Lot's Happening with Singer, Pfaff and Husqvarna Viking

Jim and I returned home at around 1am this morning from the Blessington Convention.  Blessington distributes Husqvarna Viking, Pfaff and Singer products here in Australia.

We had a wonderful time!  The flight was great (with Jetstar, which was not our first choice but turned out to be alright - except for the terrible seats), and the hotel was amazing.  What an inspiration! 

We stayed at the hotel called QI on the Gold Coast.  It is a cool, funky kind of place that just makes you smile.  I can't rave about this place enough!  Probably the best thing is to check out their website:  http://www.qtgoldcoast.com.au/?gclid=CNLaxO_B0rICFUhZpQodQzcA8w

After checking in (and our room was ready at 9am!), a delightful guy came and made us homemade lemonade! 

 

There were special touches everywhere, like the thongs in string bags hanging in our room.

Or the informal restaurant that looked like a deli!

The convention itself was fantastic, I was so blown away by the amount of new products. These will be arriving into the shop real soon, and include a range of Industrial Machines, new Singer ironing products, and loads of great new domestic sewing, embroidery and overlocking machines.
With tutors from here and abroad we had a full four days of classes, and my head is still swimming.  Lucky I took some videos and lots of pictures and notes, check out this one ...
http://youtu.be/rxVSgT15zqE

There was so much food that I'm sure I won't fit into any of my jeans.  The first night was a 1920's theme dinner held at Movie World on the Gold Coast.  Wow!  Absolutely the best way to begin a convention!  Jim look so great in his white dinner jacket, and my hurried last minute dress looked and felt lovely.

The next night was themed "Blessington's Got Talent", and I have it on good authority that Jim had a few more wines after I went to get some beauty sleep and then entertained everyone with his Kereoke singing!
The final dinner was formal and we had a special guest singing and dancing for us.  Guess who?  A look alike Michael Jackson!

Not Jim's thing, but wonderfully entertaining.

So now I'm back home for just 1 day before heading off to the Australiasian Machine Quilters Festival.  I'll blog about it when I get back.

A lady is allowed to change her mind.

After looking at the 1920's dress for three days I decided I didn't like the way it looked on me.  So today I have made an alternative dress, and it looks lovely. No time to bead it before we head off early Saturday morning, but I think it is more useful as a dress for my wardrobe to leave it plain.

Relief with two gowns finished!

Finally, a lovely quiet day at home, and I have finished up my two gowns.  Having said that I do think I could probably have beaded forever, but enough ... it is done.  I took a pic of the 1920's dress finished, but it does't really capture it.  There is a lace and silk under dress, with an irregular hem that shows under the draped top layer.  It looks cute on.

This weekend Jim and I are off to Queensland for the Blessington Convention.  This covers Singer, Husqvarna Viking and Pfaff brands and will be a lot of busy fun while we look at new machines, and do some hands on classes.  It is also a terrific time to catch up with dealers from all over Australia!

I will get back to Melbourne really late on Tuesday night, and somehow get young master Kevin from his brothers house, before I leave again on Thursday to go to the Australiasian Machine Quilters Festival in Adelaide.  I'm travelling with Cathy to this event, and really looking forward to four days of being creative, and being with other creative people. Cathy hasn't travelled by plane before and she is excited about her big trip, with no kids! 

The only down side to all the travel is the preparation, now that I have the wardrobe covered I need to cook some meals for Kevin, and get the washing up to date, and check out that I have everything he needs for his Holiday Respite Program, including money for the Royal Melbourne Show on Tuesday next week.

Now that I am all caught up I am looking forward to getting some more video tutorials done!  I think I need a list ...

A few more stitches here and there

I really wish I knew why I always seem to be in a last minute rush.  Weeks ago I started to make the two gowns I need for this coming weekend, and because I started with so much time, I wasted it!

Now I'm worried about getting them finished.  I think I will finish off the 1920's flapper dress tomorrow, but I am still beading the yoke/collar of the 1930's Formal dress!  Even worse I thought I was going to run out of beads, but a trip to my shop to teach today solved that problem ... phew.
Although the choice of fabric for this gown is a little outside the box, it is looking great.  The beading, however is taking so much time.

Back to the 1920's dress, I had about three changes of fabric, but I think I'm happy with the end result.  I just have a few seams to sew tomorrow, and it will be all done.  The dress has some draping that is clasped somewhere between the waist and the hip, and it does this on both the back and the front.  I needed to find two clasps of some kind.  While wandering through one of those "junk" jewellery shops I hit upon the idea of buying a pair of earings and deconstructing them to make them work.  It was a very inspired "budget" idea, and I think they look terrific.

There No Such Thing as Can't ..

.. It is just something you haven't done before.

I've been a bit quiet lately, and the reason is easy, I'm wrestling with the world of cyber space.

It has taught me so much about courage and persistence.  Courage to try something you've never done before, and persistence to figure it out even when you start to doubt you can ever get it done.

As I have hinted previously, I've been unwell for the past two years, and during that time have been on all sorts of meds, that combined with my un-wellness has meant my brain has been in a constant state of fog!  I have struggled to remember my name, let alone what I am supposed to be doing.  During this time I had to give up driving, and give up almost all of my work in the shop.  Needless to say it has been difficult for my family.

