Sunday, October 6, 2013

Cajun Corner - Vol. 5, No. 49

 
 

Cajun Corner – Vol. 5, No. 49 – October 6, 2013

 

Bon Jour!  Welcome to Cajun Stitchery’s weekly email and welcome to our family.

 

ΘΘΘΘΘ

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About mid-week TS Karen was noticed as a potential weather issue for the Gulf Coast.  People in our area prepared.  I know this because the stores were crowded, cases of water were displayed, and the stores were starting to run out of the essentials.  Still Karen was a tropical storm, not a hurricane.  As the week progressed there were threats of Karen becoming a hurricane.  Jim Cantore arrived on Pensacola Beach, which is never a good sign.  However, after a lot of praying Karen simply became disorganized.  This morning was the first sign of rain in the Pensacola area and so far it has only been a few drops now and then.  The weather alerts have dwindled to only alerts for rip currents.  Rain should arrive today.  The forecast for tomorrow is sunshine.  As Shakespeare said, “Much ado about nothing.”

This past week was a light work week.  When the time is available it is always a good thing to prepare for the upcoming seasons.  There is always so much to do. 

The peacock pillow was stitched out and looks great.  The design is a bit smaller than our usual designs though.  Nevertheless, it is beautiful.  The mermaid design has not been completed.

The living room/entrance room in the studio house is pretty empty.  The idea was to create an embroidery display room.  Displaying is not as easy as originally thought.  Searches on Pinterest for display ideas have produced many ideas.  Since we already have a few sheets of foam board, triangles were cut from the foam board and attached to each other to create a Christmas tree, in an abstract kind of way.  The various embroidered Christmas ornaments that have been made were pinned to the tree.  It kind of looks nice.  There is more room on the tree for additional ornaments, even after embroidering lots of lace ornaments. 

It was surprising to find how many ornament designs we have.  Most of the ornaments are lace.  Lace embroidery always means lots and lots of stitches.  No doubt it is beautiful but since embroidery is priced per thousand stitches, the stitch count becomes very important.  We definitely want our customers to have beautifully embroidered items but that is always weighed with stitch count.  The customer needs to get the most bang for their bucks.  One way of doing that is keeping the shape of the design but using more of an appliqué technique.  There are several lace designs in our repertoire that are intriguing but have not been stitched out yet. 

Looking at the Christmas designs and stitching them out gave me the bright idea to look online at some websites that haven’t been visited in a long time.  I used to be on top of all of the home embroidery designs and techniques.  OMG!  The home embroiderers are so creative and talented.  It only took viewing a few pages of some of these websites to get the creative juices flowing.

One of the first things that hit is that I’m working on Christmas and don’t have the studio decorated for Halloween.  Perusing our designs and searching for pumpkins, I did find some appliquéd pumpkins but they weren’t what I wanted.  There was one pumpkin design done in red work that really jumped out.  I took the design, increased it to 8” and created an appliqué from the outline. 

Although I believe the home embroiderers are leaps and bounds beyond the commercial embroiderer in ideas, there is one shortcoming.  That is that most home embroiderers are limited to the largest hoop size their machine will hold, which is usually 5”x7”.  Just because their hoop is 5x7 does not mean that they can embroider a 5x7 design.  There must be a margin on all 4 sides.  In practical application this means their largest design could not be larger than 4x6, and that is stretching it.  If they want to make something larger than their hoop, it becomes continuous embroidery.  They usually just make everything fit into their hoop.  When it comes to things like pot holders, the designs are too small.  We have hoops much larger than 5”x7” and can make items the appropriate size.  A pot holder should be about 8” square.  That is not possible in a 5x7 hoop, but is perfect for my 12” square hoop.  As with all designs, once the design is created, there are a few trial runs to tweak the design.  Our hot pads and pot holders are turning out adorable.

There was excitement in our Etsy store this week.  A lady requested two custom made lace handkerchiefs just like the beige and white one that is listed.  We created a custom order for her but she never paid and the hankies were never sent.  She said she needed them by Friday or Saturday.  The due date is over so that turned out a no sale.  On the bright side, now we have 3 of the beige and white lace handkerchiefs.

Last night George took me out on a date to the beach for the Pensacola Beach Song Writers’ Festival.  We went to our usual Paradise Bar & Grill, drank Bushwhackers, and listened to some great music.  We ran into several friends.  All in all it was a pretty wonderful evening.  The weather was beautiful.  There just is nothing like the beach, music, drinks, and friends.

Have a wonderful week
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Thank you Bob for the following:

Four surgeons are comparing the type of patients they consider the easiest to operate on. The first surgeon says, "I like to operate on electricians, because when you open them up everything is color coded." The second surgeon says, "I prefer to operate on accountants, because when you open them up everything is numbered." The third surgeon says, "I think librarians are the easiest to operate on because everything inside them is in alphabetic order." The fourth surgeon says, "I've got you all beat. I like to operate on politicians best. They are by far the easiest because they have no guts, no heart, no spine and their head and behind interchangeable."


Cajun Stitchery

(850) 261-2462
P.S.  You are always welcome to stop by and look at all of the catalogs and pass some time with me, cher.

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