We do the impossible

and before breakfast too! I can’t block large quilts, we just don’t have the space. Our biggest rooms are about the same size as my quilts and strangely they are full of furniture, who would have thought it. There isn’t room for us to take the furniture out of one room and move it to another. So how do you block a large quilt? Well you buy a lot of thick polystyrene boards and lay them out on the bed and overhanging all the way around. Of course this does mean that once you are on the opposite side of the room to the door the only way back is to wriggle on your belly around the end of the bed under the boards. Half way through the escape I did wonder why the army train for blocking quilts. You really don’t need a fit of giggles when trying to wriggle through a tight space with lots of turns. We also discovered that there is a limit to how far you can reach and accurately place a pin. The limit being about 3″ less than you need, typical. Still it’s done and it looks great. Hopefully it will dry during the day and we will be able to go to bed tonight, if not the sofa will have to be dug out from the pile of quilts waiting to be quilted, or I could just sleep under the longarm.

Speak or stay silent

I belong to several mail list, mostly quilt related. When I first joined I listened, I tried to soak up the feel of the lists. When I felt I had I understood the lists I started posting to join in with the community. Now I write two or three posts per list per day when I have time at my computer. However I send maybe one per month. Why? Well I can’t figure out the rules for most of the lists any more. Actually I can figure out a lot of rules. So many that I can’t see what you can safely post to some of these lists.

One rule I think I understand is no commercial posts. Many lists are funded by advertising so it makes sense that if you want to advertise you should pay. Should you also remove the link to your website from you signature? What about the link to your blog, or talking about your blog, or providing a link to a piece of your work which is on your business site? Well that depends, on who is reading on what day and how they feel. Should those who make money from their quilting even join these lists? Is it OK if they only read and don’t post?

What about going off topic? Personally if the group allows it and it’s marked in the subject line, I don’t mind but in some places it causes a lot of problems. Should the group set rules to prohibit anything off topic (then how close do we have to stay to the topic to be safe?) or should the members understand that some others don’t like them and just stop out of concern for the rest. Then again should the objectors tolerate it for the benefit of those who do want to discuss issues further afield.

What if a quilt (or indeed a customer interaction) could be seen as racial, political or religious by another group member does this then become taboo on an otherwise quilt focused list?

Maybe you can start to see why I don’t post much. This has been a very bad couple of weeks for ‘rules’ appearing. I say it like that as none of the lists seem to have these ‘rules’ and yet they should be obeyed. Tricky if you don’t know what they are. Your best guess from yesterday may be utterly out of date by tomorrow when your message is read, so it’s a lot easier to keep quiet. Saying nothing offends no one. Of course it helps no one either. I wonder how many have given up, losing one voice on a list doesn’t matter. Losing 2 or 3 isn’t really a big deal either, but I’m pretty good at speaking my mind, and I’ve shut up. that suggests to me a heck of a lot of quieter and more timid people have too. People who probably have a lot to share. In my experience quiet people listen and learn, so are a font of information, if only others will give them a safe place to share. Of course that then puts me in the same place all the other list subscribers who make new ‘rules’. Just like them I want the list to deliver what I want and like them I think it will be for the good of many if not all.

This brings me to the point of the post. Just because I am a member of a group doesn’t mean I get any say in how it behaves, I have no more rights than the next person, and if it doesn’t fit me it’s time to move and find something that is a better fit. I don’t know if groups just bicker more this time of year, but it seems to be one of my close of the year traditions, a cull of mail lists and groups. This year it looks like there are plenty that I can do without, although I will miss some of them and wish for a more live and let live attitude, I think I will be happier without the stresses. On the other hand this year I have discovered a couple of really good groups too. Mostly by members visiting this blog and leading me to them. To the friendly and accepting groups, thank you, and I hope you keep your wonderful atmosphere.

Pretty goodies

Here are the goodies I was talking about. Calendars, notebooks and mugs. The calendars have a different quilt for each month. I tried to get in lots of my new quilts and kept a few old favourites. The mug has nude with rope on it, going most of the way around the mug. If you want to orde any of these items please ues the contact me link to the right.My article in Down Under Quilts has come out, and seemed to have been well received. It is available not only as a traditional magazine but also as a digital subscription. I haven't been a fan of digital magazines, but they have managed to get the feel of looking a magazine. You can flip pages and look closer easily. It's a fun magazine well worth a look. I am out and about at the moment so can't supply a link but if you search for the title, Down Under Quilts, you will find it.

