Land lines down
July 31, 2008If you’ve been trying to contact me by phone you won’t have had much luck. The phone line appears to have been out a couple of days, maybe longer. If you need to get in touch email seems to be OK so far (different cable coming in). Just wanted to let folk know I am not ignoring them, nor have I completely flipped out (yet).
Hopefully we will be able to get the phones back up soon.
I might be winning
July 30, 2008Or I might be fighting the quilt to a draw. It’s a close call. Yesterday my machine wouldn’t play. Not at all, I guess I managed an area about the size of both hands in 6 hours. Not what I need with a deadline looming. This morning wasn’t a lot more promising. However a good clean, re time, new needle and different thread colour got me going again. Dunno how I will fare when I go back to the lilac, ask me tomorrow. Still I have now made reasonable progress. I can believe this quilt may be finished in time, by the skin of my teeth. It’s going to cost though, I expect to spend the weekend flat on my back of in warm baths. The very dense quilting is hard physical work. I also finished the second book today, and started the third. I am keeping to Heinlein as long as I can. So far I have listened to “The cat who walks through walls” and “The door into summer” and now I am on “The moon is a harsh mistress”. If I need a fourth book, and I suspect I will, I either have to re listen to something or move to a joint project “Variable Star”. It’s going to be a tough call, but without the books I will go nuts doing this quilt, so I will be listening to something. For now though, it’s bed time. I can’t quilt anymore, my hands are shaking too much.
Quilt eats first book
July 29, 2008Well this quilt is taking a while to do. I’m still not quite half way, so it isn’t looking great for being done. So far I have listened to one whole book while working on it, so it’s shaping up to be the most time consuming quilt I’ve done. It’s also very tiring. It has a lot of tiny fiddly quilting. I intend to keep at it and see where I get to. If it’s done it will go to the show, if not I can use it in talks and elsewhere. Who knows? Right now I need to lie in a warm bath and try and get my shoulder working again.
Isn’t POD supposed to be simple?
I thought that the whole point of print on demand was to make things easier. OK maybe it does, if you are printing a novel with black and white pages. However if you want full colour, 8.5″ x 11″, perfect bound it’s harder. Is that a really odd request? Well if you’re a quilter grab a quilting book, if it’s soft cover the odds are that is exactly what I am trying to get printed. So not that odd really. I can find a lot of companies who can’t do that size, and a few that can. Of those that can most won’t tell me how much it will cost. Some of those that will have interesting pricing. Would you pay over 90 pounds for a quilting book? Nope neither would I and at that price I would still be making a small loss on every copy!
So now I am back to calling printers and asking for quotes on a traditional print run. It wasn’t what I had in mind, but beggars and choosers. At least I have just spoken to a very friendly and helpful person from one of the printers. Hopefully they can give a quote I can live with and I will have a winner. We would like to know who we are printing with before the layout goes too much further, and I really do want this book out this year.
At least it is a bit cooler today. I should be able to get some quilting done before I cook. I can see the center of the quilt on the frame now, although I can’t claim to be half way there yet. I am definitely seeing a machine binding in this quilt’s future.
Busy busy
July 28, 2008Well the weekend was hectic if fun. We went down to Canterbury on Saturday as planned and caught up with more people than I had expected. Better still they were people I wanted to see. I managed to do some of the shopping I wanted although good quality belts seem to be in short supply. Canterbury has changed surprisingly little in many ways over the last 20 years, although the new housing estate in the middle of the short cut into town from the university is a bit of a shock. The shop keepers are not only the same but they remember us! Did we spend too much when we lived there?
Sunday we went visiting and a very good dinner was had. As you might conclude this did reduce the time available to quilt of tidy the house. However I did manage to finish the first round of painting things black. Unfortunately Ikea are out of stock of the corner shelves I need and don’t expect them in for two weeks, so I won’t be able to rehouse my stash just yet. I have started moving the bolts though. Especially as one of the wholesalers seems to be watching me. They sent me a box of fabric today, just in time to be first on the new shelves. It turns out I have rather more bolts than I thought, and this walk in storage might not be as huge as I was thinking. Still I will definitely be able to get a better idea of what I have and what I need. Somehow I have run out of marble blues, and I have two quilts waiting that need them. Guess another order is looming.
Other than that it has been hot today. I was hoping it was about to cool down. There has been thunder rolling around for a while now, but the temperature isn’t doing much yet. I find quilting (or indeed doing anything) very hard when it is so hot. I had a plan to do some late night quilting, but if the temperature doesn’t drop I will pass on that. So here I sit in a distinctly warm office blogging, while the show quilts sit and wait. Ho hum.
Paint it black
July 25, 2008It seems a friend of our started a tradition. I am sure he didn't mean to, and probably doesn't know he has yet. Still when he was in the position I now am he spent some hours in the garden painting shelving black. Today I have done exactly that. It is about half the shelving for my new walk in fabric store. The room is now largely empty. If anyone is looking for an office desk or a fabric covered wardrobe do get in touch. They are free to a new home. Once they are gone I can shelve the whole room. I might have to have a rethink about the lighting, but dim will at least be good for the fabric, if hopeless for matching colours. While the shelves dry we are going to see the new Batman film. Maybe when I get home I will be able to start getting the room straight. It will be so good to have all my fabric in one place. I will also have a sensible place to put my spare sewing machines, which should make them easier to get at and my sewing room clearer. Win, win I would say.
Promised Photos
July 24, 2008
I finally remembered to take my camera down with me and take some pictures. I know they don’t show much, but, well, you will just have to wait to see it all. I am so thrilled with how it is going. I don’t think the pictures really show how well it is going, but isn’t that always the way. You will just have to take my word for it that it is much better than the last attempt. If nothing else that was so bad I never shared any pictures of it. Not even with close friends, but this one I am quite happy to show off.
I don’t know how many of you will remember. I had a rather old computer. It didn’t really like me doing anything with pictures including uploading them here. It had a fit if I suggested looking at a video. Well a while ago I got my new machine, and you would not believe the difference. I can now just take some pictures and upload them. It’s just so easy now. I suspect it is going to take me a while to get used to how easy it is now.
Buzzzzzz
July 23, 2008I just can’t believe how many people are coming out of the woodwork at the moment. It’s great coming to the computer and finding who else has appeared. It is encouraging me to take breaks from the quilting too, which is really important. It’s going well now and combined with a book on just one disk I am likely to forget to take regular breaks. I guess I am about 18″ down now. It’s slowed up a bit as the quilting has got denser, but I still love how it is going and I think I may just get it finished in time.
I really will post photos, I just have to remember to take the camera downstairs with me (OK and the memory card too).
Wow, good fabric works!
I think I know what went wrong with the other wholecloth. To use shadow trapunto I needed the top fabric to be thin. I found one that allowed the colour through pretty well, but I didn’t exactly like it. I gave up and I am now just working on a plain wholecloth. It’s only just started but boy I love it already. The difference, well I am now using cotton sateen over wool wadding. I think that is the key, the much higher quality fabric. I am sure the lovely wadding is helping too, but the stitches just look so good on the sateen.
So I am now quite optimistic about this quilt. I still can’t be sure I will get it done in time, but I feel I can give it a very good shot. Yes I will put up a photo later, just a little teaser.
All marked up
July 22, 2008It’s finally marked. I can’t believe I used up three washout pens on this one. There isn’t really that much marking. Still it looks good so far, and I am ready to load it on the frame. With the way life is going I suspect my machine is going to want to discuss what threads I use, so I’ve not got too set on anything. I have an idea of how I would like it to work out, but I can negotiate. Wish me luck.