Cajun Corner – Vol.
5, No. 53 – November 10, 2013
Bon
Jour! Welcome to Cajun
Stitchery’s weekly email and welcome to our family.
ΘΘΘΘΘ
Don’t forget to visit us at www.cajunstitchery.com, www.flickr.com/photos/cajunstitchery, and, www.cajunstitchery.etsy.com often. We are also on Twitter and Facebook.
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Before we go any further, let us bow our heads
and say a prayer for the people of the Philippine Islands. The photos that I’ve seen are
horrendous. They remind me of Ivan and
Katrina, only worse.
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This past week was certainly a creative week at
Cajun Stitchery. I have a lace mask
design that the girls absolutely love.
We had a survey on their likes and dislikes of the mask awhile back and
since that time, I’ve tweaked the design as they suggested. These girls are professional mask
wearers. As a business owner, the mask
is pretty high in the stitch count and hence pretty pricey for a Mardi Gras
mask. However, it is gorgeous. I looked only at Etsy and various searches to
see what other embroiders were charging for the mask and if I decide to make
and sell these masks, I’ll have to stay in the ball park of others who are
selling this mask. The ball park it turns
out is $25.00. Of course, the lace mask
that I make has been tweaked and is a bit larger than the original design.
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Personally, I do not like to wear masks. They just are not comfortable to me. The worst, of course, are the hard
masks. As we get older, glasses become
an issue with masks. We may be older but
we still enjoy the masquerade. I am not
aware of a mask created for the visually impaired glass wearers. I determined to create “the” mask. In the process of doing so I was discussing
this issue with the owner of our local Mardi Gras store. She said that her krewe was having the same
problem and if I do create Mardi Gras masks for glasses, she wants to see them
and put them in her shop.
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My first thought was that I need a really good
basic mask design. I took the lace mask
design and used it more or less as an outline for an appliqué design. It took a few tries and tweaks. What I discovered was most masks have one
tiny hole on either side for the ribbon or elastic that goes around the head. I tried making the hole large enough for the
arm of the glasses to go through. The
problem with that idea is that when you put the glasses with the mask on your
face, the mask wiggles and just doesn’t fit snug. I ended up with the idea of 2 holes on each
side of the mask. Each arm of the glasses
goes in one hole and out the second hold; it weaves. The second hole seems to stabilize the mask
on the glasses. The holes are created
with the boring needle which creates an eyelet.
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Something else that was an issue was keeping the
mask sturdy enough. The girls all
mentioned that the lace mask was a bit flimsy.
From the beginning, rather than embroidering the lace mask as a
freestanding lace mask, I used organza.
The sturdiness of the lace mask was rectified by using 4 layers of
organza. The sturdiness of the mask for
glasses is fixed with the use of heavy stabilizer.
After several searches on Pinterest, Google,
Bing, etc., I decided to make a butterfly mask.
There are some gorgeous masks out there.
My friend at the local Mardi Gras store absolutely loved the first
butterfly mask and I have hopes of getting them in her shop. Sure hope someone buys them. By creating the mask as an appliqué, I am
able to keep the stitch count down somewhat.
The butterfly mask should sell for about $15, depending on the detail
work in the mask. The first butterfly
mask was made using purple velvet and purple thread. Later butterfly masks incorporated metallic
thread and other types of fabric. Even
though the mask is created to be used with glasses, they can also be used with
ribbon or elastic connected in the holes.
Well, that’s as far as I’ve gotten on the
masks. I’d like to create several more
designs, including a jester mask and fleur de lis mask.
Sometime around mid-week the glass panel in one
of our bi-fold doors shattered. George
was a bit upset about it but I immediately decided that the broken bi-fold
doors could be used in the Studio for display purposes. George removed all of the glass in the one
bi-fold door and painted it white. It is
perfect and now resides in the front room of the studio. Some of our tee shirts are hanging on it.
Stores are all decorated for Christmas now. Even the radio has begun playing non-stop
Christmas music. It is a bit early in my
opinion but that’s what they are doing.
A friend of mine on Facebook owns a second hand store in Mobile
One idea that I saw was “Believe.” You’ve seen the signs and stuff with
“Believe” on them. I want to do shams
with a single letter for the wall in the front room, spelling out “Believe.” In my mind, it is beautiful. I just need to figure out how to hang them. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
Tomorrow Cajun Stitchery will be closed in honor
of Veteran’s Day. In fact, I’ll be in
the beach parade all dressed in red, white and blue.
HAVE A NICE WEEK
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Thank you Bob for the following:
Late
one night, a burglar broke into a house he thought was empty. He tiptoed
through the living room but suddenly he froze in his tracks when he heard a
loud voice say: "Jesus is watching you!" Silence returned to the
house, so the burglar crept forward again. "Jesus is watching you,"
the voice boomed again. The burglar stopped dead again. He was frightened.
Frantically, he looked all around. In a dark corner, he spotted a bird cage and
in the cage was a parrot. He asked the parrot: "Was that you who said
Jesus is watching me?" "Yes", said the parrot. The burglar
breathed a sigh of relief, and asked the parrot: "What’s your name?"
"Clarence," said the bird. "That’s a dumb name for a
parrot," sneered the burglar. "What idiot named you Clarence?"
The parrot said, "The same idiot who named the Rottweiller Jesus."
A
blonde, wanting to earn some money, decided to hire herself out as a
handyman-type and started canvassing a wealthy neighborhood. She went to the
front door of the first house and asked the owner if he had any jobs for her to
do. "Well, you can paint my porch. How much will you charge?" The
blonde said "How about 50 dollars?" The man agreed and told her that
the paint and other materials that she might need were in the garage. The mans
wife, inside the house, heard the conversation and said to her husband,
"Does she realize that the porch goes all the way around the house?"
The man replied, "She should, she was standing on it." A short time
later, the blonde came to the door to collect her money. "You're finished
already?" he asked. "Yes," the blonde answered, "and I had
paint left over, so I gave it two coats." Impressed, the man reached in
his pocket for the $50."And by the way," the blonde added, "it's
not a Porch, it’s a Ferrari."
One
morning this blonde calls her friend and says, "Would you mind coming over
and helping me out with this killer jigsaw puzzle I bought - I can't figure out
how to get started." Her friend asks, "What's the puzzle of?"
"From the picture on the box, I'd guess it's a tiger," replied the
blonde. The friend obliges, and when he arrives the blonde greets him at the front
door and then shows him the puzzle spread out all over the table. He studies
the pieces for a moment, then studies the box. Then, he turns to her and says,
"I’m afraid that no matter what I do, I'm not going to be able to show you
how to assemble these to look like the picture of the tiger on the box."
"Why not?" asks the disappointed blonde." Because, you didn't
buy a jigsaw puzzle... what you have here is a box of Frosted Flakes."
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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