The Bobbin Buzz & Stitchin' Bits

Every month I get several emails that ask "How much should I charge for my embroidery work?" Today I got another one and thought I'd share this with you.

First the email...

"Larry, we are kinda new at this, but we purchased 2 BMP6 Baby Lock machines and we are in business but I still feel insecure in pricing. Do you have any suggestions on how much to charge for our services? We are in a small community and people here does not realize what is involved in doing embroidery. If you can, please advise on some pointers on how we should charge."

And my response...

Same thing everywhere! People don't realize what's involved in embroidering their whats-it until you tell them the price. If you are the first person they ever talk to about the cost of doing something for them it will probably come as a shock to them and they won't buy. Eventually they will talk with other people and find out the price is pretty similar then they can decide to do it or not.

If you're a member, just click in and use the calculator. It will walk you through all the steps to determine the amount you should charge.

-- Larry

When your embroidery machine is giving you fits, it's time to take it to your local technician. But what happens when your local guy can't get it fixed?

CLICK HERE: Want a second opinion? Or just want to vent? Ask The Reapir Tech is a new feature of Bobbin-Buzz! Just CLICK HERE to post your question and we'll forward it to our certified repair-tech!

Note: Due to the large volume of questions, not all will get answered but we will get to as many as possible!

New designs for 2007 Breast Cancer Awareness. These designs were digitized by Nita O'keefe and are available now for download. Read the details here...

We're leaving this morning on our first of 3 days of driving. Going from Nita's place in San Leon Texas and landing in Kerrville Texas tonite. Then on to an overnight stay in El Paso and then to Albuquerque New Mexico for the Balloon Fiesta.

The sun is just rising and the sky is beautiful. Maybe we'll have nice weather for the drive. It's pretty early but it will be a busy few days and we need to get a good jump on this day.

Looking at the map last night to figure out our route was a bit astonishing for one who has never driven through West Texas. There are LONG, LONG stretches of Interstate-10 with NOTHING but highway! I grew up in the Baltimore / Philidelphia area then moved to St Louis and then to Chicago so I'm used to town upon town upon town. It will be interesting to see what it's like with nothing but cactus! LOL.

I'll post a couple photos here when we pull in tonite for our stopover.

A lady called this evening as I was hooking up water hoses and taking care of other chores outside the camper. She was having problems with downloading a design set and I took the info needed to help her out.

After the details were out of the way she asked if I was THE LARRY that writes the articles for the website and was traveling around the country in an RV. I said "Yes - that's me!" She said "You must be baby boomers!"

We had a nice conversation and after we hund up I finished my hookups, all the while wondering what "You must be baby boomers" meant? LOL!

I'd have to guess it's either "Only baby boomers" would have a dream to travel around America in an RV for an extended period of time, OR that only baby boomers would be young enough to do this.

Suprisingly, there are more than 2-million Americans who travel around the country at for at least 6 months or more per year. And those that we've met range from the Greatest Generation (WW2 vets) all the way to 30-somethings. The vast majority are retired fairly recently which puts most in their 60's but a good number are in their 50's and took advantage of early buy-outs from their employers.

Another worked as a mortgage broker while traveling. Where he was located had no effect on his ability to work. Another owned a circus and only works 5 months a year. Still another made signs. So why not a digitizer?

As for the baby boomer status? Yep. We are and it's both good-news and bad-news. The good news is that it's been a terrific generation to be a part of. The bad news is, I don't think any of the money we've been paying into Social Security will find it's way back into our pockets.

Time for me to turn int. Tomorrow morning we're up early and heading for El Paso.

Help yourself to this week's weekly sampler designs...

Click Here For

This set of designs is free for 1 week to guests. They're always free to members.

Every week we release new designs that are FREE for our members to download. Last year there were over 2,500 new designs. Membership costs about 22-cents per day. Here's part of one of the new sets released today...

Members of ATW can download all of this week's new designs, along with more than 13,000 other designs in the "Design Library"... Join Here!

