Harvest Hum, New Design

Gracewood's orchard is ripe unto harvest and the apples and pears are so heavy on the braches some are about to break. The local beekeepers are also harvesting their first gallons of honey and bringing them to the local farmers markets. In honor of this beautiful time of year I bring you another box sampler titled Harvest Hum.

I will be listing this design with ICG soon, so if you are interested in a free pdf chart, please email me soon.

contact me with your request in the next few days.

I've also added a new permanently free pattern called Home By the Range, I hope you'll enjoy the latest additions!

Trust Pattern & Tips on Creating Covers for Publication

Here are two photos of Trust, one camera setting shows it very true to the royal blue fabric I'm using, and the other setting made the fabric more purple but since some may like it with that background I thought I'd share both.

When I was contemplating creating leaflets of my patterns for ICG to publish I knew it was time to find software to create something professional looking for the covers.

Image editing software, with the exception of simple things like Irfanview or Paint, are just too complicated for me to enjoy using and after doing some extensive research I went with Microsoft Publisher 2010. Since I'd not used anything like it before, I also signed up for a month's worth of online classes at Lynda.com and I highly recommend this site for all sorts of practical instructions for many types of programs.

If you page down a bit you can see how the new leaflets look. I'm slowly transferring my designs to the PCStitch Pro 9 software and as I finish each I'm creating the new leaflets and listing them with ICG.

Since I know that there are no corrections for Trust's pattern I'll be moving it to the for sale section in a few days. If you want a free copy please contact me soon.

I'll be introducing a new fall themed design in a few days as well.

Coromandel Finish

I'm going to finish the Coromandel model with four squares for a number of reasons. First, I think it looks good at four and lends itself to whatever number of squares you want to stich for your project.

Another reason I'm only stitching four is that I am listing my designs with the Independent Creative Group so that they will be available as leaflets for purchase and sale by retailers. So you can now ask your local shop to carry Gracewood Stitches designs :)

Coromandel will be one of those I'm listing with ICG and so it will be moving to the for sale section this weekend.

It has been a challenge finding the right software simple enough for a non computer savvy gal like me to be able to make some professional looking leaflets. I'll tell you more about that journey, next post!

Coromandel Part 2

Coromandel progresses and I love seeing the sense of motion the circle brings to it.

Some have emailed telling me they are going to use a four block of this to make a cushion and another is going to be stitching this design on black linen with soft gold tone floss. I think these are fabulous ideas and I just hope these ladies will send photos of their completed projects!

Design Software

First, since I'm talking about software and don't have a picture of it to post, I thought I'd share a pic of Terry's latest painting. This is 'Archie' and I love it. He did it in acrylics and it is about 18"x12".

Now to design software. As I've mentioned many times in the past I've been using the Jane Greenoff software that I purchased through Needleprint and it really has been terrific for a beginner designer, because it is very intuitive and easy to use. However I am going to be submitting my designs to a publisher who wants to carry them - so you'll be able to request them in your local needle shop soon :) - and the Greenoff just doesn't export the quality of charts and image of the design at a level for publishing.

So I've spent several days researching other design software and I'm giving the PCStitch Pro 9 program a try. So far I'm pretty happy with it, as always there are some new things to get used to in a new program, and while I wish it had a few minor things the Greenoff had, overall it is also pretty easy to use and it does have better printing/exporting abilities.

When you go from one of these programs to another they lack the ability to import your files from another design software, so I'm going to have to spend a bit of time 'redrawing' the designs into the new program. But happily, I found yesterday that isn't going to be as difficult as I thought it might be.

Next I have to put the charts into the format I want for the leaflets so I'm also learning Microsoft Publisher 2010. I hope these efforts are going to produce the quality leaflets I want to present. All this is MUCH harder than designing, ack! I'll be very happy to have gotten through this transition and get back to having some time for new designs.