45” fabric ???

Whatever happened to 44” – 45” wide fabric? I’ve put in some sewing time this week and had the occasion to follow directions that called for a cut of fabric that measured 41-1/2” of fabric across the width. I had to cut into part of the selvage to get 41-1/2” of fabric in that cut!

Now, this was “Quilt Shop” fabric. As opposed to “Big Box Store” fabric, which tends to be not as generous in their widths. Altho, some of the big box stores are carrying some high-end fabric and things are getting better on that front.

Being a quilter, I generally take big pieces of fabric and cut them into small pieces and then sew those small pieces into big pieces. I usually buy a little more fabric than my design calls for. And if sewing something created by others, I generally buy a little more, too. Doesn’t hurt to “feed the stash”. Plus, most times, I buy Fat Quarters. So, I really don’t concern myself with width of fabric. I buy what fabric grabs my heart, my senses.

Unless I am designing a pattern. Then, I am concerned with fabric width and that’s another story.

I wondered if other fabrics in my stash came close to being 44'” – 45” wide. Well, after measuring several fabrics from my stash – I did not have any that measured 44” wide. None at 43”. None at 42. I lucked out to find 41-1/2” wide fabric! That’s not anywhere near 44” – 45”! Karamba!

I went to simplicity.com to see if the newer patterns compensated for these narrower fabrics.

Nope, they were still using 45” as a “buyable” width. Even if you could buy 45” wide fabric, that width would include the selvage.

I went into EQ to see on what fabric widths they were basing their “yardage to buy”.

EQ had a 44” wide option. But, NOT a 45”. They must have measured their fabric, too! They also have 42” wide as an option. I use the 42” width for determining fabric yardage in EQ.

Now, why would a pattern company such as Simplicity still hold onto the notion that there is 45” wide “usable” fabric in the width? Never was. If fabric were 45”, that would include the selvage – selvage is NOT usable. With clothing patterns, you follow their directions to place your pattern pieces on the fabric and generally they don’t give you much “wiggle room”. And if that wide sleeve butts up against another pattern piece on a narrower width of fabric (less than 45”), you WILL have to piece that sleeve in the underarm area. Been there, done that.

I don’t think I have any 44” wide usable fabric. Do you?

Live Auctions: Exhilarating

If seen auctions in movies and on TV, but I’ve never been to a live auction.  Until today.  Wow!  What an experience.

We were in the market for some new kitchen floor tile and son said that there was a close-out sale at a place he does business with.  Well, it turned out to be an auction, not a sale.  With a fast-talking auctioneer who stood on a ladder as he moved from pallet to pallet of tile.

Luckily, I found a tile I liked and it was in a pile that was going to be auctioned off shortly.  DH & son went and got us registered.  You had to put down $100 cash to register and get a number.  You could only bid if you had registered and had a number.  The registration was refundable in case you didn’t bid on anything or if you wanted to charge your purchase.

Most of the palettes of tile were big lots – 500+ square feet and one I heard was 5,000 square feet and we only needed 131 square feet for our kitchen.  And the tile I liked came 144 square foot in a pile.

When that auctioneer started doing his thing – my, you felt like you just had to buy something.  It was fast & exciting.  Would be easy to get caught up in a frenzy.  The adrenaline was pumping.  And please don’t raise your hand, unless you intend to bid.

DH did the bidding for our small pile of tile – got it for 45¢ a square foot.  That tile originally sold for around  $1.75 a square foot.  I think we got a bargain!  It was such a feeling of euphoria when we “won” our bid!  Just a natural high.

I’ve signed up at the auctioneer’s website to get their newsletter.  I wonder what other auctions will be coming up in the future that might have something I’d be interested in.

I see on their website that they have an auction that will be at a Moving & Storage - 110+ vaults of un-paid storage.  “Vaults opened as they go. Be prepared to make immediate buying decisions.”

I wonder if any of those vaults hold anything of value?  What are the odds of lucking out on a purchase?  Like having something really good inside the vault.  But, then, they have not paid their bill, so the items might not be that important, or that valuable.  Hmmm, one can only wonder.

The price of sewing has gone up

I save things.  In some circles I might be known as a pack rat.  I’d rather be referred to as a “keeper of important things.”  In my container that has snaps, hooks & eyes and other closures is an old card that used to have snaps snapped to it.

