Computers
February 5, 2010We've all heard about the improvements in technology but I'm not entirely convinced. Once upon a time hard drives were expensive. I mean really expensive but they lasted. Now I seem to need a new hard drive every few months. It's not the end of the world we do have backups and we mirror the data, but it is annoying. Just having to get another drive and install it takes time. If this is improvement I can do without it. I would also like companies to stop improving their soups. Apparently some regulationg body has declared that foods should have less fat and salt in them. In principle I agree. However when you take the cream and salt out of cream of something soups they really loose they character. Maybe it is a drive to bankrupt these companies and make us cook more. If I thought it would get people creating in the kitchen I guess I could live with it, but honestly I think people will just choose cheaper and less healthy foods.I've started planning my NEC projects. As they are still secret squirrel I thought I would try keeping journals for them that I can post after the event. I have a lot of people ask me about my process and this might be a way to give an answer. Of course I have no idea how well I will stick to it, I've never tried this sort of thing before, but I will see. It may get less detailed when the deadline gets closer too 
There are show organisers who care
February 3, 2010I love my quilts traveling but it is nerve wracking. I find it very hard to get my quilts properly insured while they are in transit. Several times I have wondered if I should stop entering US shows because of it. I found out last night that Phoenix Rising has made it into the Lancaster County show. I am thrilled, but my heart sank when I looked at their shipping instructions. Another uninsured round trip coming up. I emailed them to explain the problem I have with this and why the insurance sold by the courier companies wasn’t worth paying for. Usually (if I even get an answer) it is of the lines, “you entered you have to abide by the guide or you can spend a lot of money doing it this way”. Not this time. I got a very well thought out response. They explained how they look after the quilts, how they insure them while the quilts are at the show, and most importantly that they have found a way to insure them on their return journey! How cool is that? They had already found out that couriers will charge you for insurance that won’t work and found a way around it. They are also looking in to the possibility of offering insurance for quilts being shipped to the show. I really can’t express how impressed I am with the attitude and the speed with which they got in touch. I feel so much better sending my quilts out when I know they are going to such a professional, thoughtful and responsive organization. Well done AQS. Maybe if they find the solution to all the shipping problems other show organizers will follow their example. I can hope.
Do you remember I mentioned the new quilt pattern? Well I got the top back on Tuesday and I am thrilled with it. I am assured it was a lot of fun to put together and was quick to make as well. I am really looking forward to quilting it, but it will have to wait it’s turn. I may also put on a border before I do that. I haven’t decided yet. I suppose that is the bright side of it sitting in my quilting queue, I have time to decide. Once I have the pattern ready I will put it up here so you can see the quilt.
Finally, Prague photos part 2
February 2, 2010I’ve been
wanting to do this for days but life has kept getting in the way. I find it does that, but when it is paying work it is hard to turn it down. Lots of customer quilts are ready to return home, and I am feeling better for having cleared some of the pile. I think they start to intimidate me after a while.
If you remember in my last post on Prague, the night we landed it was clear. Cold but no snow. The whole reason for the visit was to find snow and I was really hoping the forecast was going to be right, 3 days or heavy snow. Well it was in a way. I don’t know what heavy snow is like where you are, but here is tends to be very large lumps falling from the sky and being blown about a lot. In Prague it’s just constant small flakes falling. It doesn’t really look like much until you look at the floor and see how much it has built up. Waking up to snow was great, and it decided our first tourist stop, Petrin Tower. The tower was inspired by the Eiffel tower, but is somewhat smaller (60m). It is still 229 steps to the top. I wanted us to get to the top of it as soon as possible so there would be some view before the snow obscured everything.
The plan almost worked. There was still a view but it didn’t really photograph as well as I would have liked. The Petrin tower is on the next hill around from the castle, and I love the view you get not only of the castle but also of the cathedral embedded in it. You can see how much the snow is interfering with the visibility. However you can also see how impressive the cathedral is. I think this might be the best view you can get of the cathedral
You also get a great view of Pragues great wall from the Petrin tower. The Hunger Wall was built for the first time in the 14th century. It was intended as a fortification for the Lesser Town and Castle. It is said that the wall was built as a make work project. There was a famine and the poor of the city could earn food by building the wall. Depending on which report you read people seem to either believe it was defensive and probably didn’t help the poor muc
h, or that it was useless as a fortification and was only a social project. Sorry I haven’t done enough research to have an opinion. I just know it’s impressive.
