Labor Day Specials

Needleheads gift card sale

My Monogram Wizard Plus People…. Take note:
1) We are now selling $25 gift cards to the Needleheads {Font} Store and they are on sale for $19.99/each. (Save $5 herehttp://www.appliquecafe.com/catalog.htm?item=892)
2) Needleheads has a few *new* fonts in the store, and several of their fonts are on SALE (Save $2-3 here)
3) More Discounts (Save MORE here):
$10 off a $35 or more Purchase
$25 off a $60 or more Purchase
$50 off a $100 or more Purchase
4) Some of my *favorite* fonts from the Needleheads Store: Bistro, Camp, Happy, Kazoo, Library and Sweet Script! You can also add new Alpha Paks like Master Circle, Blackboard, Pendant, etc.
5) Who doesn’t love fonts? It’s right up there with my fabric addiction. 
labor day sale

We are having a Labor Day SALE at Applique Cafe! All designs are 35% off through Thursday, September 10th!

Craftsy is also having a great sale on classes & supplies this weekend! On my blog, search “Craftsy” for several blog posts I’ve done in the past 6 months or so on awesome embroidery & product photography classes!

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Lastly, check out our new Digitizer’s Pick which is our Pumpkin 13 Design! This pumpkin could be sewn with a wide variety of cute fabrics! I am obviously partial to polka dots and ginghams, but would love to see this in some other cute fall fabrics! adigitizerspick 500

Organization, Part 2

I wanted to go ahead and do part 2 of my Organization posts, but first, I am excited about something new we are selling on our website. I looked back through my old records, and on June 4, 2007 I purchased my first embroidery (font) software. If you’ve read my blog, you know I use Monogram Wizard Plus for my fonts (names & initials) and I use Sew What-Pro for merging and editing. I bought MWP first and have loved it for almost EIGHT years!! I don’t have to tell you I love SWP too, as we’ve been selling it on the website (here) for a little over a year now and I mention it on my blog quite often. It’s become our top seller each month over any single applique design. We are now selling Monogram Wizard Plus too, and while it’s more expensive than SWP, it’s worth every penny! I’ve used it for the past almost-8 years, so it calculates to just $30 a year thus far. It’s a great investment if you are in the business of embroidery and monogramming!  Check it out – click HERE!

Here is just a sampling of what you can do in Monogram Wizard Plus. Lots of great fonts and motifs:

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Here is a screen shot of your workspace in MWP. It’s super easy to use and super easy to scroll through all of the various font options, sizes, etc. Again, a great investment! You can click on the TAG Monogram Wizard Plus on the right column, or search “Monogram Wizard Plus” on my blog in the search box. There is also a post or two in Helpful Posts.

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Now on to ORGANIZATION. As a follow up to my last post, Part 1, Kristi D. messaged me about a couple of apps you can download to help with to do lists and organization. They are: Evernote and Todoist (not “todolist”, but todo+ist). I just downloaded Todoist so I will try it out and see how it works! It looks like you can add tasks to certain days, set up reminders, etc. I just downloaded it so I haven’t gotten far yet! I may still be a pen and paper kind of girl but will give it a try!

OK…..

When is the best time to work?

I think everyone might answer this question differently because we are all in different stages of life and all have different schedules. Beth S. answered “I try to throw one or two things on the machine after my kids go to bed. I get a lot done when my husband takes my boys to practices.” (yay hubby!) Beth also works from home on Fridays so she tries to get 5 or more things on the machine on Fridays. For me, I try to get work done when my kids are at school. They go to a classical Christian school and they get out at 12:30 every day, so this is sometimes hard! Morning is my time to run my errands sans kids, go to bible study, volunteer at their school, etc. Usually 1 or 2 mornings a week I get to just stay home and work. I also try to work in the afternoons while they are doing their homework, but this is usually chaotic and I’m constantly interrupted and usually get frustrated. I try NOT to work much when Jeff gets home from work and throughout the evening, but sometimes it happens a day or two a week while the boys are at soccer practice. I also try to avoid working on the weekends unless we have NOTHING to do and I need to knock out a job or two. as I type this on Sunday afternoon…. If your kids are small and take naps, nap time is a great time to try to get a few things done! Maybe nights and weekend are your only time to work. That’s fine too! Just don’t sacrifice precious time with your family to work unless you have to.