Yesterday we were driving through a small town and spotted two businesses next door to each other that just cracked us up!

So we started making up other businesses that should never be next door to each other. Or that would be funny to see. Here's some we came up with...

Can you think of any without being offensive? This thread was started in our Discussion Forum this morning :-)

With over 250,000 posts just in the main forum, members find a warm "gated community" feel to the ArtisticThreadWorks Discussion Forums.

Every week we draw a winner from our email list and this week's winner is...

tjlaurie @ bigpond.com who has just won a 3-month membership at ArtisticThreadWorks! You can claim the prize here... http://www.artisticthreadworks.com/prizeclaim anytime in the next 7 days..

We stopped last nite near El Paso Texas after driving 500 miles through the high-desert of West Texas. It's beautiful but would be just as beautiful if it were only 100 miles across!

We had supper at the Cattleman's Steakhouse and are heading out again this morning for the last leg of our drive to the Balloon Fiesta. Here's a picture of the desert taken last night...

Photos from yesterday and this morning...

Back-UPS CS Owners: In cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), as well as safety organization and government agencies worldwide, American Power Conversion is recalling their Back-UPS CS models in both 120-volt and 230-volt units listed below.

PROBLEM: Potential Overheating and Fire Hazard.

PRODUCT: The recall is isolated to the BK325I, BK325-RS, BK350, BK350EI, BK350-AZ, BK350-FR, BK350-GR, BK350-IT, BK350-UK, BK350JP, BK350IX218, BK475I, BK475-RS, BK500, BK500EI, BK500-AZ, BK500-BR, BK500-FR, BK500-GR, BK500-IT, BK500-UK, BK500BLK, BK500JP, and BK500TW product models.

http://www.apc.com/rely/?isoCountryCode=us

We've just sent a list of your questions to our repair technician. As soon as he answers them we'll post them as Q&A here in Bobbin-Buzz and on ArtisticThreadWorks. So thanks for your questions!

We've had several emails and phone calls from friends and members to see if we're okay. Yes, we are fine. The tradegy this morning in Albuquerque happened to the folks in another balloon. It wasn't ours. We were flying at the same time and I think we flew over the incident but again, it wasn't our balloon.

Here's a photo Holly took this morning just after takeoff...

"i'm VERY new to embroidery, but I absolutely love it and am totally consumed by it. but, being "new" has it challenges. How do I center a t-shirt and make sure that it stitches straight across instead of that lovely slant that I oh so often get? is there a special tool?"

You can buy a couple of special tools but they are for mass-producing shirts. For just doing 1 or a few shirts you don't need that tool. Instead, fold the shirt in half vertically so there's a line running down the center of the front of the shirt. Make that line visible by either pressing an iron on it to create a temporary crease OR using a disappering fabric marker. Once you have the vertical line, use it as a guide for the edge of your hoop.

If you will be doing LOTS of shirts, there is a tool called a "HoopMaster" that automated lining up the design...

From my email...

"Do you have some good instructions for embroidery machine appliqué? Thanks, Barbara Love your site!"

Yes! We have an online video that shows how applique is done using machine embroidery. It's in the members-section of the site at... Machine Embroidery Applique Video

Help yourself to this week's weekly sampler designs called "Simply Thanksgiving"

Click Here For

This set of designs is free for 1 week to guests. They're always free to members.

I got an email yesterday asking if I'd reccomend an SWF embroidery machine for a business...

The answer in short is YES! There are several ways to go when setting up an embroidery business but the single most important decision is in buying your machine. While a business can be started and even run for a while with a home machine, I wouldn't recommend it. Home machines just are NOT designed for the type of day-in-and-day-out use required for an embroidery business. Comercial machines ARE designed for that type of use.

When buying commercial machines you have several good choices. They are Tajima, Barudan, Brother, SWF, and a few others too. These machines are heavy-duty and will allow your business to earn money you simply could not do with a home machine.

