2013 National Digitizing Retreat

I am pleased to say that I've put the finishing touches on the flyer for the 2013 National Digitizing Retreat, and we are ready to take enrolments.

The event is happening on the 14th - 16th April, a the Hotel Ibis here in Melbourne.  Those dates are just before the AQC so that people travelling can attend both events!

I've been digitizing the beautiful designs that will be taught during the retreat, and since my 6mth old HP has to go back to HP under warranty next week I have been working harder than ever to get everything done and ready to stitch out next week.  Thankfully my new Apple will give me the chance to re-write all the lesson for TruEmbroidery! 

With the assistance of Blessington (the Australasian distributor of TruEmbroidery and all 5D Software), I can announce that Cheryl Bryant and Letitia Moore will both be joining me as Tutors.  Both of these women have many years of digitizing experience and are wonderful tutors!

If you want more info on the 2013 National Digitizing Retreat, you can find it all on my website.

TNT

So many people have issues with thread breaks, shredding and skipped stitches when they sew.  Learning about your threads is a great place to start if you want to overcome these problems ...
Here is a great video I found for you all.

When things heat up a bit too much!

Australia is a harsh country to live in.  Everyone knows about the abundance of wildlife that will try to kill you, but I think the constant thread of natural disaster like bushfire, and flood are much more scary.

Melbourne has had a hot summer, with days on end above 30 degrees Celsius, and with no rain for months.  There is no more grass left with out lawn just a dust bowl, even the trees are looking poorly.

I wasn't born in Australia, but immigrated here in 1988 with my husband Jim, and two elder children Cara and James.  Before coming here I had see the amazing pictures of fires, jelly fish that kill, and my greatest fear ... snakes.  Actually no my greatest fear was having natural gas cooking appliances!  I know that sounds lame, but I was terrified that I'd have to light gas to cook our family dinner and was hugely relieved when our first home in Melbourne (a rental) was a townhouse surrounded by concrete and with electric cooking.  It was a short reprieve since around 2 years later we brought our home, which had the dreaded gas.  It's funny how you can get so wound up about something you feared simply because you had never experienced "it", in my case gas cooking. 

And so yesterday fire came to the outer suburbs of Melbourne.  Tinder dry grass leapt into flames (presumable because someone was careless) and caused a major headache with 500 fire fighters battling to protect homes, and business properties including Petrol Stations! 

We have a son, who has an intellectual disability.  He has a great love of fires.  He has set various parts of our home on fire more than once.  The first one was when he built a fire on top of a ducted gas heating vent (these are vents in the floor).  It kind of made sense that he wanted heat to come out of the vent, and as the gas heating wasn't programed to be on at that time of the day he took charge and made it happen for himself.  He kept on lighting fires in and around the home, and one morning while I was busy clearing up the kitchen he set fire tot he family room.  The fire brigade had been to school, and he was very keen on everything to do with the excitement of fire.  I looked out of the kitchen window to see him outside in the freezing cold.  Beckoning him inside he refused to come, and so I went toward the back door, passing through the family room.  The reason why he was outside was evident, he had evacuated to the letterbox, our meeting place in case of house fire, and was not to be budged.  Inside the family room was ablaze with flames literally licking the ceiling, and engulfing an armchair.  The bookcase nearby was smoking hot.  On instinct I rushed to the laundry and just kept loading bucket after bucket of water on the blaze.  It seemed like forever but finally it was doused.  After that he took to lighting his fires in secret.  He set fire to packets of food in the pantry (trying to cook?) and wardrobes.  Every time the fire went out because he would close the door and thereby starve the fire of oxygen.  I worry that he will be a fire bug in the future, but he is simply unable to learn that it is not Ok.  We watch him like a hawk all summer, as does his school and the various groups that provide us with respite.

When I see someone arrested for setting a fire, chills go up my spine.  Could that be our son in the future?  What would become of him in prison?  

We live in the East, and a good safe distance from yesterday's fire, but it was a reminder that even though our home is in a suburban setting, no one can be complacent about Fire, in this harsh, sunburnt country.

Today is cooler.  A change came through last night, and so it will be a day to be super productive.  With that said it is time to jump off the computer and get on with work.

Fooling around with 5D Software

I've just come home, on what is another very hot day here in Melbourne.  It has been so warm and dry this year that talk in the classroom as all about counting down to Autumn.  We are so funny, aren't we, that we always want what we haven't got?

This afternoon I had my Advanced Digitizing girls in and over achiever Rachael has already digitized her challenge cushion and wanted a couple more of my Kaleidoscope designs to do, naturally I have given these to her, and the other girls too.  The class was great, and everyone was full of questions, which I love.  Especially those "What if?" questions.  Today I was asked if I had done anything on perfecting the look of animal or teddy bear fur.  I haven't but since I had some time to spare I decided to muck about a bit and see what interesting effects I could get with motif fill stitches in 5D Software.  Along the way I created a great looking motif stitch, that looked like this:

Everyone liked the effect (It is actually two motif stitches on top of each other with one mirror imaged Pfaff, 4.4D Art, stitch 11) and wondered if we could save it as a "My Motif".  Tricky, but actually no we couldn't.  So here was the solution. 

1. We saved it as a .vp3 Embroidery file. 
2. We opened 5D Quilt Design Creator, and brought the .vp3 file in.
3. We we did a quick trace.
4. Saved the new file as a picture (it will default to .wmf which is a Vector file format). 
5. Finally we brought the new .wmf file back into 5D Design Creator as a "load vector graphic as an object in draw window), and selected "save as motif".  Hey presto a perfectly beautiful little motif. 