To get up and down Petrin hill we took the Funicular railway. I have a huge soft spot for them and I took dozens of pictures last time. This time we decided to walk a little way down the hill to a bridge over the railway. It was well worth the walk. I love the view between the trees of the railway and in the distance the town. I think you can probably see the river and then across the river the main part of the town.
After taking the railway back down the hill we had lunch at a local restaurant. It was one of the best means for me. I loved the garlic soup and it was only 1.50! That is just amazing value. Refuled it was time to head for our next tower. This tower doesn’t need long sight lines to appreciate it, as the best view is right below it. Well technically part of it. The tower I am talking about is the Charles Bridge tower. I love the solidity of this tower. It feels safe and stron
g. It also has rooms in it with the most amazing ceiling I also find it’s stairs a lot more comfortable, they are a square spiral. It works surprisingly well. When you pay for access to these towers you often have access to the roof, and this one is especially magical in the snow. You can peer through arches in the wall around the roof and look down on the tourists on the bridge. Again you get a good view of the castle across the river. At the other end of the bridge is another tower, which I really must climb next time, and behind that is the church tower we climbed on our last day.
As you can see maintaining the bridge When I was last there 2 years ago they were working at the other end of the bridge
I assume they have been working their way along the bridge since the. It’s a huge project as they are taking They have also replaced pieces of the statues plinth. All this without shutting the bridge. I’m impressed, and you will just have to forgive scaffolding.
From here we moved on to another tower. Yes if I can climb a tower I will. I love being high The astronomical clock tower doesn’t quite work for me, especially as to access the tower you have to go through a modern building. It just doesn’t feel right. However it can be accessed by two lifts which was a lovely r
I also think the second lift it beautiful. I am amazed they thought to put something so modern into a historical building but it works. The lift in in the center of a massive spiral slope. I am sure this is going to turn into a quilt. 
I’m not sure how, but the shapes are too much fun not to do something with them.
The tower does also give
a good view of the church of our Lady before the Tyn. It’s fabulous towers can be seen poking up beyond the other buildings in the old town square from the ground but then you climb the The tyn towers are further proof (if you needed it) that Prague got a great deal on gothic architecture. Having just checked on it’s correct name it sounds as though a visit to the inside of this church is called for on our next visit.Apparently it’s interior is particularly fine. That has to be worth seeing, as their more ordinary buildings are utterly stunning.
The last picture for tonight is another 
The Powder tower. We went up this one too but it will have to wait for another day. I’ve got another busy day tomorrow. Two more classes, and that means another early start.
Much progress
February 1, 2010It’s funny what inspires me to really get a lot of work done. The most effective is knowing other people are working on my things too. Last Thursday I handed over a pattern sample to one of my students top put together. She had nearly finished it on Friday! She also seemed to have enjoyed it. So I felt I should get it’s brother pattern written too. Being a bit more complex I wanted to be able to give her a bit more info with this one. Saturday evening I came home to find another of my patterns had gone into testing. This also encouraged me to write (and I have two new ideas to get on with as well). I now have two more patterns ready for type setting and another two well on the way. The Phoenix pattern in in progress but we are still debating ways to provide the pattern. We will come up with a solution I just don’t know when.
As well as the writing I have managed to finish several customer quilts. It’s a good feeling to be catching up. I’ve got to. I have a lot planned for shows this year and I will need the frame for my work too. I am trying to get in the habit of booking my slots in the stack the same as customers. I’ll let you know how that goes.
How did it get to be this time?
January 31, 2010I had a great idea, quilt till the bobbin ran out then come and sort out photos for my blog. Now I get here and find it’s tomorrow already. How did that happen? Could it have been going to the Wandering Line in Purley to teach my book to a wonderful group of ladies? Could it be driving back on the M25 (which was actually surprisingly clear)? Could it be the two customer quilts I’ve done tonight or the third I have just loaded and started? No I don’t think so. That can’t have eaten a whole day. It must be gremlins playing with my clocks. Or perhaps the flying pigs have escaped the submarines and are causing trouble. Yes, that is why you never see flying pigs. They all liver on submarines. A student told me so, so it must be true. However it got to be this time, I think I need to go to bed. It’s been a long but very quilty day. I’ve had a lot of fun, I hope my students did too. I can’t wait till next month to see them again.
