Swag-a-Rama Update

Well, I just couldn't let this go out with my name on it. For those of you just joining this rant, a customer brought me an intricately-pieced quilt in which she wants much ruler-work and continuous curves using 3 different blues. Ah, oh yeah, the backing is white. Some of the CC work is in star points which are less than an inch long. And the quilting pattern is for a hand quilter. $%#!@

She is a very nice lady so I eased her into the bad news. I called her and explained that:
-- the dark thread on the white background was pretty "stark".

-- The straight lines were ok but their placement left some border seams with no quilting (thus the dreaded pop-up after washing).

-- the navy blue thread continuous curve "inside" 1-inch long star points and "inside" the 1.5 inch by 2 inch flying geese is cleary visible on the back and shows every wobble and seam crossing as I move from star-to-star or goose-to-goose.

-- the stacked swags in the pillowtuck look like Barnums tent at the end of a season.

She laughed....she hasn't seen it yet. I also told her to bring her nitro-glycerine tablets.

Of course, we will work thru it. It will be on my machine for way too long. I'll go over alternate quilting ideas. I'll be ripping those navy blue stitches out until Valentine's Day. I should just cut my losses and pay her to take it back.

It's not really mail....

Let me just go on record as saying that I hate chain letters. Those nasty things with which friends (now former-friends) fill up your email Inbox. I love to get mail from my friends and relatives. I see the Sender's name in my Inbox folder and click it with some anticipation.

It's a chain letter. These ought to be against the law. It's not mail, it's a promise of sorts. If you [insert gimmick here], then you must send it on to a dozen of your friends who are likewise appalled at finding it in their Inbox. You must also sent it back to the original sender to ensure that you are put on a permament chain-letter mailing list, you big LOSER. Then the power of the chain will reward your devotion with riches, great health, yada, yada. And if you do not follow the rules, egads, break the chain(insert eerie music here), you will be expelled from friendships the world over. Yeah, right..

To a lesser degree, forwards should also be outlawed. You see the "FW:" in the the Subject line and groan "Oh crap, not another (pick one) [political cartoon, photo of an enormous vegetable, funny joke, animated PowerPoint holiday card].

But again you recognize the Sender's name and despite a bizillion warnings "Don't open email's with attachments", you click on it. And there is not a single original thought from the sender. It's just the content of an email that was sent to them. It's like a time bomb . It doesn't have to have a virus or worm hidden in it to be trouble. It has just eaten up your time in opening, reading, deciding whether to bomb them back, deleting the email, emptying your Trash folder and then finally, deciding if you want to add the sender to your Blocked email list.

The worst emails are those unsolicited offers for cheaper medicine (spelled mEd1c!ne so it gets past your email filters), enlarging your penis, refinancing for your house...you get the idea. It makes me wish that stoning was still allowed. I would like to wrap their emails around a stone and heave it at them.

It's not really mail. It's like somebody dropped a flaming bag of dog poop on your front porch, rang the door bell and ran away.

Long weekend - Swags give me a headache

Oldest son and DIL and the grands went to the desert for the long week-end. I have never figuerd out the attraction of breathing dust and riding a big-tired motorcycle up and down dunes. Nope, not for me. Anyway, we had a nice meal just husband and I.

I spent most of Friday marking a custom quilt. The problem is this quilting pattern is for hand quilting. OMG. Another minimum wage quilt, for sure.

6 hours just to mark the swags. It has a pillowtuck and she wanted stacked swags on that. Huh, swags are already stacked semi-circles so stack of semi-circles on top of stack of, huh, where was I? Luckily, she is a pretty good piecer. Actually, she made this quilt from a magazine and brought the page so I can quilt it like the magazine. Mostly ruler work, lots of parallel lines and 90 degree angles. The parallel lines cross 2 borders so SID is out. Some of the straight lines in the magazine, she wants continuous curves on, thank goodness. I thought that I was pretty good at CC until I saw what it looks like from the back with no frame of reference to indicate that you CC'd a star.

For threads, she wants 3 different blues (navy, iced, yale) as well as white on the front. Warms Soft and Brite poly batt. I'm still OK with all this until I realized that she gave me a WHITE backing. Woe is me. I did the stacked swags and every wobble, every stop and start, and every traveling line overstitch shows like a beacon on the back. In one word, it is Horrifying. I already have 13 hours in this quilt and I am not yet to the mid-point.