The only exception would be the Brother PR600 (or PR600-2) machine OR the Babylock equivalents called the EMP6 (or BMP6) machines which are a "crossover" serving the home market but are sturdy enough to also use for a business. The disadvantage to the PR600/EMP6 machines is the limit of 6 thread colors but 80% of all designs sewn for a business are 6 or less colors.

Got questions about machine embroidery? Membership to Artistic ThreadWorks gives you instant access to the most in-depth coverage of the machine embroidery hobby on the internet at a cost everyone can afford. Click HERE to join!

Help yourself to this weeks free design set "Stick Kitchen Mice". These are for everyone that is a subscriber to Bobbin-Buzz, our free daily embroidery newsletter!

Have fun!

I picked this photo as a "weekly photo contest winner". Thanks for sharing with us DonnaLynn! You've won a 3 month extension on your membership for posting this photo!

"The bear hugging the pumpkin is Nita's. The primitive type ones are cindysembroiderydesigns.com and the applique one is ATW. The initial's I did on felt and sewed on with a pumpkin button. Those were done with Font Engine on Embird. Every bag has something on it with glow in the dark thread."

Thanks to all of you who post photos regularly in the photo gallery. It's hard to pick a winner every week because there's so many great ones to choose from.

For members of ArtisticThreadWorks here's a new article you'll want to read...

Besides solving the problem stated in the title, you'll also be able to speed up your computer by following 5 of the steps listed in the article!

Have you ever had a project that just went wrong from one step to the next, then again at the next step, then the next one, and so on until you're ready to pull your hair out?

Those projects end up as the "UFO's" in your closet, but in the case of "Computer Skills For Embroidery - Volume 2" I couldn't let it sit in the closet. It's taken me many, many weeks of work to bring this puppy to fruition but it's finally coming home to our warehouse! I won't go into the ugly details but I'm glad to say it should be shipping from our warehouse on Tuesday.

The introductory price will end then on Monday Oct 15th 2007. If you have been waiting to buy then now's the time to order. If you've already ordered and are waiting for the shipment, I apologize for the delay in getting it to you.

New designs for 2007 Breast Cancer Awareness. These designs were digitized by Nita O'keefe and are available now for download. Read the details here...

Every week we release new designs that are FREE for our members to download. Last year there were over 2,500 new designs. Membership costs about 22-cents per day. Here's part of one of the new sets released today...

Members of ATW can download all of this week's new designs, along with more than 13,000 other designs in the "Design Library"... Join Here!

Every week we draw a winner from our email list and this week's winner is...

grammiegumbo @ yahoo.com who has just won a 3-month membership at ArtisticThreadWorks! You can claim the prize here... http://www.artisticthreadworks.com/prizeclaim anytime in the next 7 days..

Ever wonder how to accomplish something with your embroidery software? I get this type of question all the time so I thought it would be a good idea to ask YOU what software you use and have questions about!

Please take a minute to answer our "Embroidery Software Survey". Thanks!

Embroidery Software Survey!

Readers know we've spent several days now in Albuquerque taking photos of hot air balloons and other things "Southwestern" for use in designs later on. We've also spent a lot of time talking with our friends Nita and CJ Okeefe about ways we can improve our businesses.

One of the things we've come up with is to bring "Bobbin Buzz" and "Stitchin' Bits" together into one newsletter. The benefit to our readers is that they'll now have one website to visit where they can read TWICE AS MANY articles about machine embroidery. You'll now see articles, prize drawings, pictures and other fun stuff from both ATW and Nitas Place in the same newsletter.

So look for the Stitchin' Bits articles to begin appearing here shortly!

-- Larry

It's a "Travel Day" for us! We'll be pulling out of the Balloon Fiesta RV parking this morning and heading for Amarillo and a 1-night stopover, then on to Dallas and San Leon for the next two days of driving.

Holly and I had originally planned to stay in New Mexico for most of October but we've run into some things that need to be done in collaboration with Nita so we're heading for Texas this morning. Is that one of the beatitudes... "Blessed are the flexible"?

