chickensense

Download a quilting game to play with the whole family. It is so cute! You choose fabric, then place the correct fabric in the correct place on the block. As you solve the block puzzles, you use them to build your own quilt.

Fun for adults and kids alike.

http://www.gamedelight.com/quiltingtime/game.asp

“It’s Quilting Time!” When Grandma Giddywinks playfully exclaims this phrase, get ready to be spoiled the way only a grandma can, with hours of delightful puzzle-solving fun! Every quilt has a distinct pattern, and it is your objective to try and impress Grandma Giddywinks by uncovering the pattern and completing your quilt block before time runs out!”

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I am having so much fun designing on Electric Quilt! I can make quilts with fabric I could never afford to buy.

Here is another one from the Leaping Frogs pattern. I call it Beautiful Batik Frogs. Click on the image to see an enlarged copy. I’ll bet a real quilt in batiks would really shimmer. I’ve made the frog block in two sizes now, 12″ with a wide-body frog, and 10″ with a narrower body.

UPDATE July 2009: I have my very own blog now: chickenlady quilts on Blogger.

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My friend, Mrs. Jean, showed me the most darling frog block. I couldn’t find it anywhere online so I made it myself in Electric Quilt. Here is the block, and a quilt I designed for it.

(I have found out that this pattern was in Quiltmaker Magazine #24, Fall 1991. It is called Leap Frog, and was a 10″ block. Mine is 12″)

If you would like the Electric Quilt 6 version of the block and/or quilt that I drafted, email your request to kbarberms at yahoo dot com.

UPDATE July 2009: I have my very own blog now: chickenlady quilts on Blogger.

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It was so cold this evening that I’ve decided to bake some cookies to warm up the kitchen at least. So I’ve been browsing my recipes for some good choices. I store my recipes in Big Oven recipe software that I bought around 4 years ago. It is available online for $9.95. Good price for some good software. There is a basic version, that I had, and a deluxe version. I am now using the deluxe version (approx. $30), and I really love the fact that you can use multiple “recipe boxes.” This option isn’t available in the basic version, and I never thought I’d need it but I love being able to download and view entire recipe collections (recipe boxes).

Since it is so close to Christmas, the first thing I made is some dough for sugar cookies. The dough has to sit in the fridge for a couple of hours, so here I am blogging.

The sugar cookie recipe I used is one I have not tried before, but I found it in the “Cookies” recipe box that comes with the deluxe version of Big Oven recipe software. The instructions say to cream the shortening and sugar together with an electric mixer. Big mistake! The shortening got all inside the beaters and the sugar stayed on the outside and the two never mixed! I had to scrape off the beaters and mash it all together with a big spoon. The dough seemed very dry to me. It was so difficult to mix. Still, if they taste good, that’s what matters.

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UPDATE July 2009: I have my very own quilt blog now on Blogger: chickenladyquilts.blogspot.com.

I found that it is sooo easy to make piecing diagrams in Electric Quilt 6!

1. Open a blank document in Microsoft Word
2. Open EQ6 with the block you want. (so it is on the block worktable.)
3. Click FILE then click EXPORT METAFILE OF BLOCK
4. Choose COPY TO WINDOWS CLIPBOARD
5. Choose the quality you want and choose OUTLINE ONLY
6. Go back to your document in Word and click FILE, then EDIT, then PASTE
7. Click the RIGHT mouse button on the block drawing that is now in your document, and choose EDIT
8. Click with the cursor to drag each patch wherever you want it

VOILA!

If the block drawing is too large in your Word document, click with the RIGHT mouse button on the drawing and choose SHOW DRAWING CANVAS TOOLBAR. Then click the SCALE DRAWING button on the toolbar, and click and drag from one of the dots that appears on the frame to shrink the drawing as much as you want.

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I have been playing with EQ6 the last couple of days. I bought it long ago but never really used it much. It is a nice program but definitely not intuitive. I’m pretty good with computers but I had to read the tutorial to figure out how to do things.

I’ve designed a pink-black-white quilt. I got the idea from a swap on Quilting Around the World (www.quiltingaroundtheworld.com) called the Barbie Swap. I’m hoping they’ll have another round so I can enter with one of my blocks.

Some of these blocks would be very difficult to actually make. They have lots of those pesky in-set seams. I’ve never made anything with in-set seams so perhaps it’ll be a New Year’s resolution.
I have actually made a Weathervane block. (That’s the left-most block in the 3rd row.) Instead of using in-set seams I made it with half-square triangles as shown on Quilter’s Cache. www.quilterscache.com.

I’ve also made the right-most block in the first row. It is called Next Door Neighbor block. I’ve made the middle block in the next to the last row, the Lemoyne star, which I pieced by hand. And I’ve made lots and lots of Sawtooth Stars, the right-most block in the second row. I’ve made them with solid centers to show off the fabric. All of these can be found at Quilter’s Cache. Love that site!

UPDATE July 2009: I have my very own blog now: chickenlady quilts on Blogger.

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I am testing the newest FREE Scribefire blogging software. It is an add-on to Firefox browser and seems very, very simple to use. It works much better and easier with Blogger than wbloggar software or even BlogJet. It even lets you add Blogger ‘labels’ which none of the other blog editors have done.

Let’s see how it works for photos. Wow, I just learned that when you post photos to a Blogger blog it enters them in Picasa web albums! This blog editing software, Scribefire, uses the Picasa albums to post your photos directly to your Blogger blog. Great!

Here’s a sample photo. Nice! You can click a menu button to change the alignment of the photo, and just drag the photo to change its size.

And ScribeFire is completely free!

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Yay!!! Bellsouth (now AT&T) offers stand-alone DSL, they just don’t want anyone to know. Call High-speed Internet tech support, and ask for Billing. Then tell them you want stand-alone DSL. Voila! One catch is that you have to have a zero balance on your bill to make the switch.

Even better, if you are not a current Bellsouth/AT&T internet customer you can get DSL for $10/month all the way until Dec. 2009. Check out the links below. The first is an article about the service, the 2nd is the link to AT&T documents about the service.

http://www.gearlog.com/2007/06/att_quietly_launches_10_dsl.php
http://www.bellsouth.com/consumer/inetsrvcs/inetsrvcs_agreement_plans_pop.html

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