Banks, and goodies.

Hmm, I feel I have to post about banks given the amount of time and energy they suck from me, but I’m not sure if I should be praising or cursing mine at the moment. My bank account has been a catalog of errors, culminating in me being totally locked out of my account on the 1st December. That’s pretty bad right. I was given a few possible solutions, none of which were likely to work, but today I went into the bank to try and sort it out. The first person I spoke to remembered me from my last visit (trying to fix a different and still unresolved set of problems) and correctly identified this had gone beyond anything she could fix and need to be handed over to a manager. Which she did as quickly as she could. He was helpful and fixed most of my problems, some we decided to leave as fixing them would cause more issues, some he can’t fix, as the bank doesn’t allow him to. Overall I now have a working bank account again, some services that have never worked now will, and I can get at my money. On the other hand, it has taken up a lot of time to get back to just mostly working. Hence my dilemma, good or bad?

On the other hand I was very late getting to the bank as every time I tried to leave the house I got another book order in. From that point of view it has been an amazing day. Other than it being a far better use of my time to post lots of books at once (at the great self service machine) it’s lovely to know so many people want to buy my book. I am definitely making a dent in the book mountain. Thank you all for the orders and please do send me pictures of your finished quilts I would love to see what you do with the ideas.

I will also be trying to add some new merchandise to my web site this weekend. I have mugs with ‘Nude with Rope’ on them for eight pounds each, wall calendars, and desk calendars eight and five pounds respectively with a picture of a different quilt every month and A5 notebooks with my blue nude on them. They have been selling to quickly for me to get pictures of them, but more arrived this morning so I should manage to get some pictures before they all head off again. Finally, for those who like my pencils, I will be adding those for sale too, at 10p each. If you are ordering anything else, put a note on that you would like a pencil or two and I will put them in for free.

Now I think it is time to do some quilting. Starting your day at 5.30pm is a bit sad really isn’t it.

Quilt on the frame

This is what is currently on the frame. It is a sample for a pattern I have written, which should be available early next year. I've had the top waiting to quilting for a while and as I needed a breather from demanding quilts I thought I would get it done. After all I need it finished to put on the pattern. I have already quilted one sample of the pattern with feathers in the spots so I wanted something different for this one. I've put a different filler in each colour of spot on the quilt and in the black areas I am making different borders with the quilting. I got about two thirds of the way though yesterday, which was pretty good, but I would like to have if finished for tomorrow lunch time. It's not likely, but I have found someone to do binding or me and it would have been nice to hand it over to her. I guess after the months it has already waited another week isn't going to matter.The wadding in the quilt is wool, Dream Wool to be precise, which is the wool it the holiday quilt as well. Sorry that took a while to find out. The label was in a safe place and took some extracting.

Brain itch

Last night my brain started itching, it does that. Something wanted out and I couldn’t quite see what. It was a jumble, with the holiday quilt playing a part and star and shading and well stuff. So I tried looking through the books I had been looking at just before and after the Festival of Quilts as all the other stuff seemed to fit that time scale too. There were some ideas, but none wanted to be a quilt yet and none were the problem.

It finally came to me just as I was falling asleep. Oh my it’s going to be fun, and mammoth. Tet has spent a lot of today getting it down on paper for me, as it would have been a nightmare to draft by hand and less trouble by machine. Now I am excited, I think it will be a good quilt. I have enough fabric to start it (although the fabric to finish it is only just on it’s way) and I can’t wait to start. Sadly I still have a couple of customer quilts that need to be quilted before Christmas so I should do them first, but at least I have a plan now. I don’t know how long it will take, but I don’t think it will be quick. I will be largely keeping this one as a surprise, but it will be a bed quilt, fairly traditional and very me.

Computers!##$%

So my web site is run on our own server in a very good data centre. The staff of said data centre are currently earning their fee trying to find out why some of the racks (including the one with my website in) are not talking to the outside world. Hopefully they will have it fixed pretty promptly. However if they don’t we will fail over to the other machine in the other data centre. It’s slower but it works. Please bear with us while we give the guys a chance to work. At least I have a back up plan and we can switch over if there is a serious outage. Excessive for a quilting business? Probably but I like my web site to be up

Yay, the guys did their job, and quickly. I’m back up and running.