The Quilt National 2005 catalog arrived in the mail yesterday. I have been spending way too much time perusing and ogling and analyzing the quilts. One observation that I have made is that many of them use images printed on fabric. I was quite surprised to see how many have digitally manipulated photos, photo transfers or photos printed on fabric. I think I counted about 12. Fusing seems to be making inroads, but piecing still reigns supreme. The machine quilting on most is extremely simple and rarely takes center stage. And some are hand quilted.

So with that in mind, I am happy with my E-bay purchase of an Epson Stylus Photo 2200 wide format printer. It uses pigment inks instead of dye and is more light and water fast than the HP inks. Some people don’t even pretreat the fabric with Bubble Jet set or wash it afterwards (for art quilts). So I am anxious to try some samples. It has 7 ink cartridges. I plan to use it only for fabric printing and important photos. I have a wide format HP for my other printing.

Today, I finally got my act together and rearranged the studio and found lost stuff and made my work space more functional. I feel better prepared to start creating again!!

Day Six of Twenty Days of Virtue Still doing well. I succumbed to a tablespoon of Port over my strawberries tonight. Yesterday I did a half hour of aerobics and then we worked with the large Fit Ball for another half hour. I love doing that. I have one in the studio and when I have been sitting too long, I like to sit on it and massage my butt! I am doing my first weigh-in tomorrow to see how I’m doing, but the pants feel slightly looser.