We hope to return next year to see more of the New Mexico and possibly other areas nearby. Meanwhile, we've got lots to do and we're heading out. Look for my next login from Amarillo!

-- Larry

We travelled from Amarillo to Fort Worth yesterday. Today we'll make it the rest of the way to San Leon and the home of Nita & CJ Okeefe. Then we can start in on our next several projects!

Watch for announcements here shortly. Nita will be opening up her sewing studio and inviting a few of you to come by for a day of playing together. That should be pretty fun.

Houston's Quilt Show is coming up in just a few weeks. We'll probably be there visiting in one or two booths. Look for details on that soon too.

Okay -- time for us to pack up and hit the road. Talk to you soon!

-- Larry

Help yourself to this week's weekly sampler designs called "Simply Thanksgiving - II"

This set of designs is free for 1 week to guests. They're always free to members.

Every week we draw a winner from our email list and this week's winner is...

mariehines @ sbcglobal.net who has just won a 3-month membership at ArtisticThreadWorks! You can claim the prize here... http://www.artisticthreadworks.com/prizeclaim anytime in the next 7 days..

This week's Sampler is Funny little Mice. Just waiting for you to play with them.

http://www.nitasplace.com/public/885.cfm

Ginger and Spice is Half Price, isn't that Nice? Nita's exclusive Ginger and Spice designs are on sale this week! You can find this set of designs at the link below and in the What's on Sale department of the store.

Help yourself to this weeks free design set "Football Sticks". These are for everyone that is a subscriber to Bobbin-Buzz, our free daily embroidery newsletter!

Have fun!

I picked this photo as a "weekly photo contest winner". Thanks for sharing with us CarolynH! You've won a 3 month extension on your membership for posting this photo!

" The designs are from all over, Nita's, ATW, Stitch it Cheap. For the small jars I looked for designs around 48mm high the large jar I used 70mm high some are a little more or less. Made wraps out of fleece. I put the stablizer (light weight tearaway is what I used) along with the piece of fleece and hoop them both. The directions are from www.adesignbylyn.com There are also other directions on www.hollyberry.com -- look under 'projects'. "

Thanks to all of you who post photos regularly in the photo gallery. It's hard to pick a winner every week because there's so many great ones to choose from.

Every week we release new designs that are FREE for our members to download. Last year there were over 2,500 new designs. Membership costs about 22-cents per day. Here's part of one of the new sets released today...

Members of ATW can download all of this week's new designs, along with more than 13,000 other designs in the "Design Library"... Join Here!

My dad's 85th birthday is next Wednesday. He knows my sisters are coming up for a visit and to visit with him this week. What he doesn't know... and only one of my sisters knows... is that I'm coming too.

I will be flying out of Houston this afternoon and land in Burlington this evening. Then I'll stay the night in a hotel and tomorrow will drive over to dad's house after my sister calls to let me know she "arrived safely in Vermont". The secret code is so my other sisters won't know I'm coming too. It should be fun to surprise them by walking in the door a little after they all arrive.

Fortunately I'll have my laptop with me and hopefully will be able to access the internet with my wireless card from the lake where he lives. If not, then I'll be driving the 10 or 15 miles it takes to get in range of the internet on a daily basis.

If you have an elderly loved one, why not take a few minutes today to call or stop by for a visit?

-- Larry

November 1 through November 4, 2007 are the dates for the Houston Quilt Show. There's a "sneak-preview" night on October 31st too. Read more details at... http://www.quilts.com/home/viewer.php?page=../fqf07/info/genInfo

Holly and Nita will be at the show visiting with friends and possibly helping out at the RNK Distributing booth, but we won't have a booth of our own this year. (Maybe next year?) They'll be talking about "fuwari" designs and some possibly some other projects we have going on too.

What's "fuwari"? It's a 3-D embroidery technique where the digitizer creates a design that is 3-dimensional. It's fun to look at and to touch. Because it is 3-D, it doesn't show up so well in photos but I'll try with this photo...

