Needle recommendation

You may recall that I've recently discovered Tulip embroidery needles from Japan. They really are my favorite needles now. It's hard to describe, but you really can feel the difference in how they slide through the fabric. Love love love them.

I was reminded of them when I was following links and found the YouTube video below. I've only seen these needles in one LQS but got some at a vendor at the AQS Syracuse show and you can buy them online. 

I'm not commissioned by Tulip to do this--I just love these needles and wanted to recommend them to my hand-quilter and embroidery buddies. (I may not be doing much needlework myself lately but I can live vicariously through enabling the rest of you!)

A Not-So-Random App Review (with Quilty Implications)

This is random, but not entirely off-topic as I can definitely see quilty (and dye-y) implications from this.

The very first experiment.

I follow Lyric Kinard's blog, and this morning she posted about an app she'd started playing with, named Waterlogue. I immediately downloaded it and started messing with it myself. 

O. 

My. 

I love this app. 

Mind you, I've got several photo-editing apps and most have some sort of watercolor filter effect but I've never seen any of them work as well as this one. 

I was posting these images to Twitter and a couple of folks checked out the app and have since downloaded it themselves. Unfortunately, we also discovered it's only available for iPhone/iPad, but not Android*. Sorry about that!  

My favorite Happy Sam photo.

It has 12 different filters with very different effects--my photos here only include three or four of them. It's fascinating to watch how each filter interprets your original photo. You definitely get a lesson in line and color as each filter breaks your photo down into component parts. 

Other than just good, clean fun, what are the quilty and hand-dye-y applications? Well, gee, let me count the ways. At the simplest, you could print the resulting image onto fabric and thread-sketch or quilt it up for a nice art quilt. You could use the watercolor image as a guide for an applique version: It breaks complicated colors from a photo down into much simpler color splotches (which is a very technical artistic term) that would make it easier to interpret those colors into fabric. You could use the outlines it creates in some filters as a guide to hand-draw the image onto your fabric. For hand-dyeing/painting, the benefits are pretty obvious: It gives you a clear view of what colors appear in the photo that you could easily use as a guide for creating a project. 

(I stole this photo from one that @sewexcitedquilts tweeted this morning of sunrise on a lake. Thanks, Jackie!)

The app is $2.99. I'd say I've already had about $3.75 worth of fun and I've only had the app for about four hours. When I start using it as a way to create a quilt design? Priceless.

I'll close this blog out with a gallery of the original photos with their filtered counterparts. I've got it set in autoplay to change images every two seconds, but you have controls on the right and left to move forward and back if you want to see something again. If you can't see the gallery in whatever way you're receiving this blog, just go straight to my website.  

*The Waterlogue blog explains that they have no plans to release it on Android. They're a small, independent iOS developer and Android is much harder to program with reliable stability as it's used on such a wide variety of devices. If you want to read the whole blog post, go to their blog.  (You may have to scroll down to find the pertinent post.)

Fight the Funk Friday

Two quick notes before I begin:

1. I've noticed that the Fight the Funk image--and often other pictures--don't show up in Feedly for some reason. They used to, so some glitch happened somewhere. I haven't had time to figure it out yet--so if you want to see the pics, you'll need to click through to the website. Sorry!

2. For those of you who were asking: Princess Doggie (Spencer) has experienced a full recovery from whatever her mysterious malady was. By late last night she was back to her usual freakish self. It's good to have her back, as annoying as she can occasionally be. Freak.

And so, on to my Fitness Friday/Fight the Funk Friday. Be sure to check out ozzypip too! Sandy at Quilt Cabana Corner is on vacation this week, racking up the steps and ready to knock us all down a few pegs on that leaderboard. Looking forward to hearing her report when she's back!

Friday 8/15: Walked the canal with Sammy for 90 minutes. Total 10,455 steps for day.

Saturday 8/16: Planned on walking the canal with Sammy for 30 mins. Ended up walking the canal with DH for 90 minutes instead. I told him he was almost as fun a walking companion as Sam but not as nice to scratch behind the ears. Total 13k steps for day. (Also got groceries in the morning which accounted for nearly 2500 of those steps--we were way behind in our grocery shopping!)

Sunday 8/17: Slept. A lot. Apparently my body needed some recovery time. (2,325 steps--woo.)

Monday 8/18: Gym and elliptical for 45 minutes. Total 11,183 steps for the day.

A very happy walking companion wearing his "oopsie" bag--which remained empty--and my wrist wallet with car keys and ID attached to his collar. He's happier when he's got a job.

Tuesday 8/19: Beautiful day with lousy weather predicted for the rest of the week, so I opted to do a canal walk with Sammy rather than the gym. I was dragging a bit again, and my shin started cramping up partway through the walk. I completed the entire walk (45 minutes, about 2.5 miles) but slower than usual with a couple of breaks for stretching; total 7,464 for the day.

Wed 8/20: Gym and elliptical for 45 minutes. Total 11,210 steps for the day.

Thur 8/21: I went to my WW meeting--which is during my usual workout time after work, so Thursdays are a little trickier in terms of getting steps in. Total 3,071.

This week, I moved from somewhere in the 30s to ranking #17 on my leaderboard in FitBit. I'd like to be in the single digits but to do that I have to get better at working more steps into the day rather than just when I'm getting to the gym. Still n' all, not too shabby for my first full week back in the game.

This week's #fightthefunk recommendation: Good sleep is key to a good mood. I've often had a cup of chamomile tea at night to try to help me sleep, but to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of the flavor of straight chamomile. Meh. I was much happier when I discovered this wonderful Chamomile Lemon Tea. (The link is for Amazon, but I get this in my local Wegmans grocery store.)

It's not a strong lemon flavor at all--just very nice and mellow and tasty. Although some insomnia nights still require actual sleeping meds, this tea helps me settle down on an average evening, and get in the mood for some zzzs.

One of my favorite quilt books is available again...

I don't have time to do a full-on review this week, but I wanted to get the word out that one of my favorite quilt design study books, which had been out of print for a year or so, is now available for sale again. Woohoo!!!

Check out Heather Thomas' A Fiber Artist's Guide to Color and Design. It's available on Amazon (in paperback) or through Landauer Publishing (in print or ebook).

It should suffice as enough of a review to say that my quilt design study group has used Thomas' book for the last year and it has been far and away our favorite book to work with. To whit: we're nearly finished with all the workshops in the book. When we have completed them, we have decided to "wing it" by each member of our group taking a month and choosing a topic to lead the rest of the group through, still using this book as our foundational text. We'll pull in other resources as well based on whatever the challenge is that month, but we all really like this book and feel there's more we can get out of it if we spend even more time with it.

It really is a great book--good content, good layout, good explanations in the workshops (practice sessions)...all around very useful resource. You should definitely check it out!