I will make a video of how I did it tomorrow and upload it to YouTube.



Rachael's finished Embroidery designs!

It just goes to show how much fun you can have when mucking around with the 5D Software.

An Old Dog Can Learn New Tricks

Last week I brought my first Apple Mac.  I had never had a strong desire to own a Mac since I had only ever used a Windows based PC or Laptop, but TruEmbroidery has just been released in Australia, and I need to be able to use it to support my customers.
So off I went to the Apple shop in Doncaster, we'd visited there a few times checking things out since we knew that TruEmbroidery was coming since October last year.  Tuesday was the real thing day, and so we went ready to buy.  I never expected to receive the care and attention that we did, and came home not only with a Mac, but a Mac ready to go, and an appointment with a trainer for a one-on-one session on Friday.  Needless to say my first task when coming home was to install TruEmbroidery and then to try to get my head around the new way of using a computer.  The Apple is lovely to use.  So hassle free.

On Friday night I went back and sorted out my email accounts.  Jim had always done this for me so I've never set up a mail box before.  In no time at all I had two mail boxes set up, leaving me one to do for homework.  I was shocked to discover a few days later that my calendar had filled itself in with dates that were on my Android phone.  I've now looked into this and am very excited about how the calendars can be shared between my smart phone, Apple and PC.  Amazing.
I've gotten my head around TruEmbroidery too, and I think I love it.  It is more streamlined than 5D, and have taken some annoying tasks out of digitising.  I am digitising a cushion cover at the moment, which is a challenge project that I have set my advanced students.
They all started with a picture I made using Kaleidoscope 3 (we are an authorised reseller of this fun program), and they can edit it as they wish.

Other rules of the challenge are that the design must have 3 colour changes, and include two of the following techniques:

Candlewicking

Fringing

Thread Velvet

Cross Stitch

Shadow Applique.

We have given ourselves 1 term to finish this project, and students will be using either 5D Embroidery (Design Creator) or TruEmbroidery for Mac.

If you'd like to join in the challenge let me know.

Going over to the Dark Side!

Goodness!  I can't believe I am actually becoming an Apple user.  After having a Windows based computer (laptop and PC) for so long it is amazing simple to navigate around the Apple, which is a pleasant surprise.  I needed to invest in an Apple because my shop is selling the new digitizing software, TruEmbroidery.  I already have a couple of Apple devotees using it, and will be pleased to get my Certification training done at the beginning of March.  

In the meantime I will enjoy discovering how the TruEmbroidery program works.

I have to say that actually buying the Mac was a complete delight.  The shopping experience at the Apple store was enlightening.  The really do retail very, very well!  I'm all booked into my first 1 on 1 class for Friday night, and I've already installed not just TruEmbroidery but also some other Apps that I think I may just fall in love with.

It just goes to show, you should always be open to the idea that technology changes, and what may suit you today, may not suit you tomorrow.  It is a good lesson for us to take back to our shop too, since the sewing machines of today are so amazing, and customers rarely expect the huge range of features and benefits that the technology will bring to their sewing pleasure.

No more time to blog, I've got a new computer to play with (and keep away from Kevin who loves using the Apples at school).

Where has the time gone?

I can't believe that it is February.  It seems like only yesterday that it was November and I was enjoying a visit from my Dad and Mum who live in NZ.  Obviously life has been busy since then because it is the 3rd of February now.

Needless to say the shop has been busy, firstly with Christmas and then more recently with the Fabric Frolic. I spent many hours before the Frolic organising a website and mobile phone app.  The Frolic went well, and now there is just a little book work to complete, and we need to have the Grand Prize draw which is scheduled for tomorrow night. 

I sewed madly over Christmas making a lovely Mariner's compass quilt, and a sample quilt using the Twisted Hearts Flip la K templates.  These templates are great fun, as are the templates for making the Mariners Compass quilt.  I also finished a Butterfly cushion using a new template.  All these were samples for the shop, and while my "ordinary" sewing machine was powering through these projects my Pfaff Creative Sensation was stitching up a storm getting blocks for one of the two BOM's sewn.  There is still much to be done, but I'm over the "hump" of it.

One of the Machine Embroidery BOM Blocks

The pieced Butterfly Cushion

One of the Embroidery BOM blocks.

Owning a shop can take some of the pleasure out of sewing, since there is always something more urgent that the thing I might want to sew.  I have an ever increasing pile of dressmaking fabric begging to be made into garments, and absolutely no time to get it done! 

Over the past week I've been working on the lessons for the Digitizing Extravaganza I'm organising for April (just before the AQC) here in Melbourne.  I've still got nine more lessons to write, but I'm making great progress on it all.  I thought I'd give you a sneak look ....

This is a cutwork design to be embroidered onto a table cloth.

This is a great project, it uses a technique for making Insertion Lace, without actually using any lace at all, and will be used on a hostess towel and pillow case.

This design looks a little weird as a picture because it is a Thread Velvet design that is stitched onto a pair of slippers.

Over the next two weeks I will finish writing all the lessons, and get my test and final stitch out's sewn.  Hopefully I'll have some time to post the photos as I complete them.

This was a fun project.  I copied pages from vintage women's magazines and printed them onto  fabric.  Then I crazy pieced them to make sleeves for the tins that were used to collect entry forms in during the Fabric Frolic.

For now I'm about to become a domestic goddess and cook some biscuits before I get dinner.

A belated happy new year ...