Pillow Bonanza

dresden plate + liberty of london tana lawn = o la la!

Those who follow me on facebook or flickr got a little sneak peak at the makings of this pillow before the festival, but here is the final product in all it's glory! I am quite happy and relieved to be able to have a tangible version of my vision (isn't that always the most satisfying thing?!) and am itching to keep one of them for myself...still considering that. Either which way, the first is live and in the shop now though, just waiting for someone to snag it up and give it a proper home.

Why so relieved though? Well, turns out that dresden plate is a DOOZY! As I found out the night before my last day of prep before the show, there are a few snazzy methods (including english paper piecing, needle-turn applique, and raw edge machine applique with fusible webbing just to name a few) that make the whole process a lot easier but found myself with none of the tools necessary and I must confess this is the first sewing project that has made me swear and cry this much. C'est la vie, it happens sometimes right? I finally decided to trim my rounded petals to be triangles and as 2 o'clock in the morning rolled around,  I called it a night so I could get up early and take another stab at appliqueing the inner circle in the morning. It's not perfect, but I will remember that I am capable of conquering any scary new sewing project every time I see that slightly crooked top stitch. In my mind, that is exactly what makes handmade so very special and unique: an automated machine just can't allow for such a story and the items made with them don't carry that kind of history.

"The popular name for this quilt, Dresden Plate, reflects the romance of the Victorian Era with it's love of elaborate decoration on household items and décor. Dresden, Germany was a center of 19th century romanticism movement in art, one that included the fine decoration of porcelain. The plates were embellished with elaborate design using flowers, fruits and foliage. The beautiful plates would surely have been admired by women of the early 20th century." —www.patternsfromhistory.com

As I worked on this, I fell harder for the Liberty tana lawn. The prints are the perfect blend of old and new, of nostalgic and fresh. They feel like a very British version of the brightly colored scraps of feedsack that women of the 1920's and 30's in America would have been using when they popularized this quilt block. I ended up using another chunk of it to do a couple patchwork pillows, one of which sold at the show and the other pictured below. All of these are now up in the shop as well:

Clockwise, left to right: Yo-yo Rosette Pillow on White Linen,
AMH Square Dance Pillow (with pastry line on the back!), Yo-yo Rosette Pillow on White Linen,
Liberty of London Patchwork Pillow, AMH Little Folks Patchwork Pillow

So many shiny new things, I can barely handle all the excitement! Now that I am back to focusing on my etsy shop, I can work at a slightly more leisurely pace and I do have a few new things up my sleeve that I'm planning to release this June/July. The feel of summer is beginning to take hold and is influencing my thoughts about new embroidery patterns and sachets, but no sneak peeks just yet. I'm off to get some of these thoughts on paper and will share here as soon as they are presentable...

My Spring Ruffle Top

all i need is a milk pail and a goat to complete the outfit
but this german girl would happily settle for a brimming beer stein to celebrate!

I did it! I actually did it!

I've done minimal garment sewing on things like pajama pants and my high school prom dress but this is the first real piece of everyday clothing I have made myself and I am pretty darn happy with it—especially since it's been on my to-do list for a whole year now, I've had the fabric since this past fall, and I've been ridiculously afraid of all that I did not know about garment sewing this whole time. Turns out, I just needed to suck it up and try something simple to start with (smacks palm to forehead).

the pleats and gathering seemed intimidating but i went really slowly, watched a few videos on youtube and BLAMMO! 

pleats and gathers conquered!

I used the Made by Rae spring ruffle top tutorial over on Sew Mama Sew which you may have seen before.  I came across it this time last year as part of the Made by Rae Spring Top Sewalong and I bookmarked it thinking it'd be a great starting point if I ever worked up the guts to try making my own clothes. Maybe next year I will feel confident enough to even enter a top of my own. Or at least another one of these in all white with some delicate hand embroidery across the chest band.

