Hand Sewing Pincushion

Spiritual - Holy Images, or liturgical icons, in our churches all principally represent Christ.  Images could not represent God, because of His invisibility and incomprehensible nature.  The incarnation of His Son has brought us a new insight.  These icons express  the same Gospel message that Scripture communicates by words and help to "explain" each other.  All our images, the Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, and all the saints are all related to Christ who is glorified in them.  "They make manifest the 'cloud of witnesses' who continue to participate in the salvation of the world and to whom we are united, above all in sacramental celebrations.  Through their icons, it is man 'in the image of God,' finally transfigured' into his likeness' who is revealed to our faith.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, pg. 328

Sewing -  I have a hard time keeping track of the different sizes of hand needles I use when working on a project.  Umm..I thought.  What if I had a pin cushion that had the kind and number of needles written on it?  As I told you before, I love Embird, my embroidery software.  I got busy and I'm quite happy.

All Designs Are Copyright Protected copyright 2010

I love Embird!

Spiritual - I really liked this quote from Martha Pullen's newsletter: " ...Think about David's words when he wrote 'You formed me in my mother's body.' We are not accidents. God, Himself formed us. We are not mistakes but we were carefully planned by God. We are valuable not because of our talents or accomplishments but because of our Maker. We were selected with love and God oversaw the process as he did the forming. I glory in knowing that all of my days were planned for me and written in God's book before I was one day old. The length of my life, my joys and my sorrows, the length of my life, my birth date and my death date, my trials and their solutions, what could be fixed and what could not, my strengths and my weaknesses--all were planned for me by my maker. That is reason for great joy in all circumstances I believe. I love waking up every morning and knowing that I belong to God and that He is sovereign, perfect and in complete control."


Sewing - I really love using Embird for my machine embroidery. Embird is software that can be purchased in modules. I have purchased Embird Basic (managing, resizing, converting, and changing designs), iconizer (designs are pictures and not just numbers), three wonderful pre-digitized alphabets, and Embird Studio (digitizing software). I probably paid $89 for Embird basic, $15 for iconizer, $15 per alphabet, and, $132 for studio. I purchased in first module about 4-5 years ago and added studio this past year. There are several modules that I haven't felt the need to explore. I keep up with Embird through Secrets of Embroidery . Updates to the program are free and upgrades cost about $15-30. IMHO, the designers (a family) keeps up with, and often surpasses, what other big name sewing machine software.  Some other software, I admit, can be more user-friendly.