After digging myself out from a deep depression that I let got hold of me after getting almost jobless over night, I started making baby items which I will be putting up for sale in the near future. The first being a baby quilt of about 75 x 100cm with jelly roll strips.
With my machine finally fixed, I could get back into embroidery again. Extremely sad if you take your machine twice back to the agent and then receive it back more broken than what it was before with even missing screws and accessories mixed up with other people's machines as obviously I know how my machine's parts look. Then having to pay the technician who looked after the machine the past 10 years as well to fix the mess made by the agent. It was a very expensive mistake on my part. And everybody is just shrugging their shoulders and don't want to man up and reimburse me or even apologize for the substandard work done. But we all know about Karma and the people responsible for this will lose double in the end.
But, enough about that. I started working today again after a lengthy break of 5 weeks although on contract basis for the next 10 weeks only. I am searching for a permanent post and hope to get something eventually. All depends on our government turning the economy around though. Otherwise I will be forced to retire early and/or search for any other work to keep us afloat. But, I leave that in the hands of our Lord and trust that He will show me the way forward.
The only items being finished the past two weeks, is 8 spit cloths I embroidered for a dear friend who crocheted the edges. Two of them was covered with beautiful checked bias binding which I then appliqued in coordinating fabrics.
I forgot to take a photo of the last one, hence only 7.
Another few weeks slipped past with no quilting or embroidery done. The past two weeks was just spend relaxing and wondering what 2021 will bring as for me personally 2020 ended on a very low note.
The new job I was so exited about did not work out and as I am writing this I am still jobless as all in the engineering industry closed over the holiday season. As the industry is also in a very precarious position due to an almost bankrupt government, the prospect of finding another job is slim at best. But, as Jenny of Elefantz so eloquently put it, we should not despair "for we know the Lord is for us and not against us, that He will make a way where there seems no way, and He will provide for His flock."
My machine is however a totally different story as it is now already out of order for two months. As the matter is still ongoing, I will write about that later. I am taking it for a second opinion tomorrow and will hopefully get it fixed soon. I might have to fall back on machine embroidery and quilting to supplement our income so I need my machine up and running. It might also be time to seriously start designing and selling embroidery designs online with the digitizing program I won way back in 2004 and never really had time to get going whilst working fulltime. I am still praying about this for guidance as to what direction I should take.
The only thing I did manage to do was sorting through my fabrics and copied two of my friends who started organizing their fabrics neatly. It was however a huge task as I first had to cut up empty boxes to A4 sizes and then wrapping the fabrics around it. But it was all worth it as the before and after pictures clearly show. Now I can actually see what is there at first glance. This however exclude my quilting fabrics which are stowed away in drawers.
During the first meeting of 2024 in February, friend Ansulet Swanepoel demonstrated a rather mind-blowing technique enabling quilters to tur...