Overall I think you have to look at your schedule and try to carve out time when you can get some work done uninterrupted! If you do this part time, you need to set hours and stick to them. I have a friend who lives in Atlanta who once told me that he intentionally gets up in the mornings, gets dressed and purposefully goes out for coffee or to grab breakfast. He then “goes to work” which is back at home. It’s hard to separate yourself from being at home when you work there! I am often distracted by laundry, cleaning, the dog, watching TV (I love The Today Show!), etc.

This is what happens when I try to work in the midst of kids!!

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When is the best time to check email (other than every 5 minutes like I do sometimes….)?

I would add to this: Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and all the other “distractions” I struggle with that are “for work” but can distract me for an hour!! When we first started Applique Cafe, I worked out of our dining room in our old house and felt the need to check email literally every time I walked by the dining room. It was out of control! Depending on what your business is and how important email is to you, I would say to check it 3 times a day. Set a schedule and try to stick to it barring special circumstances. Try to check it in the morning when you get up or sometime in the morning when you have a few minutes. Check it at lunchtime or in the afternoon if you are away from home during the day. Lastly, check it quickly at night before heading to bed. We do have to check ours often b/c the majority of our business is email, but I have found that if I check it too much, I am taking time out of my day to check it and may only receive 4 emails b/c I just checked it 20 minutes ago!

Social Media… if anyone is guilty of wasting too much time on social media, it is ME! There is no telling what I could accomplish in the hours and hours I’ve wasted since Facebook was invented! If you use social media for your business, try to stick with the same 3 or so times a day rule. Yes you might need to check Facebook to see if you have any messages or comments you need to check on. What you don’t need is to open Facebook in the middle of sewing a shirt and waste 30 minutes scrolling through to see what all your friends are up to! Same with Pinterest and Instagram! Both are great tools for business and most importantly they are FREE, but they can also distract you from your work and next thing you know an hour has passed and you haven’t even finished a single monogram! SET LIMITS!! 

How many items do you do each day? Goals are good!!

Beth S. says that she sets small goals. If she has 11 baseball bags on her to do list, then she tries to complete 2 to 3 a day. If she finds some extra time here or there, she can usually exceed her goal. I agree with Beth in that small goals are a great idea! I not only do this with embroidery work, but I do it with my every day stuff as well. Every day I either think about what I need to get done that day or write it down. It might be: go to the bank, send out X email, bathe the dog, monogram Leslie’s 2 items. Doesn’t it feel good to mark those things off the list, 1 by 1? I might have 32 embroidery items on my to do list, but know today is sort of a busy day and I don’t have a lot of time. Set a small goal of monogramming 1 thing, or 2 or 3 things. A lot of times you might be able to squeeze in 1 more and that’s great, but if you can’t, then at the very least you can accomplish the small goals before the day is done!

That’s all for today! I will continue next time with time savers & tips for doing monograms and appliques and the easiest fastest way to pick out fabric and thread colors! I would love to read your comments or suggestions for ORGANIZATION, so comment away!

THE Mighty Hoop

First and foremost, the master bath-de-Gulledge is D-O-N-E!! I know I got behind in my renovation posting and will try to catch up soon. It’s DONE and we have moved back in, but it needs some decorating before I post my final AFTERS. Here is a little peek at the before/after of the tub/vanity area. Again, nothing has been hung (tv, decor, artwork, etc.) so it’s a bit of a blank canvas right now. We are enjoying it immensely but had a bit of a crazy week last week so I haven’t had a chance to add some color yet! I’m pretty sure HGTV will be calling me soon…..IMG_9267-vert

Totally random, but I noticed a blog comment today that had to do with SCISSORS so I thought I would add that in here! For all these year I have preached about the Gingher 4″ curved embroidery scissors. They sell them at Joann and probably most sewing stores. Well…. maybe it’s my old age and poor eyesight lately, but I’ve started using the 5.5″ double curved scissors (Ginghers also) and I.LOVE.THEM! I think what happened was that my 4″ got dull after years of use so I got a new pair. They are sharp, but a little tighter and don’t trim as easy. It may be that they are not broken in yet? Anywho… I started using the bigger ones and now I like those better! Not sure what it is about the extra curve and 1.5″?? The big scissors below I use for cutting fabric and my big pieces of stabilizer. The blue handle ones are Brother scissors I think (they came w/ my machine in the little tool box). I use those for trimming the stabilizer around the applique (back) when I’m done, and also for when I am trimming inside of a design. They aren’t super sharp, so I pierce the fabric with them at an angle and then cut with my Ginghers.