Yep! Believe it or not, that was sewn out on a home embroidery machine!

Right now I'm in Vermont to visit my dad, stepmom, and sisters. Meanwhile, back at the ranch (literally) Holly and Nita are busy test-sewing fuwari designs on different machines and fabrics with different combinations of needles and threads so they KNOW exactly what to tell people that want to learn how to do fuwari. It's keeping them busy but they're also having a ball with this project! The design packs will begin showing up on your dealer's shelves in March, although a few dealers will have them sooner than that.

When I get home on Thursday I'll be working on several new videos we have in the works, along with more website updates, and a couple other projects we're working on. It sure can be busy when you own a small business! But for the next 3 days, I'm relaxing and taking time out for family. I'll still be checking in, just not all day long. Hope you're having a great weekend!

-- Larry

(Thanks to Cindy for this great story posted in our ATW forum yesterday...)

My mother passed away over 11 years ago - so its a little late to let her know what I finally understand but...

I remember as a teenager helping her fold laundry and as I folded my bikini panties, and little lacy bra's - I asked her how she could wear those granny underwear and playtex cross your heart bra's - she told me I'd understand when I was her age. Its been years since that conversation took place between us, but I always remembered it in the back of my mind, each time I went shopping for those oh so personal items.

Well, I'm the age she was then (45) and today I understand...Comfort. No digging straps, no crawling undies, no pinching, poking, pressure or bouncing out above or below. Yes, I took the plunge into the ladies high waist undies, and a playtex cross your heart - and I have to say - its been an 18 hour day and I feel better than I have in years.

So Mom, If you can hear me - I finally understand!

Did you know we have a "classifieds" section on ArtisticThreadWorks? It's a place where members can post items they have for sales, designs they've digitized, used machines and accessories, and lots more.

Here's one ad from our classifieds today...

Lisa

If YOU have an item you'd like to advertise to thousands of embroiderers, post it in our classifieds section at ArtisticThreadWorks. It's free to members!

From our Computer Help Forum...

I need a hint on software to use for creating photo collages. On E-bay seller gets one photo for free. I need to get several photos in one photo! Help please.

Thanks for the question! We have a Computer Help Forum where you'll always find a helping hand with your computer and software questions inside ArtisticThreadWorks. We also offer VIDEOS on CD that play in your computer and shows you Basic Computer Skills For Embroidery...

Help yourself to this week's weekly sampler designs called "Simply Tropic"

This set of designs is free for 1 week to guests. They're always free to members, so why not become a member now? What are you waiting for - really?! JOIN US HERE!

Every week we draw a winner from our email list and this week's winner is...

stitchbystitch @ insightbb.com who has just won a 3-month membership at ArtisticThreadWorks! You can claim the prize here... http://www.artisticthreadworks.com/prizeclaim anytime in the next 7 days..

Help yourself to this weeks free design set "Ladybug Bears". These are for everyone that is a subscriber to Bobbin-Buzz, our free daily embroidery newsletter!

Have fun!

I picked this photo as a "weekly photo contest winner". Thanks for sharing with us lslater! You've won a 3 month extension on your membership for posting this photo!

"Spiral skirt. Pattern from youcanmakethis, Michael Miller fabric. Laura "

Thanks to all of you who post photos regularly in the photo gallery. It's hard to pick a winner every week because there's so many great ones to choose from.

Every week we release new designs that are FREE for our members to download. Last year there were over 2,500 new designs. Membership costs about 22-cents per day. Here's part of one of the new sets released today...

Members of ATW can download all of this week's new designs, along with more than 13,000 other designs in the "Design Library"... Join Here!

This week's JoAnn's $25.00 Gift Card Winner from the mailing list is Estelle from Viginia-- email address estelle . murphy @ gmail.com

The winner has 5 days from today to claim the card by emailing me nita@nitasplace.com or you may call me at 281-559-146

This week's Sampler is Happy Hippos. Delightful to sew out and will look cute on anything. These are just the cutest little designs.

