Grumble grumble grumble

The desktop died again. I spent most of yesterday fixing it. I simplified the recovery process by placing all my software in a notebook binder thing. Plus I made a list of the order that the software had to be fixed in. Yes I had to make sure that I installed 4D Pro before I installed Norton. While I was watching the desktop install, BORING. I had the laptop in front of me on the desk and was cruising the Internet looking for a good source of polos, t-shirts and caps. I ordered a few catalogs.

This morning was cleaning for the house appraisal coming on Thursday afternoon. I had to run a few errands like the dry cleaner. The Hubby was in the habit of having his military uniforms (me too) being laundered and pressed at the dry cleaners. Now that he wears dress shirts and chinos to work, he like to have them done at the dry cleaners. Our dry cleaner has decided to close on Saturdays and be open later in the evening on Thursday night. Thursday night downtown businesses are open later, trying to entice shoppers downtown. Downtown shopping area is four blocks by three blocks. We live in a very small town. Once I got home, I finished the canoe shirts. They are in the washer.

New Machine Love

I have to show off my new machine. Thursday was a good day learning to use my new machine. I made a hat for my son stationed at Ft Hood, in Texas.

Once I got home the Hubby and our son put together the stand and we carried in the machine. So Friday, I set up my room, to fit the machine right inside the door to my sewing room. I stitched out some samples, to make sure I can switch needles and that all the needles were properly threaded.

So the Hubby and a bunch of his buddies are going to canoe the first fifty miles of the Mississippi River. I get to drop them and the canoes at the headwaters in Itasca Park and then meet them at the first night's camp site, then pick them up at Lake Irving. This trip is next week, and the Hubby wanted T-shirts for each of the guys. I had a canoe design and I added their names to each of the shirts. So today I finished two of the four shirts. Plus I stitched out another set of the baby slippers.

Of course that was after he took over my whole day on Saturday, we drove out to the camp site. The drive was to make sure that one I knew where I was going, But also to make sure I could get the vehicle down the very narrow dirt road and that the site was open for camping and to check and see what was available. Today I also cut up a copy of the map and laminated for the guys to take with them. Nothing is worse that a soggy map.

Does your husband volunteer you for stuff? Mine does all the time. The canoe trip, the t-shirts and now I found out that he volunteered me to stitch out 15 more t-shirts for the Boy Scout troop's summer camp. I think I need to draft a donation slip for my taxes, for the shirts.

new machine tomorrow

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you tomorrow. Can you hear me singing? Actually I hope not, I can't carry a tune for beans.

I get my new machine tomorrow. I'm so excited. I just can't stand it. I got the call around 1030 this morning that the machine was in Grand Rapids. I had my nail appointment and then we have a dinner thing tonight with the Hubby's new partner and his wife. Grand Rapids, Mn is about an hour and a half to get there. So I couldn't go today. The new machine is the Babylock Professional, with the current package deal, I got 2 of each of the hoops. Which is one extra of each hoop. While I've been impatiently waiting, I've been downloading and adding fonts to my software. I'm looking for a font to match the one for the ball caps. Plus I needed one that looked like wood for a digitizing job for a muzzle loading club (rifle). This is the sketch of the design.

The lettering looks like wood branches. I finished the Dakota territory which is the background and the tree stump. I sketched out the coon cap, the powder bag and the ax. I need to merge them and add them in the right places. I need to pull out my light box and sketch out the rifle. Then I will add the lettering last.

I found a nice wood branch like font on 1001 Fonts.


I can add fonts from the Internet to my software, but you learn really quickly which type of font does not work as a good embroidery. Simple clean lines, not all jerky and bloppy. Yes Bloppy is a word in my house. It's kinda of blobby,blochy and sloppy all at once. When I first started adding fonts, I did not print off a copy of the added font, which is a pain when you need to know if the font is Caps only or does it include "(" or even commas and periods. Fonts are often called true type fonts (*.ttf files).

How to add fonts. So you download the font, I save all my downloads to a folder in My documents. I virus scan them. Open the zip file with Winzip and in the folder is a file with an extension of ttf. I grab that file, drag and drop the file into c:/windows/fonts folder. I can use the font in any windows based program like Word or Powerpoint. But not Blogger. Once I've done this I can use the Quick Font Tool in my software to add each font to the folder My Fonts.

Example of bad fonts: Parry Hotter. It looks good on the web and in Word, but the software didn't like it. I found another similar font, just like for Harry Potter, which is very cool. I have fonts that are the Disney font, the CocaCola font, and scary fonts.

