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Nancy Prince |
Keeping You in Stitches |
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Fall Already? The beginning of October always brings thoughts of beautiful fall leaves, crisp nights and beautiful clear days. Now living in Florida these days are just beautiful "thoughts" as it is still hot and humid here and we are on a constant hurricane watch and crisp nights are months away. So for those of you that are enjoying the above - I will be thinking of you in January when we have crisp nights and you are watching the snowflakes fall. How do I hold the hoop for thread painting? Slide the hoop underneath the pressure foot, pull the bobbin thread to the top and you are ready to go. A light touch works best. Place your fingertips on the east and west edges of the hoop and begin thread painting by lightly guiding the hoop with your fingertips. Avoid a tight grip on the hoop as this only hinders the process and will totally stress out your forearms after awhile. Keep the hand movements smooth and a constant, moderate machine speedHow do I determine the correct machine speed for thread painting? The design will dictate the machine speed. Confined areas that require more precision call for a slow to moderate hoop and pedal speed. Larger, open designs call for a moderate to fast hoop and pedal speed. Some large designs are easier to execute with a fast machine speed. Let your comfort zone and size of the area dictate the speed. How do I know how dense to thread paint each thread with multiple thread colors? Let's assume you have selected 4 thread colors for a particular design. Avoid thread painting any of the 4 thread colors too densely in order to allow space for successive colors to thread paint over preceding colors. It is way easier to add than try and remove unwanted stitches. Thread paint the first 4 colors, evaluate the design and then go back and tweak each area with the appropriate thread color. Some designs, such as thread painting people, require multiple "stitch outs" of all 4 colors. Playing with all the thread colors really creates the realism required in any given design.Free Online Video Workshop- The first FREE online video workshop, Thread Painting - Stitches with Attitude - is finally online!!! Yea!! This video showcases the two thread painting stitches I use - a straight and zigzag stitch. Both have serious attitudes and possess their own idiosyncrasies and quirky personalities. This Free workshop will take the jitters out of thread painting by showing you just how simple these two stitches are to execute. I hope you will take a few minutes to view the video and see what Stitches with Attitude is all about. As all of you know, this is a new venture for me and there are guaranteed to be a few video hic ups here and there. We have no way of anticipating the number of viewers on the site at one time so we have had to take an educated guess. There are a specified number of simultaneous connections and if this number is maxed out, you will not be able to view the free video It may take us a few videos to iron all this out so if you have a problem getting connected, please try again in a few minutes. Please be patient - we will get the hang of this after a few videos go "live". The video requires a Flash player to play the video. You most likely have a Flash player installed and may not know it. If there is an indication you don't have a Flash player, scroll down underneath the video and there is a "Click here" where you can download the Flash player for free. Google MapsHow would you like to see what a house you once lived in looks like today? It might be possible using the "Street View" feature in Google Map. Unfortunately, all cities do not have a street view option, but for those that do it is quite an experience to be able to virtually visit a place with special memories. If street views are available, you can use your mouse to "drive" down the street to see how things have changed. Here's how:
Enjoy! PS - Let me know what you think about the Techie Tom feature. I Leave You with This...I am always looking for copyright free images and I would like to share a site with you - http://www.pdphoto.org/. You will find an amazing amount of free photos there and the quality once they are printed out - whether on fabric of paper - is amazing. There is a small section of photos that aren't copyright free so watch out for these. Now a word of caution!! If you Google "copyright free images", a zillion sites show up. However, please read the fine print on each site as most of them are not completely copyright free. So be diligent and make sure the photos are really copyright free before using the photo. Thanks for spending some time today with me. "See" you online. Till the next newsletter. Happy thread painting!! Keeping you in stitches,
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Volume 1 Issue 4 What's In This Issue?
Upcoming teaching events -
Palmetto Quilt Guild October 16-18
International Quilt Festival October 26- 31
Quilters Unlimited November 18-20
I would love to hear your feedback on the Newsletter or the new website. Click here to submit your feedback and receive my handout on Easy Steps to Free-Motion Border Designs - a short how to. |
