Snob

It has been a while since I posted!

I guess all the 'stuff' happening with the Grand Princess has put me behind on a lot of things!

But, today I want to write a bit about being a snob.  I know I am a thread snob.  Being a machine quilter, there are certain types and brands of thread that simply do no hold up to the abuse the machine puts on it.  Now that I am an embroiderer as well, I have found the same thing.  Like NEVER buy a spool of thread from your local discount store.  Even though it may be a good brand, it has been sitting who knows how long, who know where, under whose guess as to the conditions!

I have now come to find that I am a snob of applique designers as well!

I realize that the very best designers (like Frou Frou by Heather Sue) do a fantastic job of making me look like I have a great talent.  When a design is so perfect, it is hard to mess it up!   A little fabric here, a cut there, a stitch or two here and you end up with a perfect applique.  No real thought or talent goes into it.  You would have to try really, REALLY hard to mess it up!

Other 'designers' are a pain to deal with.  The stitches don't cover the fabric right, the instructions are totally confusing, the stitch map is sometimes non existent, it takes forever to make it look ...well sometimes the best you can do is to make it passable.

When I first started, I only filed my purchased designs by subject matter, never by designer.  This has led to so much frustration!  When looking at nice, slick web sites, you see something you like, purchase it, download and put it in your machine and start to stitch...only to discover that it is from one of THOSE designers!  YUCK!

Now I have a method of filing the designs away that eliminates that (at least on newly purchased designs).  True, it takes me three times as long to download them, but it helps me to remember who is who.

Of course, the fact that so many 'designers' copy from each other (the good ones are the ones BEING copied, not the ones DOING the copying)  makes it difficult!  When you are searching for a design, and you see 'designer' D has the design you are looking for...sometimes you aren't sure if they are the ones that have it done 'right' or not.  Especially when you see that 'designer' V also has the same design.

Then there is the problem that they like to change their names a lot...I guess if you get a reputation of having 'iffy' designs, you don't want to carry that design over to new customers!

I just spent $18 purchasing 4 designs.  They were really cute...something I had not seen before.  They were a 'family'...Mom, Dad, Brother and Sister.  I had high hopes for what I wanted to do with it.  Only to stitch it out (as a test...learned the hard way never to trust the pictures on the web sites!) and discover that the Dad and the Brother are the same design.  While the Mom and the Sister are the same design.  They are not even taller and shorter...they are the SAME design!  They have become completely useless to me!  They will not work for what I had envisioned.  Frankly, I don't have a clue what they can be used for!

I will spend several hours with my software and try to make them into something I can use...or I will delete them from my computer.

But the good thing is...I will now add a notation to this 'designers' folder and NOT purchase from her again!






Nini