www.LaurasSewingStudio.com

October 16, 2006

FYI

FAX ORDERS - Don’t know if I’ve told you this before but you can fax your orders to us at 281 257 3985 Available 24/7 This may be more convenient for you.

Our fax machine is located in a secure area where your personal information will not be accessible to anyone else.

Adding you to the list or changing your email address To all the folks who email asking us to add them to the list or change their email address - Yahoo will not let us do that. You need to go to the Yahoo group and make the changes there.

Newest Products

Mehndi Body Art Machine Embroidery Designs

The Big Easy Purse Pattern

The Hex Flex Frame

Where are our trunk shows?
Oct 1-23 Somewhere Sewing, Johnson City, TN

New Projects

Christmas Outdoor Quilts

For the next few weeks I will be featuring Christmas Quilts made with our Outdoor Quilts Collection. We’ll start this week with small quilts that are 2 blocks wide. These quilts fit small hangers well, inside and outside your home. These quilts are semi-transparent so they look great inside in the windows of your home or office.

I’ve used colors Red - Green - White for my quilts but other variations that would also be nice are Cream instead of White, Burgandy instead of Red, and Other shades of Green.

Metallic fabrics and threads would also work well when used indoors. The Double Wedding Ring design would be great done in golden rings.

Visit the Outdoor Quilts Collection page for  more details and more variations.

Featured Project

As you can see this garden quilt is 2 blocks wide and 4 blocks long. It hangs on a small wrought iron hanger.

The Rose of Sharon block done in red fabrics work well within a Christmas theme.

The 4-Leaf Clover block with its points look more like Holly than a 4-Leaf Clover.

This simple arrangment sews up fast and adds a little Christmas flare to your garden.

Follow the directions in the book that accompanies this collection for making these blocks and assembling them with the borders.

This is “Bond, James Bond, License to Kiss” but we call him “Knucklehead”. He is sitting in the breakfast nook window along with the little Christmas Quilt.

If you need fabrics and/or hangers for your quilts be sure to check the resources in the book that accompanies this collection.

Want more layout ideas for small quilts?

The following is a few virtual layouts for you.

Click on the photos to go to the Christmas Outdoor Quilts page with even more layouts

Baskets

Double Wedding Rings

Large Flowers

Combination Quilts

Next week I’ll feature larger Christmas Outdoor Quilts with more layouts for you.

Albert’s Cubicle

The Psychology of File Back Ups

In recent years, a variety of devices have come out making file back up easier than ever. Still, getting important files copied to a new off line disk or thumb drive has been, and always be, the greatest obstacle anyone faces. After all, the PC was suppose to be the next major home appliance.  Turn it on for entertainment. Turn it off and forget about it. Still, the PC demands a bit more attention than simply tending to the power switch.  So how to tend to the need for regular file back ups?

The simplest of philosophies is to turn file back ups into just another routine. When it's time to pay bills each week, add ten minutes to the routine for copying personal files to the thumb drive. Gas  bill check, light bill check, phone bill check, back up computer files check. Cut the grass, tend the garden, or walk the dog? Schedule a full system backup to an external hard drive just before starting routine chores or exercise.

Whatever routine works best, be consistent, orderly, and repetitive.  Organizing personal files into a single location on the PC hard drive can make back ups simpler. Still, some applications encourage or insist that data files run from specific folders on the PC.  If the data is too important to lose, know where it's located and back it up as part of the routine. Some applications have built-in back up routines that even remind the user when to back up data, but the back up typically stays on the computer until transferred to off-line storage by the owner, making it only half a solution.

Whether the back up solution is a $20 thumb drive or a $1,000 software/hardware solution, consistent repetition is how to win the back up game.