Learning is fun!

I squeaked through another day! Oh gosh --- there's so much exciting stuff that I can't contain myself. I can't share all of it with you today, but WOW --- I'm so lucky. I've surrounded myself with some very talented people, and we are sharing all kinds of amazing information!! You'll be able to participate in that sharing either through the blog or through some future clubs. 

But here's the thing --- it works best if a great majority of the people are participating. You all know about the 80/20 rule --- 20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work. Me? I want 100 percent of the people doing 100 percent of the work! Yep -- life gets in the way -- I get that, but I want people to get the most out of what they have, and that's by everyone sharing -- mistakes/successes, etc. 

There may be many FOMO (fear of missing out), and if that's the case, if that person is willing to make a serious commitment, they can follow along. But FOMO without action? That's not a good thing!

Anyway -- I'm happy to report that all the presentations are done for this morning. They literally got finished. I'm very tough on myself  --- I rarely say, "I didn't have time." I make the time, and other things get sacrificed. I'm OK with that -- it's a decision that I make. It was a long, long day yesterday as I had to make something, and well --- let's see what happened. Don't worry about me -- I'll be taking almost three months off in the summer! 

I'll start with my neighborhood picture. The other day, I was walking past and noticed that the BRAND NEW fence (one year ago) was ripped down. There was debris all over the backyard. Yep  -- a car crashed through the fence on a STRAIGHT road. They knocked down the STURDY, 8-foot high fence and rammed into the corner of the house, messing with the brick and the foundation. And I see there's a broken window. At what speed was the driver going to go through the fence and hit the house? 

A house damaged by a car

This is on the same street where someone hit a concrete hydro pole several years ago and knocked it down, and one person was killed. This is in front of a HIGH SCHOOL. Need I say more! 

Miss Murphy was not pleased that her ball ended up on the kitchen counter. She is darn persistent, and I needed to get some work done and had no time to play ball with her. She was NOT pleased!!!!

MOM -- I need my ball NOW

This was the better part of last night. I was sewing on the Designer EPIC 2. 

Sewing - notice the clean workspace

I ran to the creative icon 2 every so often to clip threads on an embroidery design I was stitching out. 

Embroidering on the creative icon 2

And guess what else I was doing??  I'm not sharing all the details, but I was using my Scan and Cut to do something important. 

My Scan and Cut

All I can say is that the 2-hour class I took with Stitch by Stitch last weekend was worth every penny. I remembered everything the instructor said (OK -- it took me a couple of tries for some things), but I accomplished what I needed to accomplish, and I was dancing for joy around Studio B. 

Cutting with the Scan and Cut

Let's just say that the Scan and Cut machine is STAYING out. We had an information session on different digital cutters yesterday. And I thank my stars that I bought this new one. Many people have the older machine, and now the big dilemma -- use what they have or upgrade. Personally, I LOVE this machine. It auto senses the height of the material I'm cutting -- I don't need to tell it what I'm cutting like I have to with the Cricut Maker. I literally put the blade in, loaded my mat, and the machine did all the rest. It was EXPENSIVE but worth every penny. 

And all the while, I was taking photos for the two classes this morning, and I don't know how many times I lost my darn phone. I didn't get out for that second walk yesterday, but I swear I did loads of steps trying to locate the phone. 

Where or where is my phone to take a picture? 

But now that everything is off the floor, it's easy to zip around that space. I still have one bag of stuff to put away, which will have to wait for another day. That was from my class the other day, so it hasn't been sitting there long. 

I had to laugh as I had the Scan and Cut behind me for my free-motion quilting class and someone in the class asked if I was teaching how to use the Scan and Cut. Well, not exactly, but we will have a Scan and Cut club in the fall!!! Oops -- did I say that out loud? Yes, I did. We need to start using these darn tools we've purchased. Actually, I should say a Club for digital cutters -- not specifically the Scan and Cut. 

I don't know how many times yesterday I heard people say -- "I bought my Scan and Cut years ago and never used it." Now it's several iterations old, and well -- do you upgrade or use what you have? I'm tired of not using my tools, so my focus is to figure out how to use every tool I bought in the way I intended to use it. No more slacking off!!! I'm so excited, I could burst!!

This is the same scenario with embroidery software. So many people purchased the software but never used it. Now their software is several versions old, and while still supported, they won't get classes on it. If you plan to buy something, you NEED to learn it NOW, or that purchase will be a total waste of money. 

On that note, Ronda and I went to a new (to me) shop to look at supplies for the digital cutters. OH  -- we hit the mother lode at Sign Supply Canada. Dede mentioned it to me a while ago, but I never had a chance to go. OH MY GOSH --- the place was filled with every color and style of vinyl and heat transfer stuff that you could imagine. It was like being a kid in a candy store. 

Part of the display inside the store

Even better, they had SAMPLES that you could buy to try different products and colors. I got some glow-in-the-dark, some glitzy stuff, and a lot more. Looking at what I bought, I wasn't too imaginative with the colors, but I'm OK with that. 

The samples I bought to play with

I have something to make for my Dad that has been sitting here for several years, and now I know how -- I can't wait to make it for him. 

And they had cute little T-shirts all over the store with examples of the heat transfer vinyl. I whined that I wanted those little T-shirts, and guess what? They had them for sale, so I bought two -- one white and one black. I can't wait to design something to put on them!!!!  Oh my gosh -- I want to put my logo on them!!!! OH  --- I have to try that later today. I've got my Singer Steam Press to use for the heat transfer. 

Mini T-shirts

The other day, I bought a fat quarter of this fabric. It's a collage of orange things. I have to say that I'm very disappointed in the quality. The base fabric is not the best, which is not good since it's a Northcott, but look at how "straight" it's printed. It was totally wonky. 

My wonky orange fat quarter

If you look at the original design here on Northcott's website   - that design is printed straight. This is either printed incorrectly, or the fabric got skewed when rolled onto the bolt, and I think it got printed crooked. Anyway -- I got a fat quarter and put it in my "out of the box" project container. This collection came in several colors, and while I really like the concept, I'm not happy with the quality. 

So this is Princess Lexi. She is definitely a daddy's girl. And DH gets "angry" with her but doesn't do anything about it! Then he wonders why he can't get rid of her! 

Princess Lexi

I had a very late night last night. I had this embroidery project that HAD to be done last night, which I'll explain tomorrow. And it was a 7-hour job, but I couldn't let it run on its own, and I certainly couldn't do it while I was on Zoom, and I was on Zoom for hours yesterday. 

At 8 PM, I still had a couple of hours to go, so I kept sewing and finished it. 

Still 2 hours and 38 minutes to finish the stitching

There were almost 200,000 stitches in the design, and it finished at 10:05 PM, according to the clock on the creative icon 2. 

The next time I should NOT leave the project until the day before it's due!!!

I've got one class and the machine embroidery club this morning. Lots of great show and tell and more homework!!!

On that note, I'm out of here. 

Have a super day!!!!

Ciao!!!!