Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Apps and crafts

I am a gadget person by nature, but not with a lot of money. I have been perfectly happy with my Nano to listen to music and audiobooks while quilting, knitting, crocheting or cross stitching. But, the temptation of apps finally suckered me. I didn't need an iPhone so bought an ITouch. Love it. Love my gadget devices. Will your world be less if you don't have these apps? Nope. Stick with your Nano. But, if you already have the gadget, here are some apps you may find useful.

Block Tool is perfect for a quilter. Has 102 common blocks in 5 sizes. Worth the $5 if you commonly struggle with figuring out what to do in a hurry for that next baby blanket or gifted lap quilt. If you already have Electric Quilt, the app is redundant. Quilt Block is by C&T Publishing.

Sewing kit is an app created for sewers. You can store your inventory of patterns to take with you. Each pattern has a place to keep yardages. While it can be used for quilting, it is clearly designed for garment sewing. You can create projects linked to pattern and fabric as well. I loaded it with 42 garment, accessory and household patterns. If you load the manufacturer and pattern number, the app searches a database for current patterns, and adds photos if there are any. If not, you can take a photo to add to the pattern.. I had a few crashes when taking photos of patterns not in the manufacturer's database, but it was still fast. I did it while watching 2 episodes of a Brit crime drama on Netflix.

Finally, many cross stitchers and other crafters like to keep track of the time worked on a project. If you charge $$, then you certainly need to do that. Hours tracker is intended to be used by jobbers. At $5, it's a good choice for cross stitchers as well. It runs in the background, so uses less power. It will also keep a history of your job. Do you need it? Nope. There's a free stopwatch as part of the programming even on a nano. Gadgets. I love them.

As I find other apps that are useful, I will tag them. Ok, well Polly is knocking over everything so that I will go to the quilting sewing area, so I will post another time. But, not by ITouch. This took forever to type.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Stuff

It's been a really slow week. Hurt my back and sitting has been difficult. Hopefully I will still get something done yet this week. I have a new ITouch. If you have any app recommendations, please let me know.