I'm gonna wash that dye right off of my fingernails . . . . .

Yesterday I finished the last of the pew drapes ordered by my brother's parish -- 40 in all. Hurray!!!!

What a relief! It took all summer to get these finished, what with work and health problems and more work. I don't even want to see this fabric again for a loooooong time. . . . . well, at least outside of work. ;P

The pile may not be very tall, but it weighs a ton -- it took 7 1/2 yards of drapery weight suedecloth, four rolls of stabilizer, and three spools of embroidery thread. And the dye kept crocking off the back onto my clothes and hands. My fingernails have been pinkish for weeks!

Tomorrow my brother will pick them up (and even more importantly, pay me!!!), and then I can concentrate on getting the dye off my hands, my fingernails, my machines, my iron, my tools . . . . . . . . . . .

If I ever work with this stuff again I should be certified.

Update: no money yet, but soon. :o( My brother had to submit the invoice to the parish board.

Moving Right Along

I know, I know, it's been over two months since I last posted here. Two months filled with tendonitis and steroid shots, short work hours, and a nasty stomach bug that I'm still not completely recovered from. And waaaay too many viewings of Sister Act 2 in an effort to boost my spirits.

Moving right along, let me show what I was working on when I felt fairly decent -- pew drapes for my brother's church.

I now have 23 of the desired 40 drapes finished and ready to box up. Tomorrow I plan to start embroidering the rest of them.

Where does the time go?

It's been nearly a month since my last entry. In that time, I've been occupied with the following:

• work
• six houseguests, 4 of them preteen/teen boys
• migraines
  
• work
• starting a major embroidery project, involving seven and a half yards of drapery weight suedecloth
• trying to salvage seriously broken nails
• work
• taking pictures of rainbows and roses
  
• general laziness
• more work
• waaaaaaaaaaaaay too many sessions of playing games on POGO.com

I kept trying to think of something to write about with no luck. I composed a lot of posts, but I never remembered them when I woke up in the morning. ;P

This morning I started cutting pieces of the suedecloth, but stopped when I decided I needed a different quilting ruler -- one that's longer than the blocks of fabric I'm using. I'm going to to be making 40 (or more, counting mistakes) doohickeys to lay over the back of pews to mark them as reserved. Each doohickey has to be embroidered on both ends, so that's 80 renditions of the same design, and then I have to sew them together. I'll post pix when I get a few done.

Auf wiedersehen. A bientot. Ciao.

Aggie Pride Meets a Kitty with a Camera

My latest commission involved a couple of quilt squares for a member of the Dallas County Aggie Moms. Due to various problems, she needed the squares tout de suite, as her contribution to a memory quilt was already late.

On one of the squares she wanted a pair of Aggie boots. She'd found a good photo on Wikipedia, but had no idea how to get them embroidered. I have a digitizing program that will convert artwork to embroidery designs, but no way to remove all the extraneous elements of the photo. My solution? I called on CameraforKitty!

Kitty's a friend of mine on Etsy who goes by many names there, and she's a wizard with Photoshop and a lot more. I sent her the photo of the boots, and she removed the background and the excess reflections with lightning-speed. Thanks to her, I was able to get the embroidery done quickly, and my customer loved the results!

Gig 'em Aggies!

Check out Kitty's other shops: The Jewelry :Ninja and The Plushie Foundry.

Addendum: Blogger is having issues, so I was unable to post pix of the squares. Here are the links to them on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ladybuggz/4274100411/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/ladybuggz/4269626453/.

Done Just in Time!

I got a commission to embroider 11 beach towels for a bachelorette party (oh, how I hate that phrase). The customer wanted the names 2" high, with "Mexico 2009" underneath. And she needed them by March 24 at the latest -- they're leaving on the 25th!

These are really bright towels. The striped ones made my eyes hurt. I decided to wash them first -- good idea, since some of them shrank noticeably. I ended up with several filter screen "blankets" of orange and green lint.

It took me a week and a half of trial and error to get the names the right size, and 3 full days of embroidering, but I got them done with a few days to spare. :o)

Celebratory pizza and other ramblings

On Wednesday the repairman came and replaced our wonky control board on the oven. While he was at it, he replaced the thermal sensor. To celebrate the oven's rebirth, we had pizza for lunch. :o)

Right now I'm so tired from work I can hardly stand it. (Or is it, can hardly stand?) The company keeps cutting our weekly allotment of hours, but wants us to keep the store looking perfect. Sorry, ain't gonna happen. We can do a lot, but we're not miracle workers. When you only have 2 people on at night, especially when it's busy, there's no way to get everything put away before going home. And forget about making things look nice -- we don't have time for that kind of luxury, even if the big boss IS coming to visit.

This week I have to buckle down and get 11 beach towels embroidered. I wanted to do the names really big, but I can't manage to work it out with my software. I'll have to do it letter by letter on the machine, as big as possible. Oh well, c'est la guerre.

3 sales in 2 days!!!!

This has been my best week ever here on
Etsy. Friday afternoon my Autumn Leaves micromitts were snapped
up by the first person to view them.

Saturday a friend bagged the Golden Leaves mitts and a baby blanket.


And on Sunday morning another friend purchased her special order, two matching pairs of mitts for her and a friend.

I'm also working on three commissions -- mitts and heartpads for an Etsy friend, and two local embroidery orders -- and I have another Etsy commission to accept for more mitts!

So far I've sold 8 pairs of micromitts on Etsy, and 4 pairs locally (plus the two orders!). Looks like I've found a previously unfilled need with my marvelous micro mitts. :o)

Too Many Gadgets

About 5 years ago I bought a simple Babylock embroidery machine, very similar to this Simplicity machine, and this PED Basic card reader/writer device to download designs from the internet.
Unfortunately, machine embroidery software is only available for Windows, so I had to buy a PC and a printer.And a hub, since my laptop only has 2 USB ports. :-(Then I messed up and bought a pack of designs on a disk instead of a card, so I had to buy a disk drive for my laptop. It's been 3 years and I've used it exactly once, to read that disk. LOLMy next purchase was a digital camera, so I could take pictures to list items on Ebay. Before I could list anything, I learned about Etsy.com, a much better place to sell handmade items. :-) This one is similar to mine (it's hard to take a camera's picture ;p).After I started to sell things on Etsy, I signed up for Stamps.com and got this digital scale. It only weighs up to 5 lbs., but it's fine since my stuff is all very light.Earlier this week I got tired of changing camera batteries all the time and bought myself a card reader. I'd have preferred green, but the choice was black or blue. :-( so I got blue. The only downside is the cable's fairly short.And of course, there's the nearly 20-yr. old dual tapedeck/radio that I listen to while on the computer!
As I've been sitting here tonight, I've realized two things. One, I have too many gadgets. And two, I have too much time on my hands when I start taking pictures of everything I own. :o)

The Gods Must Be Crazy

I actually managed to log in to my blog from my computer! Previously I've had to post or edit from my dad's mac. Who knows how long this will last, though? I'm not counting on anything right now. LOL

Yesterday I finished two bibs for a friend on Etsy, and sent them off today.
Today I finished two pillowcases for a decorator in town. I make the cases, and she makes the pillows as a gift to the people whose nurseries she's done.

So far I've done them in six colors --- white, pink, yellow, blue, lavendar, and natural. I keep the design in my machine's memory so it's easy to call up. The hardest part is remembering the measurements when it's been a few months since the last one. :o)