Phew! That holiday weekend just FLEW by…and I was quite the busy bee. I had to do a huge studio tidy up, while I did that i found a UFO that was more finished than I thought! Gotta love that! It’s up on the design wall – it’s a Welcome quilt in the style of Charles MacKintosh I started … 3? years ago…I can’t even remember now! I put it away because I got a bit frustrated with trying to make everything look perfectly symmetrical. This was one of those “AHAH” moments I got while working on this piece – I don’t want to make things that look all perfect, it removes the human element (for me, anyway). And in this quilt I was trying to recreate some lovely typography – which needs to be perfect so that it doesn’t detract from the eyes ability to read smoothly and quickly across the page. I want my quilts to be savored and to have lots of things to see, not be this perfect set of shapes that the eye just zooms across. BUT, I still love this font…I’m going to leave this up for awhile and think about it!If you’ve read my blog for awhile, you know I’ve taken to posting my to do lists. I love this so much that I’ve expanded it a bit and turned my “inspiration” board into a “Git ‘er Done!” board, where all the stuff I need to be working on is posted right there. I can put invoices when I make an Etsy sale on there, and tracking info for recently shipped packages too! A simple thing, really, but it’s helped me get a handle on my pre-Holiday making!

Look what my honey made me for my Birthday! A super duper strong keyboard “drawer” on really strong full extension slides. It’s got room for my mouse and my new Mac keyboard (even though my computer is a “mad Dog” PC, this keyboard is the BEST when it comes to fast typing!)

Gift suggestions for quilters anyone? Here are some lists to get you started:

• Amy of Park City Girl: Ooh, I love my EQ6, but here’s anew addition: Amy Butler has a set of projects that run on this software, I’d love to play with this!
• Natalia of Piece n Quilt: My favorite on her list the New Noel book with lots of really awesome stocking patterns.
• Vicki of Sew Inspired: Simple, but oh so useful flat flower head pins, yup I definitely need more of these!

I’m sending my hubby this list right now!

Don’t forget my Rainbow Sale going on all this week!

Now, I’ve gotta get back to my day job! sigh…

I’ve talked about photography here before – and if you’re a blogger (or not!) you know how hard it is to take a good photograph to accurately show people you’re talking to through the computer what exactly you want to show them! But I really wanted to get more of my scarves up in my Etsy shop, so I’ve been plugging away at how to photograph them!

Back in June I did a guest post on Simply Robin’s Blog about my very simple light box I rigged up to take photos of my Going Green Journals. Well, I needed something larger for my scarves, so my hubby had time to rig up something for my from PVC (Bill Huber has a nice tutorial here, we did something quite similar). So here’s my setup (note: the good camera is in the shot, so this is my cell phone!)

It’s a frame made from PVC. Draped down the back, across the table and then down the table front is a large piece of white polyester fleece for a smooth, white backdrop.  A piece of white, quit weight white fabric is draped up the sides and over the top, this diffuses the light. I’ve got 4 clamp on lights – 2 are huge, “trumpet top” CFLs. I learned about them here: (this is a GREAT resource about photographing quilts!) I needed more light so I added 2 more regular CFL’s, 2 more of the trumpet tops are on their way to me as we speak! This creates a white glowing box with very little shadow.

I then turned off the flash, set my white balance and started clicking. I still had to tweak a little in Photoshop, but much less than I had before. Mostly I just played with the levels to get the whites whiter. Kathy Mack has some awesome tips about tweaking digital photos on her blog, this is the one that talks about levels, but they all are worth a read, and written by a sewist, not a photographer, in language we quilters can understand!!!!!

Now that I’m happy with my picture taking process, I can start doing a better job of trying to sell my scarves online. One issue there is that I sell so many scarves locally, I would sell a scarf listed in Etsy. BUT I’ve now changed my listing to read:

Each scarf is uniquely hand-dyed, using a specific set of mixed colors. Description of the particular palette here.  Although I may have one in stock, I also may need to dye one just for you, so it may take as long as 7 days for me to ship it. Patterns & distribution of colors varies from scarf to scarf, convo me if you’d like a picture of your exact scarf or the exact timing on your own piece of “Candied Fabric”.

I’ve also started creating palette shots (inspired by Vickie Welsh and Daisy Janie) to help me describe the colors in the scarves.

Daffodil Sky is a combination of a yellow-gold, 2 shades of blue and teeny bits of a leafy green.

Wild Rice is a delicate mix of gray, tan, light pink with a hint of gold. Earth, Wind & Fire combines an earthy brown, with an ethereal blue and a vibrant red & gold.

So, what do you think? Is this a good way for me to showcase my scarves online?

Hi there! I’m blogging about taking photos over at Simply Robin today. I took some new photos of my new Journal covers (STILL need a name!) this morning and posted my adventures over at Robin’s. Here is the “money shot” – I LOVE this one…

I’m now off to sew 30 of these babies by…Saturday! Yikes!!!!