Email – the bane of my life
January 28, 2010So about this paperless revolution. Anyone remember that, or am I showing my age? I had planned on looking for more Prague photos tonight but instead I’ve been hunting through email and putting paperwork in order. I’ve been finding problems with email for a long time but it just seems to get worse. I’ve now got a reliable system, mostly by cutting out as many links as possible, but I have to have a spam filter in place. That is where the problems start. We have 10,000 spam messages per day. These are just the ones the filter is sure is spam, I also have a few hundred I have to check. Unfortunately it seems that a few good emails are being stopped. It’s very hard to track, and at the moment we can’t see a solution. It’s very frustrating for both sides to have this failure of communication.
If the email gets through it then needs me to do something about it. That is usually not too much of a problem until you have a few that need something looking up. I keep falling into the trap of ‘it will just take a minute’. Well a minute or five, or ten. Then you look up and an hour has vanished. Argh. Still that at least all works. I then often have to print out the information and instead of being a couple of lines it is three pages, so much for paperless.
The worst part is when I need to remember an email from months back. Of course, first you have to remember it exists (darn aging, it really does eat your brain doesn’t it) then you have to find it. There are thousands of messages stored on my computer (yes I do need them all, well mostly) do you think I can ever find the one I want quickly?
So is there a point to this post? Well yes. A while ago I instigated a policy that I would only make a booking if I had spoken to the person making the booking on the telephone. I am now going to extend that to anything that needs to go in my diary. So if you want to see me, for quilting, workshops or talks I need to actually speak to you. If you email me with your number I will call you or my number is on the website. Firstly I remember things far better if I hear them, secondly it makes me go through the appropriate paperwork and gives me the time to put things in my diary. It also means we both know we have achieved communication. In short, it’s safer, more reliable and both parties know it has happened successfully.
We have just updated my online diary. If you have me booked for an event it is worth checking the calender to see that it is listed correctly and if you have a web site I would love to include a link for it.
On a more quilty note, I’ve finally given in to the idea that more of my patterns will have to be pieced by other people. It’s a shame as I would really enjoy making them myself but I just don’t have the time. On the other hand I think at least one of the people I have doing the piecing will really get a lot from doing it, which is pretty cool . She is a really good piecer and I think she will enjoy the challenge of this one. I can’t wait to get the tops back so I can quilt them. They both will have great areas for quilting, and hopefully be striking and popular patterns. I have also started writing the pattern for the Phoenix. I have had so many requests for it, that I am giving it a go. Bear in mind it was never intended to be a pattern, and it is very different to any patterns I have ever seen. It’s taking a lot of writing and re-writing and even then I am not sure if others will understand it. I’ll let you know what the testers say when I get that far.
There are days.
January 27, 2010I'm not a morning person, I know that but when I picked up my Nintendo DS instead of my phone I think it set the tone for the day. I've been nearly on the ball all day and by the time I got home I was definately tired. I had planned on repacking the gearbox on the longarm, but that is quite a physical job so not too appealing right now. In one of my classes I had been talking about a pattern I had been meaning to write and I though it would be a nice simple thing to do tonight.Then I walked into the computer room and turned on my monitor. No screensaver. Odd. No lights on the machine, even stranger I guess one of the cats managed to turn it off. Oh well. I turned my machine on and went to retrieve my phone. Apparently we had a major power cut today. It took out many blocks. Of course that took the computers down and our network needs bringing back up. So here I am ready to work and no computers typical. Worse than that the designs I wanted to work on are all on the computer too. I tell you pen and paper is the way of the future.
First talk of the year and housekeeping
January 24, 2010Yesterday I had a very early start to get to Sevenoaks for the Quilters Guild regional day there. I felt quite nervous as I’ve had a long break from talks (over a month) and I was worried I might have forgotten what to do. Fortunately I had a great audience and they seemed to enjoy it. I had fun too. They had a lucky dip for 50p a go. I got a pack of postcards which had some quilts that I really like. I felt that was very good value. Besides it is fun just digging in a bucket of shredded paper to find things.
From there we headed off to find a friends new house. It is on a new development and doesn’t yet appear on maps, GPS or have street signs. Still we found it and the house was warmed (just gently it is still standing).