The fabric is voile from AMH's Little Folks line. Sigh, still my all-time favorite even if it two lines ago and perhaps overexposed at this point. I don't really care, I just love it and am finally glad to have something to wear for myself out of it at last!

I skipped the arm divots but kind of wish I hadn't—you live you learn.

The optional shaping at the end really helped it look like I was not going to give birth to a whole litter of little ones at any moment, without it I'm not sure I would have been so happy with it. I am not the uber skinny girl I was growing up and appreciate this pattern because it is at once flattering and comfortable. Plus, you can add a basic cardigan to it so it can transition to colder months or to hide flabby arms (I totally deleted those photos!).

My new year's goals included learning to make ratatouille and to sew something that I could wear in public and not be embarrassed by—check that one off the list I think! My mom got me a copy of Julia Child for my birthday so I think I can get to work on that ratatouille now...

Taking Shape

(The blanket was crocheted by my great aunt, the pillows and bunting are both by moi,
the couch is Ikea, the vintage work basket is from Ginger's Girl, and the photo was a gift from my mentor
—an original from the Getty Museum archives of the Parthenon marbles, which I wrote my senior thesis on in college)

You've seen the better half of my home studio here but I never revealed the rest because it was always filled with boxes of supplies and odds and ends that wouldn't quite fit into our attic storage area. Just last weekend though, we got a new couch for our living room (which I think I'm going to re-upholster so stay tuned for that bit of madness...), cleaned in places I didn't know existed as we moved things around, and hauled this little Ikea sofa to my upstairs workroom. I had gotten it when I was working in DC and had a studio apartment in Alexandria, VA so perhaps it is fitting to have it up here now—I'm certainly happy to finally have a place to sit and do embroidery without hurting my back or having to haul my supplies to and from the living room!

I've been waiting so long to be able to bring this couch up here so I could make a pillow out of some of my AMH square dance/pastry line fabric to go with it:

VERY easy to make:
a large panel of the square dance fabric fits a 12x12 pillow (or 14x14 if you've got enough seam allowance) 

and then I just made an envelope closure for the back in coordinating pastry line fabric.

I've thought about embellishing some areas of the flowers with embroidery but like it just as it is for the time being. I think having a bit of my favorite fabric on display like this will be a nice bit of inspiration and I do like being able to decorate this room with anything that suits my fancy, in any colors I please since I do not have to go through the process of whether it is way too girly or not. Eventually I'd like to repaint (the blue was there when we moved in), but I'm pretty happy with how it's coming together for now.

Speaking of things coming together, I've made some good progress towards the show as well this week including 20 draft stoppers and 26 yo-yos! The weekend will find me holed up in the studio still so I can churn out a couple pairs of embroidered converse and some embroidery pattern work...I've definitely got my work cut out for me!

a girl can dream.

i definitely set this to be my new computer desktop

today is one of those quiet fridays that i relish in. i'm baking rye bread, getting all my custom orders organized for a weekend of embroidery, and i still haven't changed out of my pajamas. shush now, don't spread that last part around.

i'm also taking a bit of time to work on my of my own projects (yes, there are just too many that i have going right now...) as this afternoon light fades and, as long as we're on the subject of anna maria horner, i thought i'd share with you my progress on my AMH queen-size patchwork quilt! now, if you remember from my first post on this, i am doing the whole thing by hand...piecing, quilting, binding, the works. i started it back in the fall and i now have six rows done and sewn together which amounts to 126 squares. if all the holidays had not taken place right after starting it, i'm sure i'd be further along but that's ok because it's also something that i just want to relish in. the above photo shows some of my finished rows and some of the next ones that i have planned out.

the voile is so nice to handle and the colors make it such a cheery and relaxing thing to work on...i am really finding that piecing, designing, and planning a quilt is my favorite part! as i work i think more about my overall vision for the design of our bedroom: this folksy and luxurious quilt on the bed, creeky wooden floors, sweet and bright little accent items a la anthropologie, all contrasted by clean white walls and all white wooden furniture so that it's not at all overwhelming or clownish but anchored in peace and calm: very grimm brothers meets anthro meets cape cod meets prairie homestead meets color theory art student....a girl can dream right?!

