Tidbits October 19, 2008

 New Home!

Yup, I can now call Maryland my new home, although my heart and permanent home will remain in Missouri. Its been an exhausting journey in settling down and I can almost say that I’m there…not completely but almost there. I do miss my big baby, the “SWF”, but will use the PR and the Innovis while I’m here.

Speaking of the PR…ahem…after its yearly TLC at my dealer in Missouri, I was notified that I have the “most” stitches ever to be placed upon the machine…to the tune of over 80 million stitches! WOW! That is a lot of stitches and the machine still goes on. If anyone needed a push in purchasing a semi-commercial machine, feel free to email me. From day one, this baby has done nothing but run day and night.

Speaking of semi-commercial machines, I did have a chance at viewing the Janome MB4 at one of my shows some weeks ago. It is a good semi-commercial machine and I would definitely recommend one to anyone wanting to have a home business. Speaking of shows, I had a ball meeting so many lovely ladies and sharing tips, techniques as well as showing my trunk show. Jean Smith, whom I first met at my very first AEC show in Boca Raton, had invited me to her embroidery club in Virginia. What a wonderful group of ladies and ofcourse, my hats off to Jean. Not only did she host me and dh at her house for a week, I learned a lot about Janome machines from her. I almost thought I had broken the machine when the screen started to fall down…LOL, the screen on the machine moves. I did not know that!

Attic Treasures in Occoquan, VA is a darling store tucked into the historical district right onto the water. My thanks to Judee for hosting a three day and evening event at her beautiful store.

Well, as I said earlier, I’m almost settled. Still have to unpack a lot of sewing room boxes and organize it a bit. Both my cats have finally decided that I am here to stay and no amount of “meowing” at me is going to take them back to Missouri. It was a fairly good drive, about nineteen hours straight for me and two cats in the back! I don’t look forward to doing that anytime soon! So, Maryland…here I am!

Say Hello to PE Design/Palette Version 8

Say what? Say “Hello”….PE Design/Palette version 8 is out. Seems just like yesterday that I purchased version 7 and here is version 8 already…..Are there ever any “free” upgrades to these softwares?? After spending quite a while online trying to figure out what is “new” and whether $300 +- is worth purchasing the upgrade, I finally called the sole “GURU” of PED/Palette, Carol Price.

Believe me, this lady knows the software inside out. Not only is Carol on top of everything that has to do with these softwares, she has quite innovative lessons and tutorials already on the way. Please do check out her website: http://www.carolcp.com  Carol does have some free sample tutorials which will give a pretty good idea of how thorough this lady is with her lessons.

I am indebted to Carol for sending me some of the snapshots of some new features. There are tons of changes though and I’ve shown a few.

One of the cool features is the attribute window which has so much more to offer in terms of underlay not just for the designs but also text. In the text attributes, there are definitely a lot of changes to where one has the ability to rotate, set spacing of letters, alignment, direction as well as choose from pre-set banners.

However, that is not all for text. One can manipulate the undersewing in a variety of ways. Five different types of underlays are provided for the user. These five are the most common types of underlays used in any form of digitizing and to be able to use them in text is definitely a plus. I have to say that I personally am not too much into text and do only the minimal amount of text. But, I do know that there are so many that work with text all the time and for them I see these changes as a definite step up towards having more control.

One of the changes to terms is that “Random Walking Stitch” is now called “stippling”.  Motifs can be applied to the option and the extra step of clicking to apply is now removed. Simply select the attribute and wait for the change to apply. This allows one to at a glance see the changes that would apply when selecting the pattern. And, again, lots of options for user input.

It is always so great to be able to visualise the embroidery that one will do on a certain fabric. This gives so much help in the set up of the color palette. Version 8 now has the ability to do precisely that!