Today I had planned a good run of quilting. It was a great plan honest, and went well until I rolled on the quilt to do another area. Then I found out that my tension had drifted in one place. Oh dear. I had lunch and hoped it would look better after food, but the quilt fairies failed me again and I have spent the rest of the day unpicking the quilting. It’s not quite taking the 1 hour per minute of quilting, but it is taking far longer than I would have hoped. Still it’s the right thing to do and the sooner I get on with it the sooner I can get back to quilting.
You may notice I’ve added a couple of items to the list on the right hand side of this page. I’ve been noticing many more foreign visitors here so I have added a translation system. I suspect it won’t be a great translation but I hope it will be better than nothing and will make life a little easier for some visitors. If anyone can recommend a better system please let me know. It’s hard to judge when you aren’t using it yourself. I have also added a link to Quilting Bloggers. This is a great site to find a lot of quilting inspiration. There are blogs, galleries and shops linked from one place. It’s a wonderful site, and will suck as much time as you fancy spending there.
APQS Maintenance
January 22, 2010
I’ve just come back from a day of learning the proper care and feeding of my longarm machine. I have had quite a bit of hand on experience with it so I was expecting to largely pick up little tips. It turned out that there was one piece of maintenance I hadn’t been doing at all and if left can turn expensive. Given you are supposed to check the motor brushes every year and I’ve never done mine we figured it was about time. From the look on Marks face I got the impression it was a sooner rather than later kind of job. so I came home and took mine out.
The handout says they start 1/2″ long and if your are only 3/8″ you need to replace them. I tried measuring mine and it seemed to be 1/2″ so I figured the best was to be sure was to compare it with the new one I got today. Mine is the top one in the picture. It’s clearly worn, although not as badly as we had feared. This is fortunate as I have a quilt on the frame and I really didn’t want to have to clean out the motor with a quilt on. I would have done it if the wear had been really extreme but I am comfortable with leaving this for another 10 hours then doing a through job. I will also finally get my gearbox done. Neither job takes long and they do make a huge difference to the machine. We got to repack Chris’s machine today and it was amazing how different it sounded.
I think the best thing I got today was a kick up the backside, these jobs are quick, easy and will keep my machine giving me good service. What is my excuse for not doing them?
Irish quilting magazine
January 21, 2010
It's been another mad day but I think I will forgive it. I got the next customer quilt onto the frame and started, and I made it to the post office to pick up my package that was waiting, but more about that in a while. The highlight today was finding out that the new Irish Quilting magazine is out and has arrived at the shop. I am really pleased with the article and I particularly like the way they have used the images of my quilts. It was probably one of the trickest and most fun articles I've done. Sherry Nugent who wrote it is also the editor of the magazine and consequently very busy. She was trying to interview me at the time I was wondering if I still had a home I saw it so infrequently and we kept missing each other. One night I got home late and found she had emailed me again to try and arrange a time to call. I replied saying 'tomorrow morning would be great, or about now as you probably aren't sad enough to still be reading your email'. She was a replied saying so. She agreed that the next morning would be fine and joked that so would now. Given how long we had been trying to talk to each other I thought the joke wasn't such a dumb idea. We were both free and neither of us likely to need to rush out (it was after midnight) and unlikely to be interupted. So shortly after 1am we were on the phone chatting. I think that is just amazingly cool. Sherry has said I must stress she doesn't normally call at that time of day, I think she is worried it might scare people off. For me it was perfect far better than having to get up early (before noon) to be interviewed. I am very much a night owl and I think it shows in the article that I was more relaxed and well more me.The package was pretty cool too. It turned out to be a book I have been after for a while. The quilters album of patchwork patterns by Jinny Beyer. It is a book of over 4000 block patterns which is right up my street and I love Jinny's work so I pre-ordered it as soon as I heard it was coming out. It got delayed and delayed, I was giving up hope of ever getting it, then I saw it on the quilt show. I was almost drooling after Jinny explained what was in it. She said there are lots of blocks using borer prints to make them more interesting. She also explained how to take one block and make it more inticate to make a whole quilt of just that block scaled. Those aspects of the book are fantastic, a churn dash with fussy cut fabric looks amazing. However there is also a whole section on drafting which is fascinating too. It isn't a cheap book, but it is good quality and packed full of inspiration. I am very pleased I bought it. I'll have to sign off now and go and get the workshop ready for tonights class.