Hello. Hello. Thump. Thump. Is this thing working?

Hi. It’s me, tech support (husband). Doing a guest blog for Sherralyn. I haven’t blogged here since early 2009. And that was just part of trying to get he blog software set up.

This time I’m going to blog about the globe pincushion that has been available as a free download on this site for some time and about a new version of that pattern.

A key aspect of the original pattern was printing the pattern on to cloth using an ink jet printer. Running a piece of cloth through an ink jet is not something everyone is comfortable with. One reader wrote Sherralyn that “my husband would have kittens if I did that”. But Sherralyn and I have been doing it for some time and I have yet to have kittens myself so we know that not all husbands necessarily have kittens if cloth is run through an ink jet printer. That’s just not the way cats, husbands or ink jet printers work. There are commercially available printable fabrics that work well and Sherralyn’s patterns have instructions for a DIY approach that has also worked for us. We use the DIY technique not only for the globe pincushion but for some of the doll patterns.

Nevertheless, we recognize that not every one is willing to give this technique a try. And, we have come across a solution! There are online services that will custom print on fabric for you. We have been trying out a site called Spoonflower that will print patterns that we have uploaded onto 8”x8” swatches, fat quarters, or yards of fabric. A swatch runs about $5 plus shipping. The cost of larger quantities varies with the type of fabric selected. Sherralyn has been very impressed with the quality of the Kona cotton fabric that we have ordered from them. The grain is unusually square and the colors are bright. On the other hand, the cost per yard is, as you would expect for custom, print-on-demand fabric, relatively high. And, delivery times can run a couple of weeks. But you may consider these disadvantages a small price to pay to avoid kittens.

If you want to give this a try, we have updated the original pincushion instructions slightly to accommodate the print-on-demand fabric here. And a link to the globe pincushion fabric pattern on Spoonflower is here.

blog, Free Patterns blog theme

I have only had four people to comment on my blog during February. Since I have enough copies of my book to send each of you a copy, I am declaring everyone a winner. My piano teacher would have enjoyed drawing the winners, but she is very tenderhearted, so she will be glad that everyone has won. John Nickolaus, Damerose,  Melissa, and Annette, If you will email me with an address, I will send you each a copy of the book this week.  Send me e-mail You can also find the email link at the bottom of my main page.

Thank you for all your comments. I hope that you will continue to read my blog and comment.  Next week I hope to write about decorating eggs with tiny scraps of fabric and Mod Podge. Be sure to check to see if my eggs turned out okay.

Uncategorized blog theme

Today I made some changes to the “sunshine” theme that the blog is using. I think this is pretty good for now. The blog page looks more like the other pages of the web site.  What I did:

Using the WordPress themes editor I edited styles.css to have the #header function display line.jpg at a height of 10 pixels. This replaced the header.jpg image of the yellow bicycle that was 200 something pixels high.

Using the editor on the server, I edited the templates/header.php file to comment out the stuff that was drawing the blog name and tag line and the navagation bar. I could not figure out how to do this in the WordPress themes editor.

blog blog theme

Still working on the blog’s appearance. I looked at some other themes including “Dream on” but in the end I thought that would be harder to adapt than “sunshine”.  So back to sunshine where I added the sherralynsdolls.gif image and the navigation buttons to the “notices” section of the blog. That’s almost what I wanted. Next I need to get rid of the nice picture of a the yellow bicycle at the top of the theme. The brown navigation bar is a bit of a problem too. More to come.

blog blog theme

Hello.

Testing. Testing.

1 2 3 Testing.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

Can you hear me?

How about there on the back row? Raise your hand.

Okay. Let’s get started.

This is my first blog. First post ever. I’m just trying this out. The web site and blog are supposed to be about Sherralyn’s dolls but I’m helping out with the technical stuff. I’ve written some html in the past but have never set up a web site and never used WordPress before. The look of the blog is determined by what WordPress calls a theme. There’s about a bazillion of them to chose from and for now I picked this one. It’s called “sunshine”.  It’s nice enough in and of itself but it’s not what I really want. What I want is to have the picture at the top be a photo montage that I made up of some of Sherralyn’s dolls. And I want the words “Sherralyn’s Dolls” up there. And since I was thinking to have a “Main” page that shows the dolls and to have the blog as a secondary page, it seems to me that the “Main” button should be on the left and the “Blog” button to the right of that.  But the WordPress themes that I have looked at so far do not let me change out the picture from the “theme editor” function of WordPress and I don’t see an easy way to move the “Blog” tab out of the left-most position.  What I want would look something like this: 

 But we are anxous to get this blog going so I’m going with “sunshine” for now. I think that I can change the theme later and not lose any of these first blogs. We shall see.

blog blog theme