packages on my doorstep:

"big birds" in lime from echino 2009, anna maria horner little folks voile in pink rose,
and anna maria horner "woodcut" in perfect from her new innocent crush line. 

i love getting things in the mail, don't you? there is something about a package on ones doorstep that elicits such giddiness which can brighten an otherwise altogether normal day. a few of them have arrived on my doorstep recently and i'm pretty sure they'll be right up your alley too.

above is some fabric i got at roughly half off from whipstitch fabrics. if it wasn't for occasional online promotions, i would have no way to continue stash building right now considering how tight of a budget we are on...thank goodness for small miracles!

i spent part of my christmas money on a few books from amazon, one of them being elizabeth hartman's "the practical guide to patchwork". it's a gorgeous volume and full of great quilting techniques and designs. my only complaint is that it features a ton of flea market fancy prints from denyse schmidt that are no longer available..cheese and crackers vern!!! (what my great grandma gert used to say to her husband vernon because she didn't swear. i'm a little less classy and tend to swear like a sailor in real life...but not here *grin*). maybe we should all start a petition for a reprint of that line, ya?! also, this gave me the idea of starting some reviews of craft books here, sans the cheese and cracker comments perhaps.

more about this hand-embroidered pillow here

and finally, something i wasn't expecting at all but am relishing (and may just be wrapped up in as i type this): a hand crocheted afghan from my great aunt karen which is going to match perfectly with the pillows i've made for my workroom...that is, if i ever manage to get a couch in here for guests as originally planned. everyone who sends wedding presents a bit late apologizes, but personally i love the thought that a gift could arrive at any moment throughout the year!

in the works:

while awaiting the arrival of two remaining prints in anna maria horner's little folks collection, i've managed to get the rest all cut up into squares for the queen-sized patchwork quilt i'm making. for me, arranging and handling all the pieces is one of my favorite parts of the quilting process, it's such an orderly, imaginative, and soothing activity!

i decided to do a patchwork design because it seems to best showcase the prints which are easily among my favorite fabric designs...um, ever. o wait, did i mention that before?! ok, so maybe only several hundred times...ANYWHO. the cotton voile is such a joy to work with and this will be the biggest quilt i've ever made sooo i made the decision to do it all by hand—from piecing to quilting and binding, stitch by little stitch. i know, i might be a little off my rocker, but this is a very special project that i actually get to keep so i want to take my time and enjoy it! so having said that, it may be a little while before i'm able to share the completed quilt top...

my other idea is that for the actual quilting, i think i want to use a thicker strand of embroidery floss or pearl cotton in various colors to complement the variety of color and pattern in the fabric itself. have you ever quilted with anything but regular ole mercerized thread? did you like the results?

the fall line-up

this will become a small quilt and pillows for my studio

a package arrived late last week with a small but lovely little stash of anna maria horner fabric. it may be small, but it is all mine! muah ha ha! i really have never found fabrics i love so much as the voile from her little folks line, they're just completely gorgeous...so of course they're also being discontined. before they completely disappear i decided it was high time to search the internet high and low for any left that i could afford and i managed to get enough to set me up for some fall projects. the line up?


this fabric i'm going to use to make a top for myself using this cute pattern from made by rae on sew, mama, sew.

and this will become a pair of easy pajama pants using amy butler's pattern from in stitches:


then i'll be able to runaway and go join the circus if the mood strikes me, eh?!

and last but certainly not least, i have some plans brewing in my brain for a full-size quilt using scraps from the whole collection. like a bohemoth beautiful undertaking of hand-quilted wonderfulness. i haven't landed on a design yet but this is the best inspiration anyone could ask for, am i right?