Photos, etc.

Applique Cafe and Facebook:
Hopefully you've already seen that all Applique Cafe designs are 30% off until the 12th! We've had a great day so far and part of that may have to do with us having close to 300 fans on Facebook! WOW! I'm amazed at the response and have enjoyed seeing the customer pictures that have been posted as well as the comments! Speaking of comments, Facebook doesn't notify you of them on a Fan Page so I try to see/read them all! Hopefully I won't miss too many!

Scissors:
I went to JoAnn yesterday with my 50% off coupon and bought a pair of the 4" curved scissors! I haven't used them too much yet, but they are pretty sharp and I think I like them!! I'm going to have to get used to them for sure!

New Designs:
We'll have 4, if not 5, new designs up this week! I'm finishing up sampling 2 of them right now. When I'm done we'll send them to be converted to ART and then will get them listed ASAP!

Machine Numero Uno:
I'm sad to report that my PE-750D is on the fritz AGAIN!! :( I was doing shirts Saturday evening and somehow in between shirts the top tension went ka-put! I e-mailed Steve @ Sewing Machine.com to see if there was anything I could do to try to fix it. I didn't expect to hear from him until Monday and was surprised when he e-mailed me back several times Saturday NIGHT! Depending on the weather tomorrow I may run it over to West Point and leave it with him. He said he might need to replace the tension parts since this has happened before. Luckily I have my PE-700 as a backup!

OK... now to the topic of PHOTOS:
I won't go in to too much detail, but in a nutshell, this morning a friend of mine realized that someone was using HER photos of outfits she had sewn. The person that posted them did not give my friend credit, nor did she say "I didn't make this outfit, but I can make an outfit like this". Much to my surprise, after looking further I realized that this same person had "borrowed" photos from my blog as well! Not just my applique photos which many of my customers use showing what appliques they offer, but photos of specific things I had done and these photos were made to look like HER samples. All of the photos had prices underneath and were misleading and looked like the person who used the photos had sewn them herself! One photo in particular was a project that I spent hours on and consisted of 11 baby gift items I did for a customer. Another photo was of a bib & burp cloth a customer of mine did using one of my designs! I think it's in the AC Gallery so I assume that's where she got it?

OK.... it is one thing to use applique design photos. I have people e-mail me all the time asking permission to use my pictures and that is fine! And most people don't ask, which is fine too! I usually suggest that as they sew the designs themselves, that they replace my pictures with theirs! The reason being that you will run in to people requesting appliques in fabrics that you don't have, and also it's not a representation of your work if your whole blog is full of other people's pictures! But, I do understand that people buy lots of applique designs and it takes time to sew them all and show pictures of them completed! I think I can count on 1 hand the number of pictures on my blog that aren't mine (from the right hand collumn). There are a few from Embroidery Boutique from when I did samples for the website. If I do use someone's photo in a blog post I always give credit (ex: customer photos of the teapot shirts for example).

The person who used these photos is a good Applique Cafe customer, and I'm not going to make a big deal over a few photos. But, use your best judgement when using other people's pictures! I'm flattered when I see AC design pics on other blogs because it tells me that people are buying our designs. Like I said, I do suggest that you replace the pics with your own as you sew them! However, please don't use other people's photos of outifts, baby gifts, etc. and make it look like they are samples of your own work! That is very misleading and dishonest!!

On another note, Mallory just dropped a little poop in the toilet!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm sure it's a total fluke, but very exciting here at the Gulledge household! Of course she had an audience of 4 people cheering her on so we probably freaked her out!!

Back to work on these samples...