"Christmas Lace" is Half Price this week at Nita's Place. These designs make great ornaments and gifts. You can find this set of designs at the link below and in the "What's on Sale" department of the store.

We've been at NitasPlace for this last 2 weeks working on projects. I mean literally "at" Nita's place! We're parked in her driveway where her husband C.J. has installed a special 50-amp outlet for our motorhome to plug into.

Holly and Nita have been working on digitizing designs for the upcoming couple of months as well as a special Fuwari project. C.J. has been preparing for the www.nitasthreadnest.com shipments that will be going out next week. I've been working on www.digitizersworld.com and also on a new video that we shot on Friday morning.

I'll tell you a little bit about the video first...

On Friday, Ricky Brooks sat down with me to be interviewed. Many of you know Ricky from the "Hands On Sewing School" that he and his wife Kay started several years ago. They also previously founded and eventually sold "Best Sew" in Knoxville Kentucky which was one of the largest single-store sewing and embroidery machine dealers in the US. And more recently they founded RNK Distributing , the company that brings you all the fine Floriani products that you see in your local dealer's store.

RNK sells their products through an international independent dealer network currently comprising about 1,000 stores. And RNK is growing very fast. It's not often that I get to ask questions of someone that has built several very successful companies within our niche market and it was a great pleasure for me to interview Ricky.

That interview will be packaged onto a DVD and released as soon as I have finished the editing and preparation work. For those of you who are IN the embroidery business, or any business for that matter, this would be a fascinating look into the mind of a genius of our industry.

Part of the interview will also go into the new Fuwari video that I'm also currently working on. This will be the snippet that explains how Fuwari originated and how it came to America. The rest of the Fuwari video will cover the entire story from how it works, what gives the best results with it, and showing the entire process of Fuwari.

The OTHER thing I've been working on for several days now is DigitizersWorld. I've made some very significant changes to DW, basically opening up some of the bottlenecks to joining the site, changing some of the policies and processes, and generally streamlining the operations of the site.

There are TWO things you'll be interested to know about the DW changes right away...

First - The Daily News will change formats with the November 1st issue. It will be going to a much more "graphical" format, with a layout that is based on our photo gallery software. That is to say, there will be a photo gallery showing 4 thumbnail size pictures across each row. You can click the thumbnail size picture to get a closeup view of the details, and if you like what you see, click the closeup picture and you'll land on the digitizer's website!

This makes surfing the Daily News more enjoyable and faster too. From our side, it will require less work by my staff to prepare the Daily News every morning, meaning among other things that I can now let more digitizers into DW!

Second - The other change at DW is something hundreds of people have been asking for now for years -- online digitizing classes! I've purchased a very high-end commercial "distance learning" program from a very reliable manufacturer and we are having it installed as part of the DW site next week.

We will beta-test the installation with Shary Connell from Stitched Impressions being our first teacher using our new system. If all goes as expected then we will quickly release the software for use by the other digitizers that want to teach lessons through DW.

I have set up an info page to tell you more about online classes work, as well as an FAQ FAQ page too. There is now a calendar on DW that will allow you to browse upcoming lessons dates and times too. And I'm currently in the process of setting up a "feedback system" so you can rate the quality of the lessons you take. We'll keep an eye on your comments and let the teachers know how they're doing.

Well that's all the news for this weekend. I hope to see some of you at the Houston Quilt Festival next week as we wander through and enjoy the show.

-- Larry

The week's Sampler is now online for you to download.

http://www.nitasplace.com/public/894.cfm

Come on over and get yours.

Remember it is free for all for 1 week only.
Then it moves into the members area.

On Sale this week! Nita's Noah's Ark Designs are half price this
week at Nita's Place. The designs are for the 4x4 hoop.
You can find these designs at the link below.
This set of designs will be on sale all week in the What's On Sale
department.

http://www.nitasplace.com/public/viewimage.cfm?ImgID=687

Also see the new designs available in the Discount Designs department
of our store.