Date: Thursday August 18, 2011
Project Accomplishments: Last night I prepared a piece of fabric to run through my pigmented ink printer. I wanted to experiment with printing the rosette I designed for the center of the quilt. The HP B9180 printer I have is touchy and I was pleasantly surprised that my paper/fabric went through and printed the first time. In FreeHand, I also added seam lines to two pattern pieces for the very narrow pointed star sections. I plan to find time to print those templates later today. I printed the templates—see discussion of problems with this process below.
I created and printed a paper-piecing pattern for the fine star points. There is a description of this process below.
Books: Lost City disc 8 (part of):
Exercise: Walked on treadmill for 5 minutes
Tools: Hewlett-Packard B9180 Photo printer, HP 7310 printer, Krylon Fixatif
Observations: It is always a challenge when products used in the past have changed in quality. I use Templar on project designs and have used it for years. I print the patterns using my ink jet printer. Last week I ordered four packs of Templar because I was out. Today, I used a piece of Templar from the new packs. After it printed, I let the plastic sheet sit on my printer for a while and when I picked it up, I could not believe it, the plastic acted as if it was a wet cloth and the ink spread out. The ink also wiped off. The text became unreadable. What a mess. I changed my drawing lines to “hairline” and printed it again. It was not as bad but the lines still expanded. I wanted to cut the templates and use them to cut the fabric. I decided to test the plastic product by spraying it with fixatif before printing again. That worked and I got nice clean lines. I phoned Pat Andreatta, who owns Heirloom Stitches to discuss this problem. She has a supplier for this product. I talked to her husband about the problem because she was away. I left my name and number for her to return my call and discuss the problem.
In the past, I taught an accurate paper piecing method. The paper pattern contains seam lines (where stitching is done) and folding lines. The fabric pieces, cut to the exact size (including seam lines), are glued to the paper using a washable fabric glue stick. The paper, with the fabric attached, is folded along the fold line and then stitched along the stitching line. It is quite an accurate way of making parts of a quilt.
Diversions: I got up early because I heard husbands smart phone alarm go off in the kitchen. He did not hear it! I reset it for 15 minutes later and put it next to the bed. He did not her it! Earlier this week I ordered him a new alarm clock and it came today. The new clock has a pillow vibrator to assist in his morning alarm routine. I have a meeting with Pat Anderson in morning. Harold and I went to lunch at t
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