A majority of the stitching I wasn’t happy with has been pulled and that half of the quilt has been re-safety pinned. Now it’s time for quilting (again). This time I’m going to follow Jacquie Gering’s tutorial which uses painter’s tape to assist in quilting straight lines.
I wanted a portable machine to use when I take the Weeks/Ringle workshop in August that Kelly is hosting. I bought it on eBay after searching locally for one for a few months. It’s not that I couldn’t find any; I just couldn’t find any in my price range. The serial number on my machine is AG807981 which means it was manufactured around September 16, 1946.
Our house has terrible natural lighting so I end up using lamps even when it’s still sunny outside. My go-to light bulb is the OttLite natural daylight bulb (25 watt). Although I’m very happy with these bulbs I wanted to try out a LED bulb to see how it compares to the OttLite. I bought a Cree 9-Watt Daylight light bulb after reading this review of their warm light version. After some unscientific testing I found I still prefer the OttLite bulb for accurate color presentation while the LED uses less electricity and is perfect for most work I do in my sewing room. Most of the pictures I took don’t capture the difference in color but this side by side photo shows that the white areas of my Kona color card look cream-ish under the LED. Both bulbs cost about the same ($12-$14) but Jo-Ann’s usually has the OttLite bulbs on sale for 50% off.
Some quick specs:
Color temperature (both fall into the range that’s advertised as natural light): OttLite: 5850 Kelvin Cree: 5000 Kelvin
Actual wattage (important if you’re looking to save on your electricity bill): OttLite: 25w Cree: 9w
Wattage equivalence (as compared to an incandescent bulb): OttLite: 100w Cree: 60w
Light output (brightness): OttLite: 1425 lumens Cree: 800 lumens
This is what I’ve been up to lately, but in no great hurry. It’s not going to be perfect because I cut the strips improvisationally but I’ll be happy with however it turns out. The next step piecing the triangles.
Quiltography is a new quilt designing app for the iPad. The app lets you upload pictures of your fabric (and can serve as a nice list of your stash) and then use those uploads to create blocks using the built-in template blocks. Creating a quilt from your custom blocks is easy. The interface is intuitive with enough options to create without overwhelming the user with a steep learning curve. The biggest improvement to the quilt design tool I’d like to see is the ability to export a quilt pattern/amounts of fabric needed list. Right now Quiltography doesn’t let you set a size for your quilt, just how many blocks it’s made of.
The Quiltography app also includes a ‘photoQuilt’ tool that lets you create pixel quilts from uploaded pictures. The interface of this tool is intuitive as well. What this tool does better than the quilt building tool is exporting a PDF quilt pattern. The instructions were detailed and looked easy to follow.
While not as powerful a tool as Illustrator or Electric Quilt (but MUCH cheaper and easier to learn) I do think Quiltography can be very helpful to brainstorm a quilt idea. I’m eagerly waiting to see what improvements the developers have planned for future updates.
I bought myself a gift.
I’m very happy with my other birthday gift as well: a Roku 3. The UI is intuitive and quick. I like the ability to watch TV shows/movies with closed captioning and playing videos off a USB drive.
meh