The Dakota Territory is going to be appliqued on. So that was easy. I traced the territory in my design software and colored in the center. Then exported the design to be imported into the embroidery software. I told the software how I wanted the stitches to run. For example: Single stitch to mark the layout. Then you lay your fabric on top, then it stitched the outline again, then you trim the fabric to the edges and then the machine embroiders a satin stitch around the edges. Love the automatic etup of my software. I can also add tack down stitches or just run one set of outline stitches. I like the two sets, when I use applique. It allows you to trim tight to the edge of the stitching and prevents cutting the shape being to small.

Okay back to adding fonts to my software. I need to try and stitch out the snow covered font for my banner again. I have some fleece pieces, maybe blue thread on cream or white fleece. Hmmm

Shirt dress Tutorial

The computer saga goes on. My printer/fax/copier/scanner died. At 930 pm no less. I had to buy another one. The new one is a cheaper plastic version. I found out my old one had a feature I really liked that the new one doesn't, enlargening and reducing my copies. I was trying to work on a digitizing job when the scanner died. I tried all the un-helpful tips on the HP website. I'm sort of happy with the new printer. I would have like to find one tha used my old ink cartridges, but NO. Enough whining.

I was cruising around the Internet yesterday waiting for the Schwan man to arrive and found this great turoiral on making over a man's dress shirt into a little girls dress. How cute is that. I'm a big girl and may granddaughters would love grandma made dresses from some of my old dress shirts. I love not having a need to wear dress shirts to work anymore. Jeans, sweats and fleece are my new friends.

http://dana-made-it.blogspot.com/2008/07/tutorial-shirt-dress.html

Living in Northern Minnesota, is tough because yesterday it was 65 degrees and today it's 42. I don't pack up the fleece. All summer long, all three days of it. Laugh loudly, I have a jean jacket in my car just in case. Any way, I had cut up a few old hawaiian shirts, then changed my mind about what to do with them, two of the granddaughter live in Georgia.

On my sewing front, I finished nine polos for the grduation and found out that there are two more coming. I alos think I scored a job doing more polos and T-shirts wiith hats for a local business. I'm writing an estimate, tomorrow. I think I need to call and stimulate the economy. Oh crap, I just called and ordered the Babylock professional single head embroidery machine. All sorts of goodies come with the package. Whoo Hoo.

doll shoes

Today was very productive day, even if what had been on the list to do was bumped down the list. Okay, what I mean was the plan was to stitch out the polo shirts, but the visit yesterday to pick colors and text didn't happen. I did get a friend to pick, which pinecones, she wanted for her towels, which was job 2. Job 2 is now done. Picking colors and text is on for tonight. Just got a call.

I made doll shoes. I found this great site that had embroidery clothes to make for an 18" dolls, like American Girl dolls clothes. I only wanted shoes. Let me explain. I volunteer with a bunch of ladies from my church to sew for a compassionate service project called, "Dress An Angel". We sew preemie burial clothes. Finding clothes appropriate and the right size for a preemie, who has lost their battle with life, it is very hard. Many funeral homes, just wrap the infant in a blanket. Our local funeral homes have found that the families would like their child to be dressed in nice clothes. We volunteered and sew the clothes, donating them to the funeral homes in the area. The funeral homes call us when an outfit is used and we get together to sew another outfit. Each of the two funeral homes were given three different size girl outfits and three different size boy outfits. Our pattern for the outfits are 18" doll clothes. I'm in charge of shoes. The pictures are hard to see. There are eyelets sewn along the top edge that I run a ribbon through so they can be adjusted to fit.

So today I stocked up and embroidered four sets of blue and two sets of white, so far. Tomorrow, I make more white. I can hand stitch thetops to the soles watching TV.

rinse and repeat as needed

I'm not lost. I've been really busy and then my Hubby killed my desktop computer. I came home from a church conference and the computer was frozen in this spam ware program telling him he had bad cookies. My son had this virus over Christmas break. I had to do a computer recovery. That means a lot of my files were deleted off my computer and all the files to activate software programs were broken.

This is a painful physical therapy for my computer. I had bought an external hard drive a few months ago and backed up all My Document files to it. It's just slow and painful to get everything working again. I've had to install and uninstall most of my programs to get them work again.

Install program

restart the computer

test the program

Doesn't work

Uninstall program

Restart computer

mummble mummble

download program on laptop computer

transfer to jump drive

transfer to desktop computer

install program

restart computer

test program

rinse and repeat as needed

Good thing I kinda know what I'm doing

Have you every worked on two computers at once, and forget which keyboard goes to which computer? I'm having that kind of a week.

Three different glues and I think the lace is attached to my Croc Jibbit buttons, my fingers to the cutting mat, and my jeans. Laugh loudly. Head and Shoulders to the rescue. That stuff cleans everything even glue from stuck jeans and gummy fingers. Ooop the computer is ready to rinse again. Hopefully sewing stuff tomorrow. I test sewed out some samples for a friend for some polo shirts. She'll be by tomorrow to pick the color and text. 11 Polo's for the West Point Graduation. Whoo Hoo