INDEPENDENT NEEDLEWORK NEWS

It’s sad CraftGossip is having such a difficult time keeping a needlework editor, but before she left, Joanne Leuci wrote a terrific post about The Silver Needle’s exclusive Just Nan project called Christmas Workshop. Take a look for yourself, and then don’t forget to pre-order!

I bet this project will be a handy one for guiding stitchers through finishing CA Wells‘ Pyramid Etui, too, which might be another good reason to purchase this lovely Just Nan project.

Technorati Tags: Joanne Leuci, CraftGossip, Silver Needle, Just Nan, exclusive, needlework, Christmas Workshop, Pyramid Etui, CA Wells

I’m not quite sure how long it will be until I’ll be able to announce the grand opening of Tricia’s shop, but when I stumbled across this post with pictures of it as it’s all coming together, I knew I had to share them with you.

Doesn’t it look like the shop of your dreams?

Make sure you check out the rest of Tricia’s shop pictures, too! There are oodles of darling little delights in store for you …

Technorati Tags: Tricia’s shop, doll house, miniature, needlework

Distributor Norden Crafts has a very informative article called Copyrights and Copywrongs on their website.  It gives you the basics on copyright law as it pertains to the needlework industry.

This article is about as close as you can get to finding copyright information pertaining to the needlework industry “in a nutshell.” Even though I have been studying copyright law with regard to needlework for many years now, even I still find it confusing at times. 

In fact, that is one of the biggest problems with copyright law, in my opinion – that it is so confusing.  I focus on it often here on Independent Needlework News as a service  to you and to the industry I love because, most of the time, understanding is the key to compliance.  It is difficult to follow a law you don’t understand because you don’t know if what you are doing is correct or not.  However, ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law, and the penalties for copyright infringement are too high — this is DEFINITELY one law you do NOT want to break for a MULTITUDE of reasons.   

Norden Craft’s article helps answer some of the more confusing questions in a fairly clear way. I recommend it to you as something to read today, and then as something to review perhaps once every six months or so — just to keep these thoughts fresh in your own mind so that your actions are always clearly in line with copyright laws.

Bookmark this site, too, for those times when you have questions!

By the way, if you are wondering why a needlework distributor is interested in copyright law, it is because needlework distributors are affected by the illegal copying of needlework patterns, too.  Copyright infringement hurts the needlework industry AT EVERY SINGLE LEVEL.

Let’s say this distributor normally sells ten copies each of ten different patterns to each shop (100 patterns total). If one customer from each shop buys one copy of each of those ten different patterns and makes ten illegal copies of each of those patterns, which they then illegally give to ten different friends, then those friends do not need to buy the original patterns (which means the shop loses their business).  Now the other nine of each of those patterns waiting to be bought by customers are still sitting on the shop’s shelves …

And let’s not forget to do the math, either.  Suppose each of those ten different patterns retails for $10, which is getting to be a fairly average price nowadays.  Just one set of those ten patterns at retail value would be $100! With just one customer from each shop giving away ten copies of ten patterns to ten friends, the shop would lose $1000!  Nine more shops around the country would also lose $1000 each!

When the shops don’t sell the patterns they expect to sell, they don’t reorder as soon as they expected to and/or they don’t have the funds to place new orders for other products. This means the distributors are now not receiving orders like they used to — either they are receiving smaller orders, or their orders are coming in farther and farther apart.

It took a little while, but in the end, both the shop AND the distributor lost business, and that is why Norden Crafts has made this article available to you. They want you to understand that if you make a copy of a pattern for a friend or accept a copy of a pattern from a friend, it is hurting their business, too.

What’s more important, perhaps, at least to you, is that Norden Crafts wants you to understand that when you cause your shop to lose business in this way, then you give your shop two choices, neither of which is particularly appealing: raise their prices or go out of business. Which one do you prefer?

I prefer my shop stay in business AND be able to keep their prices lower, so I refuse to make or accept illegal copies of patterns. Please do the same.

JUST SAY NO TO COPYWRONGS !!!

Technorati Tags: Norden Crafts, copyrights, copywrongs, needlework, copyright, infringement

For some time now, I’ve admired crazy quilting from a distance. I even took a class back in October, 2001, in Romulus, Michigan with the legendary Carole Samples (why does this woman not have a website?), during which my grandmother passed away and I also learned I did not get a job I really wanted and had been fully led to expect to get. 

Unfortunately, the class organizers had done a very poor job of organizing anything (for instance, there was not enough food for all of the attendees to eat, even when it was served to us instead of buffet style).  On top of it all, when I had the “nerve to complain”  I was hungry and expected something to eat, especially since we were being hosted at a Hilton, the retreat organizers demanded I leave!  Somehow my stomach growling loudly and rather angrily sounding after missing two meals had upset a couple of people in the class sitting nowhere near me who had no idea what was going on, or what was making the noise.  I was deemed to be setting a bad example and ruining the retreat for others, and so I was ordered to leave without being allowed to explain “my side,” without being able to make any appeal, without being able to inform them of my grandmother’s death, and without even receiving any portion of my money back!  Oh, and I did not get my class kits either.    My one big regret is that I did not make my complaints known to Carole Samples, who, as far as I know, would have been appalled at the treatment I received from the organizers.  As a result of this experience, I  have had a bad taste in my mouth for crazy quilting that has lasted to this day.