So now I'm off those meds, and have a new specialist who is working things out.  I'm functioning so much better, and believe that things are really on the improve.  So it is time to get back to all the things I have wanted to accomplish.  The first of those was to create a Smart Phone App for the shop. Frankly I was terrified when I began and looked to outsource it to an IT specializing in such technology.  Then I though heck, I can do this.  And I did, the app should be approved by Google's Android market in around 5 days.  It is cool and includes the ability to reserve a class, let the shop know that you won't attend a class etc.  You can also check on the status of your machines service.  There are coupons that are programmed to flash on for a defined amount of time and then vanish.  It is all way cool!

The next thing I wanted to do was to step up the use of social media, and the web for our annual shop hop, known as The Fabric Frolic.  And again I faced the self doubt.  But after a hard day working away at the computer I have it mostly figured out.  I have to say it was stressful, and the hardest thing was knowing what questions to ask, but now that I'm well underway I am amazed at what I am able to do.

I guess that is a good life lesson.  I've always taught my children that they are only limited by fear and self doubt, and now I have lived my own message.

Some sunny inspiration for you all ....

How many times to you just lack motivation?  I know I do! 

Over the past weeks I've been so busy setting up two new websites, and trying to finish the two gowns I need for next week, that I'm feeling a little drained.  

But today is a particularly glorious spring day.  The sky is a lovely blue with puffy white clouds floating around.  It is exactly the kind of day I love, so I'm bound to get quite a bit done.

Maybe it isn't a great day where you are and you're looking for some inspiration?  I went looking for something to give us all a smile and get me going.  Here it is ...

More on that Confetti Technique ...

After yesterday's video, I managed to find another great tutorial on this technique for making landscape and texture quilts.

Trying new things can be such fun.

A visitor ...

Our son, James shifted into his first home around a month ago. He is loving it and has lots of plans for fixing the old house up.

He didn't expect to find something else living there! He has a wombat that thinks he should live under the house, and James (with advice from wild life experts) has been encouraging him to move on.  The best technique seems to be playing his music to the wombat ... 

But every three days or so, Mr Wombat returns in the hope that James has vacated.  He seems too old to move too fast so James managed this picture of him late last night.

A fun way to waste time ...

I've finally finished the newsletter for the shop, and have made good progress on the two gowns I'm making.  I thought I'd do some work on finding vintage style tea cups, plates and so on for our new Coffee and Cake sessions (at the shop).

What fun I have had trawling through e-bay looking at all the lovely pre-owned crockery.  I think it will all look so lovely when we have our sessions, and am inspired to embroider some napkins and table cloths to finish the look.

The Coffee and Cake sessions will raise money for charity, since we are asking everyone who comes to make a gold coin donation.  We will do some lovely food, and nice fresh tea and coffee. Practically all our tutors have offered to do a demonstration for the sessions, which will add to the fun.

If you'd like to join us, we'd love to welcome you.  Just RSVP to the shop so we know you are coming (e-mail is easiest sales@michellessewingbasket.com.au).

Dates & Details:

Wednesday 3 October 2012, 10am-11.30am - Be amazed at how simple shaping lace can be with Heirloom Expert Jeni.

Wednesday 10 October 2012, 1pm - 2.30pm - Learn Cindy's secrets for planing and selecting fabrics for a quilt.

Thursday 11 October 2012, 10am-11.30am - Join Michelle for a short presentation on 5D Embroidery Software.

Thursday 25 October 2012, 10am-11.30am - Janna has a beautiful Christmas stitchery for you to make while you are at this session.  As a treat we will provide the kit for you!

Tuesday 30 October 2012, 10am-11.30am - See the magic of a sewing machine that will sew a cosmetic's purse including putting in the zipper, automatically!!!  This demonstration with Meg will really surprise you.

Friday 23 November 2012, 10am-11.30am - It is the finishing touches that make a garment look great.  Margaret will show you how to get that finish on hems today.

Spring has sprung

With the exception of hay fever I love everything about spring, the beautiful warm days, and the cool evenings included.

Today is my day for being a little more disciplined than usual.  I will do all my office work this morning and then work on my gowns this afternoon.

I had a brain wave about the long evening gown I have now drafted and am ready to cut out.  It features a beautiful yolk and I had intended to embroider this, but I would also like to bead it, and frankly beading through dense embroidery stitches is no fun.  It was then that my brain when *ta da*.  I'm going to digitize the pattern for beading in a running stitch and then embroider it to the yoke.  This will then become the pattern that I will bead through.  How good is that?

There are times I want to scream...

I work with technology all the time.  The machines I use (and sell) are very high tech, I use social media, I digitize and teach others how to digitize.  So I'm pretty good with the old Technical stuff, and that's why I'm so frustrated.  I worked hard to produce the shops newsletter only to have our current website server decide to stop hosting our emails and put the with gmail.  Now we can only send 50 emails before it blocks us for 24 hrs.  Imagine that only 50!  Hell we have thousands of customers waiting for the email!
Why oh why does "business" make it so hard to do business with them?

Thankfully I am nearly finished working with our amazing web guru on the new websites, and that should solve all our email problems.

Meantime, I did some sewing on the weekend.  The first dress I started for the convention is turning out ok, although the style would better suit someone with a size 10 figure.  I've had second thoughts on my fabric choice and are now embroidering some fabric for the dress.  Meantime I have made a test of the second long evening gown, and it looks lovely.  It too is taken from a vintage pattern (1930's) and boy they don't make them like this anymore.  It has a charming line to it, and made even me look elegant.

Looking forward to doing some sewing tomorrow ...