If you will click on the above pic, you will see that the empty card on the left is from “Penneys” and the price printed right on the card is 13¢ !  I don’t know the year that those snaps were bought, but Pennys is now known as JC Penney and certainly does not sell snaps today.  The card on the left has snaps made by Dritz and they sell for $2.29 today at JoAnn.  Same amount of snaps – 12 of them – but very different pricing!

I did a search in Bing for “calculate percentage increase” and got a formula that gave me a price increase of 1661.54%.  That’s One Thousand Six Hundred plus percent increase!   That can’t be right!  Anyone out there who knows their math?  Let me know if that percentage is right.

Actually, I got the snaps from JoAnn on sale and only paid half-price $1.14.  And using the same formula to calculate the percentage it was only a 776%+ increase.  Such a deal …

Raccoons & Dinosaurs

Another grandchild came to use the sewing machine on Sunday and Tuesday.  This wasn’t the 1st time that Jessi has been here to sew/quilt.  In fact, way before I started blogging, I wrote about our first Quilting Adventure together.  Goodness, she was 5 then, is 17 now.  Doesn’t seem like 12 years ago!

Along with pics of grandkid’s shoes, I like to take “back” shots --

Jessi is working on the planks in the boat.

We found that the “waves” fabric we liked didn’t show up too well on the fleece background.  Soooo, fused “wave” to blue fleece and cut a margin of blue around & were able to use the fabric.

Looks like a tall chair with feet!

    Aaaah, but it is only Jessi!

Jessi had bought the fleece & a Tshirt with a raccoon on it.  Her mom sketched paw prints on the Tshirt and we were able to appliqué the paw prints down on the fleece, also.  The boat fabric came from this grandma's stash.  The blanket goes to a special friend.

There’s a raccoon on the other corner.  There’s a story to this blanket & the appliqués, but it’s not mine to tell …

We have raccoons back in our neighborhood, again.  The cold weather had kept them away, but they are back to digging in the flower beds and the mulch and knocking things around.  So, my DH traps them & re-locates them.  This guy is no longer in our neighborhood --

What a coincidence – a raccoon in a cage and a raccoon in the sewing room … I prefer the sewing room kind!

Bloggers can get EQ7 free!

Bloggers – if you want a chance to give away a copy of EQ7 on your blog AND get a free copy for yourself, head on over to EQ’s blog for details.  Scroll on down to April 26 entry.

Electric Quilt will even mail EQ7 to the winner.

Beta-testing EQ7

Usually, I am not lucky. Someone else always wins the lottery. Someone else always wins the quilt that a local guild raffled off. Someone else always gets the best parking spot. But, this time, I got lucky! I was asked to Beta-test EQ7! How about that!

What exactly is "Beta-testing"? Well, let's say you've created a pattern for a quilt you designed and want to present it to a class or publish it. You'd want to be sure the pattern was accurate as accurate can be. So, you ask some friends if they would check thru the pattern for typographical errors. Spell-checkers do not know the difference between "their" and "there", but people do. Pattern has to be checked for accuracy in the measurements of the pieces to be cut to make the blocks, yardage required for the pattern must be accurate. And it would be best if some of the friends would make the quilt. That's the real, true test for patterns.

So, that's basically "Beta-Testing" -- checking and re-checking that the product is written correctly. In the case of computer programs, every click of every button has to produce the correct results.

How it all started --

At the end of Dec. 2009, I received an email from EQ asking if I'd like to test EQ7. Would I? You betcha! We were asked to keep this hush - hush.  (On April 28, we found out from Ann that we could talk about or even blog about what we did.)

In our next email, we found out that we would be asked to spend 20 hours in EQ7, over a course of 4 weeks. Hey, I could do that.

We received a CD of EQ7 Beta in the postal mail. The note inside said to go ahead and install it and play with it, doing usual things and trying out new things. There were a few instructions on things to try. It also said that EQ6 project files would be created with this version.  So that meant if we were to design, we would have EQ6 files after the testing was over – no need to use EQ6 during the testing period.