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I haven’t been doing much work lately b/c of the craziness going on at Casa de Gulledge ~ renovations, travel soccer management and family stuff (my dad was in the hospital for several days last week and goes home tomorrow from the therapy rehab facility). I have a friend in ATL who asked me to do a few baby gift items for her and told me the colors were navy blue light blue, gray and white. I REALLY like those colors together after sewing a few things! It has also been raining here in Montgomery for like the past month, so these pics were taken inside and don’t do the items justice! LOVE the colors! 🙂 Anchors and whales were the theme also.

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Now on to the title of my post…. MIGHTY {magnetic} HOOPS! I recently got the 7.25″ x 7.25″ and finally got around to trying it out! It is SO EASY to use and I’ve taken a few pics along the way for this post!! First of all, they are magnetic and REALLY STRONG, hence the warnings….. I haven’t gotten pinched yet but I can see how it can easily happen! They are STRONG. I like the size of the 7.25″ x 7.25″ also b/c I typically stitch 5×7 designs and it gives me a little extra room for initials or a name. There is also a pacemaker warning on it…..

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Here is the bottom frame. All you have to do is get it in place and the magnets do the rest!

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I did my burp cloths using the MIGHTY HOOP and it was super easy! Burps can be thick and hard to hoop. With the MH, no wrinkling or hoop burn! As you can see, I got the burp cloth on top of the bottom of the hoop. You just have to make sure it’s straight.

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Just hold the top of the hoop frame over it, and BAM it snaps in place. Very easy!

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They go on the machine just like Fast Frames. You just have to make sure you check your boundaries to make sure the needle is not going to hit anything. Unlike Fast Frames – no sticky stabilizer is needed!

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You may notice that Bentley is in navy blue down below. When I did the baby gifts the first go-around, I had navy and gray in my head (which looks great together also by the way…). If anyone knows of a baby boy named Bentley, I have a bib and burp cloth available…..

The MIGHTY HOOP also works great on bibs!

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I also used the MIGHTY HOOP on a Market Tote. I typically use Sticky Stabilizer and Fast Frames, but the MH was easy and worked great and I didn’t have to peel “sticky” off of anything!

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This is Monogram Wizard Plus “MC Center” H (I made it wider than usual) plus some motif ends which are also done in Monogram Wizard Plus!

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I got my Mighty Hoop from Sewingmachine.com (search: mighty hoop) and you can find demo videos on Youtube HERE! They also have some videos at Sewingmachine.com under Product Demonstration Videos – click HERE. They sell a variety of sizes sort of like the Durkees. Anyway, I look forward to using them more as I get time to do more work!

Did anyone get to go to the Everything Embroidery Market last weekend in Chattanooga? I was so sad to have missed it! I realized several weeks ago that with the renovation and our soccer schedule that I was not going to be able to wiggle my nose and appear there for the weekend. On top of all that with my dad being in the hospital, I would not have made it anyway. I have seen tons of pictures and have heard nothing but great reviews, so I hope you all had fun and that they will do it again!

Have a great weekend! OH… I will work on the ORGANIZATION post ASAP with the feedback I got from my last post! I got some GREAT Tips!! One idea I had was to go ahead and get your next project ready while your machine is sewing. DON’T jump on Facebook because you will get sucked in to “15 Ways To Bond With Your Daughter” and then next thing you know 45 minutes has passed and you’ve done 1 burp cloth. Go ahead and iron the stabilizer on the bib you plan to work on next. Go ahead and iron the applique fabric and iron Heat N Bond Lite on it so it’ll be READY! If you have extra hoops, you could go ahead and hoop it! I would get a lot more done if I could discipline myself to think ahead and actually do stuff while my machine is sewing! photo (22)

One more time…. have a GREAT weekend! We have been out of town for soccer tournaments the past 2 weekends, so we are looking forward to being HOME. 🙂