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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