February 2010: Letter from Lindee
Here we are in the midst of National Embroidery Month and I hope you’re celebrating it appropriately! If not, here are some ways to grow your skills and share your love beyond the special Valentines in your life.
New! Technique Projects
Our weekly free Generations Workshop Webinar continues to grow and the attendees are definitely pushing me to learn more about this program. Participants have also requested written project instructions and as I put those together, you’ll find them here on this website. These projects are carefully written and illustrated so that with a basic familiarity of the program, you should be able to complete the project. Although they are titled Quick Projects, they definitely were not quick to write up into a publishable form!
These technique-based projects are designed to teach you how to leverage the tools in Generations to produce a particular result. In the first three projects, I’ve covered Redwork, Fringing, and Manual Techniques without Artwork. Leanne Church, Education and Support Coordinator for Generations with Echidna Sewing Products in Australia has also generously donated a project working with lettering in Generations.
Each project includes illusrated step-by-steps to walk you through recreating the design or technique on your own. Full projects include sample files, which may be the actual designs in native format, additional designs to illustrate a technique in a “real life” manner, and art work to create the file. You can try a sample Quick Project with the redwork instructions. This sample is much shorter than the full projects and does not include any auxilliary files. It is designed to give you a flavor of the much longer projects.
These projects are ideal for someone who wants to learn a particular technique or wants to enhance their skills with or outside of the Learn to Digitize series. They are not designed for the person who just installed Generations. for that look to Getting Started with Generations.
Blankets for Haiti
Another contribution is from Margaret Bailey who is making blankets for Haiti. The need there is great for many things and you can send some love with a blanket. According to Margaret, “I am making blankets for Hati—they need 10, 000! Project Linus is the group coordinating this effort. They want fleece blankets 42 X 60 or larger. I’m making mine 1¼ yards and finish with a shell stitch using the overcast stitch on the machine. To make it more fun I am putting an embroidery design on each one. If the design is red-work, I stitch it directly on the blanket; if it is a filled design, I stitch it on a piece of cotton then sew or appliqué that to the blanket.”
The heart design is shown on this red blanket (very suitable for Valentine’s Day, don’t you think?) is from my new Frames and Borders Building Blocks collection. You can download Margaret’s instructions for finishing the blanket and visit the national Project Linus website.
Learn to Digitize Training Series
Units 1 (Getting Started) and 2 (Keyboard Lettering) are shipping and participants are sending in their projects. It’s wonderful see how great they’re doing and get such positive feedback. Unit 3 is in the works, a lot on graphics and design. You can be technically good but your designs will suffer if you don’t understand some basic principals of design and color. I also show you how to select and prepare graphics for easier and quicker digitizing. This first series is taking all the digitizing theory and applying it in Generations. Once you understand theory and have a working experience in one program, it is relatively easy to transfer the knowledge to other digitizing programs.
If you’re buried under snow in your area of the country, what better thing do you have to do than give yourself some time to really learn a skill you’ve wanted and maximize your investment in embroidery? No one is “too old” and besides, challenging your brain in new and different ways is healthy and will contribute to keeping you alert and sharp.
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