I have looked long and hard for some cotton jersey with penguins on it, but I just can't find any.  Preferably 95% cotton, 5% lycra, but definitely cotton.

Does anyone recall seeing any in their browsing of online shops?  Flo loves penguins.

Mr Acorn has a very old pair of trousers that he loves.  They are, however, on their last legs, and he has been trying to replace them for several years.  They're the sort that feel like wearing pyjama trousers, but look like proper trousers, so he wears them in the evening and isn't bothered about answering the door if necessary.

So, naturally, I'm thinking that I should make him a new pair.  The pattern is no problem - a combination of lounging trousers and the pattern of the originals will be fine.  The fabric, however, is difficult.  They're fairly lightweight, but heavier than, say, poplin.  Probably cotton, maybe with some poly in there.  Lighter than canvas.  Linen would be nice, but the creasing less so.

If I could go and have a good browse I could find something myself, but I'm going to have to get something online.  What do I search for?  And where?  I think Croft Mill are quite good at giving the weight of fabric, but are any others?  And does anyone have a reference for comparative weights of woven fabrics?

Does anyone know which quilt fabric suppliers (with wide backing fabric) are delivering quickly?  I would normally go to Doughty's, but theya re taking up to a fortnight at the moment - they are really busy, I know.  Other orders I've placed recently have also taken quite a bit longer, but I do know that some places are still up to speed - I just don't know which ones!

This topic has been moved to House Beautiful.

https://thesewingplace.org.uk/index.php?topic=9950.0

I need to ask everyone not to post very large photos.  We have a storage limit on our hosting, and we are filling it up at an alarming rate of knots.

To give you some idea, 18 months ago our attachments folder contained 5GB.  Today it contains 14.5GB.  The total limit for our hosting is 50GB.  (The rest of the site is trivial in comparison.)

I am not asking for any compromise in terms of the sharing of pictures - we love pictures and we want to see them.

The maximum width of a picture that can be shown in a post is 900px, and 650px is usually quite big enough to properly show almost anything.  If you upload a picture larger than 900px wide, the excess size is completely wasted, but still has to be stored.  It also slows down the loading of the page dramatically.  This, in fact, is almost as important as the storage issue.

UttaReth's excellent Lunapic tutorial is here, enabling you to resize your images very, very easily and then either download them to your own computer (so you can add them as attachments) or link to them (using the img tags).*  Other image editing sites will do similar things, and you might prefer the way they function.  Be Funky is one that has been recommended to me.

If you are posting directly from your phone there may be settings you can change, or apps that you can download to resize an image before you upload it to the site.  I have a free app on my Android phone called Photo & Picture Resizer which does just that.  I'm sure there are others available (I really am no phone expert!!)

So, in short, please resize your pictures before adding them as attachments, ideally to 650px wide, but definitely to no more than 900px wide.

I could put in a setting that would block pictures above a certain size, but it would be very inflexible, and I would rather trust to your common sense - however, if we carry on increasing our storage at this rate I will have to do something more drastic!



*Images posted using the [ img ] tags don't take up any space, so no problem there.  NB This is the tag that I mean:
  [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]  
and it only works with images that are somewhere else on the internet - you click on it and then put the url into the box that pops up.  It has no function whatsoever with attached images.

1.   Save your picture to your computer desktop (or somewhere you can find it easily).
2.   Use the Browse folder in Lunapic to find the image you want to upload.
3.   You will see that you have options to crop, scale or rotate.  If the image is large, pick scale and reduce.
4.   APPLY the resultant new size.
5.   Scroll to the bottom for the Save options and click on Imgur.
6.   Copy everything in the Image URL window and use the link to repost the image using the tiny Mona Lisa picture icon in reply.

Here is the link to the Lunapic site.

We are always  delighted to have new members, and particularly love it when they dive in and get involved.

However, because some people join in order to post advertisement links (and worse!) we have to have a rule that says new members won't post links until they have made 25 posts and been members for 2 weeks.  It is clearly stated in the Membership Agreement that you agreed to when you signed up.

We can't make exceptions because it would be unworkable, us being human and volunteers and all that.