However, I’m still very attracted to the idea of crazy quilting. Probably not to a lot of the crazy quilting that has come into fashion quite recently — I don’t see myself using pictures on crazy quilts, for example. I’m also not crazy about things that are Victorian style, so I would be doing things which reflect an entirely different decorating style and color palette. I also think that most of the time I would tend to go for the simpler look — although the style known as “encrusted crazy quilting” (which is a type of crazy quilting just smothered with beads and all sorts of sparkly doodads and whatnots until it seems there isn’t any more space to add another bit of sparkle to a piece) is extremely popular right now, it also is really not my particular style or interest.

It’s all yummy eye candy and terrific inspiration for sure, but what interests ME, as a needleworker, about crazy quilting is having a purpose to use all sorts of lovely fancy embroidery stitches in something other than a band sampler.

However, one of several things which has held me back from giving crazy quilting much of a try on my own — besides not having my class kit and supplies from the class I mentioned above — has been wondering how I’ll ever be able to make such nice, neat stitches as all the crazy quilters seem to do. Well, it turns out that at least some of the best crazy quilters out there, including Carole Samples herself, use a little help to make everything come out looking so nice and neat. Some of us might call it cheating; others of us would call it smart or a trick of the trade.

Personally, I’m just surprised because, still being outside the crazy quilting world myself, the thought that this wasn’t all done completely by hand — and that it’s actually OKAY to use a tool to help you get things just right — hadn’t even occurred to me. Suddenly, if I could get my hands on this tool (the shops I’ve found who carry it are currently out of stock, sigh … well, perhaps they know I’m broke!), I feel like maybe I could grasp crazy quilting by myself now.

Sharon Boggon reviewed Carole Samples’ Dream-a-Seam Templates in excellent detail, and from the point of view of how they can be useful to an experienced crazy quilter. The fact that one of the most well known crazy quilters in the stitching universe thinks so highly of the Dream-a-Seam Templates tells me they are a super tool.

But read all the comments on Sharon’s post, too. Carole Samples actually posted a comment on Sharon’s review (in response to a question from another commenter) that one of her intentions in creating the Dream-A-Seam Templates was to help crazy quilters get over a hurdle preventing them from even getting started creating a piece of crazy quilted artwork. That’s pretty much where I fall, so the Dream-A-Seam Templates should be helpful and a lot of fun for me — if I can just get my hands on them in the first place! :D  Then the hardest decision left to make will be which seam to use — and from Sharon’s review, that sounds like a decision which could confound me for months, LOL …

By the way, the commenter to whom Carole was responding, Sarah E., felt using Carole’s Dream-A-Seam tool might not be all that historically accurate with what crazy quilters in days long past used to do — and went on from there to make some very insightful remarks regarding crazy quilters today having a bit of a hangup about making things perfect.  I think Sarah’s thoughts apply to needleworkers of any kind and are relevant in several types of discussions, so I will likely be referring back to Sarah E.’s comments at some point in the future — as well as trying to locate her.  (If anyone can help me locate her, I would really appreciate it!)

Technorati Tags: Carole Samples, Dream-a-Seam, templates, encrusted, crazy quilt, Dream a seam, Sharon Boggon, Hilton 

I received a question from a reader (who prefers to remain anonymous, but thank you all the same for giving me the opportunity to weigh in on this very important NEWS ISSUE within the needlework community) late yesterday asking me to confirm or deny a rumor going around that popular thread company (certainly one of MY personal favorites!) Needle Necessities either has gone or is going out of business.

This rumor is COMPLETELY FALSE.

I spoke directly with Debbie BuSteed, Needle Necessities’ front Office Manager, on the telephone just minutes ago using the main Needle Necessities number posted on their website (714-892-9211). Debbie was very forthcoming and confirmed that while she has heard the rumor and received numerous calls about its veracity, it is NOT TRUE. If ANYONE would know whether or not this rumor were true, it would be Debbie.

Perhaps partly fueling the FALSE rumor is the fact that a few Needle Necessities’ employees have chosen to leave the company for personal reasons. Therefore, Needle Necessities has been running shorthanded, which has in some cases left them somewhat behind in filling orders.

However, they are catching up with all their employees pitching in wherever they can. Debbie herself is doing pretty much everything from answering the phones and taking orders right through to shipping — except the actual dyeing, she says, which she does not know how to do.

***************************************************************************

Now, on a somewhat different note, I would just like to refer you to another of my absolute favorite Internet resources. It’s called the Internet Tourbus, is written with intelligence and a generous dose of good humor by Bob Rankin and Patrick Crispen, and I have been subscribing to it for literally YEARS, even though I know the Internet pretty well by now. In particular, I would like to mention an archived Internet Tourbus issue concerning people who have spread false rumors which resulted in harming a company’s business … And THAT resulted in those people being SUED by a big company — Proctor & Gamble, to be specific … And the little people LOST the lawsuits — BIG TIME — because they had lied without bothering to check their facts, and thus were deemed to have willfully harmed Proctor & Gamble’s business.

So my personal advice to anyone who has been spreading this rumor about Needle Necessities which I have now FLATLY DEBUNKED is that you post immediate retractions everywhere you posted the rumor ASAP to CYA. Better to be as safe as possible at this point than sorrier than horse poop. Feel free to refer people to this article here on Independent Needlework News for the facts; the direct link to this article is:

http://independentneedleworknews.com/2007/08/21/nn-not-out-of-business/

or you can also use the TinyURL code: http://tinyurl.com/2gru83

And sign up (or as Bob and Patrick call it, get a free ticket) for the Internet Tourbus, too. You’ll enjoy it; I promise!

Technorati Tags: Needle Necessities, rumor, out of business, Internet Tourbus, Proctor & Gamble, lawsuit, sue, Bob Rankin, Patrick Crispen