Thursday Misc.

Gifts and Wrapping Department
How many gift bags have you made? I saw a great video on making gift bags. Longtime readers know that I love fabric gift bags because:

  1. they use great fabric
  2. I am terrible wrapper
  3. can be reused
  4. little to no garbage/recycling on the holiday, birthday or anniversary

Deirdre has been sending me Colouricious videos and the most recent one is all about making making a gift bag. This is a really lovely pleated gift bag. You won’t be able to make a bunch of them before Christmas 2010, but this is a heads up for 2011. I think these bags would actually make nicer birthday or Mother’s Day bags. Please show me what you make!

I have had a whopping 4 sales in my Cafe Press shop. I am excited that people I don’t even know like my stuff enough to buy it. Look in the New Year for your thank you note cards!

Fabric

Westminster MN43 Plum
Westminster MN43 Plum

I think I said recently that I was going to try to keep my fabric purchases to a minimum through the end of the year so I could finish cutting all the diamonds for the FOTY 2010. I wanted to show someone some Martha Negley fabric I bought a few weeks ago, so I searched Google and found MY image there (I am ranking in Google. Cool, huh?). In the process, I saw other Martha Negley fabrics. I really like her designs, especially the one above. Perhaps I will just admire it.

I want to make a Quillow and need some nice fleece. The stuff at some local chains is just too pilly (is that a word?). I once bought a whole bunch of fleece for a bathrobe making jag from a place in Massachusetts that had the most wonderful feel. They had a fire and there was a big deal about how they kept paying their workers. I can’t remember the name of the place or if it is still in business. Where do you buy your fleece? Do you have a brand that doesn’t pill too much?

Replay Department

I know that I wrote about this tip before, but I really think it is a good tip. Also, questions about it have come up. I thought I would do a replay, not to bore you, but to encourage you to bite the bullet and set up a feed. ResearchBuzz is an electronic newsletter I read for work. One day, I was pleased to find an article that would allow me to keep a steady stream of quilts coming to my blog reader.

Here is a sample of a quilt search:

http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=quilt,modern

After creating the link above (by changing the tags-everything after the = sign with terms separated by commas- at the end to suit your needs), paste this URL into your Bloglines or Newsgator or Google or whatever reader. The feed will send you back search results showing the gorgeous quilts that have been added to Flickr. I put the above search into my Google Reader and was immediately provided with several fresh looking quilts for my viewing pleasure.

I also wanted to see what was new and exciting in the basket quilt arena so I changed up the URL above to:

http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=quilt,basket

I retrieved a number of basket quilts, but also some mishits. They were pretty mishits, so I didn’t mind much. You can also cut and paste the feeds I have created above into your reader.

Find more info at ResearchBuzz.

Workroom/Studio

This TedTalk is about offices, but I am curious to know how it applies to your quilt work? Jason Fried, the speaker, talks, at one point, about creativity and creative people.

Rice Freeman-Zachery is doing a workshop sort of thing in 2011 using her book Creative Time & Space. Take a look at the blog post on Goodreads. She has a worksheet you can download. You may have to sign up for Goodreads to read the post.

Chronicle Books

We didn’t win the big list of books I made. I did get some new visitors and I hope they come back. I never win the blog giveaways. I did win a book once from Quiltin’ Jenny and that was fun. Perhaps I got a taste of that joy and just want more. I have plenty and will be happy with what I have. -)

Author: Jaye

Quiltmaker who enjoys writing and frozen chocolate covered bananas.

4 thoughts on “Thursday Misc.”

  1. The fleece place was Malden Mills. They eventually went bankrupt, then I think they were bought by Polartec. Why do I think this? I don’t know, except that we wear a lot of Polartec in the chilly damp Pacific Northwest – it was probably front page news in the newspaper at some point! 😉

  2. Yes, you are correct. I was thinking it was m-something. My brain is awfully full right now, which is probably part of the reason I couldn’t bring it to mind. Have you made anything with Polartec lately?

  3. No, not in a while. I did a batch of baby quilts a few years ago and used polartec for the batting and back all in one. It was a little slippery to work with – unlike batting, the fleece doesn’t cling to the cotton at all — so I had to pin really closely, but other than that, the quilts came out pretty well. I’ve also made blankets and scarves, but that barely counts as sewing — just doing a decorative blanket stitch around the outside.

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