that front page.  Four more pages where the pattern had been broken down more and enlarged.  Much easier to see and after I blow it up a bit more for these old eyes to see, it shouldn't be bad at all.


What else was in the chart pack?  A thank you card as well as a card that told a little bit about Orenco Originals.  It had on it certain FREE services such as "...would be glad to re-chart any of our designs for different finished measurement).


They also  had a note about how to read their charts.  It was standard cross stitch stuff but it was done on 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper instead of a 2" column along the side.  That was nice.  Another nice surprise was two hard floss cards.  The symbols were already on them, all I had to do was match up the DMC floss numbers by the symbol, punch a hole, and insert the floss.

I liked my packet.  Oh, did I mention that there are only whole stitches?  No messing with little half stitches or quarter stitches.  YAY!  We'll see how it goes.  I might end up ordering more charts from them if I like it.

This isn't getting anything else done so I'd better send this off and get back to work.  I hope you all have a great day and Happy Stitching!

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