Fabric and IPads Oh My!

I'm back home (the damn house elves didn't break in and clean while I was away). The QuiltDogs are back from their stay at my parents' and snoring like I never went anywhere. I worked a full day then ran errands, walked dogs, watered plants, pulled and sprayed a few of the thousand weeds that sprang up in my absence. (The thought has occurred that an apartment and dog nappies would be a lot easier). I made dinner, made salad for lunch tomorrow and fruit salad too. When you get off the plane and the first thing people say is "you ate well on holiday", you know it's salad time. I'm too lazy to go shopping for new jeans and mine are currently a cheap alternative to stomach banding and not all that comfortable.

ANYWAY, the point of all that was that I was EXHAUSTED when I finished it all (house still a mess, suitcase not unpacked, dirty laundry piled up), and my sew-jo fled, despite coming home to this little batch of goodies...

THIS of course is a jelly roll of Good Fortune (addict), one of Ruby (love those aqua and red tones), two fat quarter packs of Hoffman Handpaints (now have the pink, orange, blue and  purple packs - yes, my name is Laura and I am a fabricoholic. Incidentally, these were $90 each in LQS in Victoria as opposed to $30 online...). There's also some Bella solid Iris (thankyou Jane!) to match Terrain (my birthday next week, hope the email hint about Terrain Layer  being the ideal birthday cake with the link to Want It, Need it, Quilt, was not too subtle...).  And batting FINALLY arrived - ordered on *July 5* from a certain big dealer who offers free shipping on occasion. I have learnt that this means they sent your order in 12 different parts, cancel half of it, leave items out. It took me 3 email follow ups to get my batting.

The errand that took the most time was picking up a framed picture of a photo I took in Austria a couple of years ago. My youngest cousin drove us out to Neuschwannstein castle on a fairy tale winter's day. Apt as it is supposedly the castle Disney based their logo on. I took this photo with a Canon Powershot - you know I'm no great shakes at photography, but you'd have to have had something really wrong to not get good photos there that day. There was magic in the air. My lovely friends gave me a $100 voucher last birthday - it took me 11 months to get round to using it - and the gorgeous Gary, my tame Graphic Artist friend, tweaked the photo slightly. I've had it framed in silver with a white matte border. Too tired to fuss with proper camera so here's an IPaD shot which I fiddled with to show you a really cool app I've discovered.

Photo taken with IPad. Cropped with PS Express(I think that app was around $5-6), then, using Adobe Ideas (free from memory), you ask the app to generate a colour palette based on your photo. Like design-seeds! Like the Dead Simple Quilt-a-long pics you've probably seen popping up. But this was DIY!!! :) Not a great example being all silvers and greys, but you get the idea. Here's a better one with a cross section from the Ruby jelly roll.

Isn't that cool?!! Out with the Kona colour card next to pair up the perfect solids! Any apps you recommend?



One last mention - I got an email from Miss Erin Missy Mac who is hosting tomorrow's (day after's?) TGIFF. Her sewing machine, Brutus, came back from sewing machine hospital in time for her TGIFF hosting, but annoyingly, has suffered a relapse. Poor Erin is stressing out, although I told her people would understand, but let's try to channel some quilty magic and cross our needles for her and send a thought her way... Or prepare for It'sNotQuiteFinishedFriday instead!