It was interesting working in a "beta" program. Things were incomplete. Some of the new features were so new they weren't included on the CD. There were only 3 block libraries in the program and 1 fabric library. The Help files weren't complete. There were notations in the Help files to remind the programmers about things they were yet to do in that area. I was surprised to see that some of the notations they used were the same things I do when re-vamping a webpage. Like putting 3 big X's at the top of the paragraph that needs further info. Can always search for "XXX" and find all the things that need attention.

Another email came and had an attached file that had "Beta Testing Instructions". We were asked to give info about our computers -- the make & model, operating system, screen resolution, etc. There were also tasks that we were asked to perform, covering every aspect of the program. Majority of the tasks involved working with the new features (the new features that were complete).  And printing from the program. We were asked to report any problems we found. I found a few - very minor things. Everything was just working beautifully.

The CD had an expiration date of March 15 and on March 15, the program no longer worked.  I had been using EQ7 for almost 2 months and when I went back into EQ 6, I found I was missing so many of the new features from EQ7.  Drag & drop blocks, grid on the Custom Set Quilt, to name a couple.

I wasn’t expecting it, but near the end of March, another CD came in the postal mail from EQ – EQ7 Upgrade Beta 3.  Wow, I got to play some more!

The note in the packaging asked us to try out the completed new features and test out the Help files which were now pretty much complete.  The problems that the Beta-testers found, they had fixed.  The libraries were still being worked on, so they still weren’t complete. 

Also in the note was the 1st time we found out about the new activation/de-activation program.  On EQ6, you were only allowed so many activations.  EQ7 allows for having 2 activations at one time.  If you get a new computer, you de-activate on the old computer and then you can activate on the new computer.  Much better than a dongle would have been.

On April 10, we received an email with a ZIP file that contained some files to copy over to the program which would give new code to the way the program works.  And some tasks to work through.  Again, asking us to report any problems.  EQ7 is addressing the netbook this time around.  When EQ6 came out, there was no such thing as a netbook.  I did not find any problems in my testing of this version.

I felt honored to have been asked to Beta-test EQ7.  I enjoyed poking around in the program.  And I had an excuse for all the time spent having fun – I was working – I was Beta-testing!  LOL

Electric Quilt announced EQ7 on April 24 and they are running a fantastic pre-order sale price for a new program or an upgrade.  EQ7 will be shipping June 7 (how clever).  And while you’re there, you can read all about the new features.

If you’re going to jump in on the fun of EQ7, might I suggest joining the info-eq list for a while – you will pick up a lot of tips from all the new EQ7 users.  And if you have any questions, that’s the place to get (almost) immediate answers.

What did I think of EQ7?  I loved it and recommend it, but that’s fodder for another blog post.

Lists for iPod Touch

Has this ever happened to you – you bring home a book from the library and when you start reading it, you realize you have read it before?  The thought of dragging around a list of “books read” never appealed to me.  Although I did meet a gentleman at the library who had a printed list (of many pages) of books he had read!  It would have to be constantly re-printed, in order to keep it in alphabetical order, or sorted by author.

I do bring an envelope of clippings of articles on books to watch for when I go to the library.  What a mess that is to look through!

So, I thought – how about putting the list on a page on my website and then I could look at the list at the library on my iPod Touch.  Wow!  What a great idea this is!

I can update it at any time and don’t have to print anything to have a current list at my finger tips.

I had a head start on a list of books I had read, as I had created one on a spreadsheet, years ago, but I never kept up on it.  I was able to get names of some “books read” from the notes in the envelope.  My list is not complete, but it I had to start somewhere and now was a good time.

I also have a list of books I want to read.  And also a list of my favorite authors.  I can hardly wait to try this out the next time I go to the library!

Then, I thought, why not put up a list of movies we’ve watched so that I can access them on my iPod Touch?  So when someone asks me, “seen any good movies lately?”, I can just whip out my iPod Touch & flick through the list of movies to jog my memory.

It was easy to get up a list of movies, cuz I’ve been keeping track of the movies we’ve watched since we got Netflix in Dec. 2009.

We recently enjoyed “Fracture” with Anthony Hopkins. A good courtroom drama with suspense.

Another thing I have put on my website – for my own use – is a webpage that has a list of all my favorite links.  So, it’s real easy to find all my “private pages” – all I have to do is remember the address of that one page.
I can do that …