The Princess and the Pea


I am thrilled to announce the newest pattern in my line: The Princess and the Pea Finger Puppet pattern. I had so much fun making this collection. I wanted the Princess to be sweet and sleepy and the Queen to be slightly bossy and a bit dominant as she is written in the original Hans Christian Andersen tale here. And, btw, no need for revisionist history here, peeps. He wrote it in 1835. Let’s just let it be, nkay? read more

GIVEAWAY :: Blog Makeover!

Check out the new digs! I know that all I do lately is sing the praises of the amazing women I have around me helping me do all the stuff I can’t do- but this one takes the cake. Can you believe it? I found Sharon at Redbud Designs in a late night blog troll searching for I-can’t-even-remember-what. I knew she was the one. The ONE. I didn’t even know I could hire someone to design my blog. But there she was. I looked through her portfolio and was smitten. read more

OMG

Here it is! The Wonky Little Houses™ Quilt pattern! It really does take a village and I just lu-uh-uve the people in my village. I have a graphic designer friend named Flip Rapier and hers are the next loving hands my pattern has passed through on its journey to the printer. Pretty much, without her, I’m no good. A good designer knows how to listen to her client. Flip is so innately talented that she knows what to listen to more closely and what to let go of. She has given me a crash course in package design and branding to boot! It is so much fun working with her. I kinda sorta don’t even need to tell her what I want anymore- she just knows and she does her thing. I’d send you to her website, but she doesn’t have one…yet.

Wonky Little Houses™ Quilt

Having passed through many loving hands, the Wonky Little Houses™ Quilt is finally finished. I LOVED making this quilt. Certainly, I was making it for the pattern cover– but in my heart I was making it for my little girl. I wrote her a secret message, only visible when the quilt is folded down. It says, “may happiness always find you.” This is the biggest quilt I have ever made- a Twin. The pattern is a companion to my Wonky Little Houses™ Pillow and for a sense of scale, I increased the size of the houses. Once finished, the quilt moved on to the amazingly talented and loving hands of Carol Meka from Tomorrow’s Treasures. I was referred to Carol by my pals at the Bernina Connection. When I met Carol she was in her converted, carpeted three car garage studio sewing away on her old Bernina in bare feet. The first thing she said to me was, “come on in–sorry for my socked feet–I have to quilt in socks–I always tell my students that–you just don’t have the control you need on the foot pedal in shoes.” I kinda fell in love with her the moment I met her. Bubbly, wise, gentle and kind. I just love people who are so comfortable with who they are that they start a conversation as though they have known you forever. Anyway, Carol quilted my quilt so beautifully. She filled it with artful meanderings and included flowers, hearts and spirals that are only visible on the back. I requested back-and- forth channeling for the grass and she surpassed my expectations. And then she bound it. I am not ashamed to say that I am terrible at binding and will happily outsource that particular job to someone so much more qualified than I am. And then Jill came over and photographed the quilt for the pattern cover. As usual, her photos are just so good. So, check back in the shop in a week and the pattern will be there for sale. AND when you check back, you might be surprised to see the look of my website and blog. But that is another story…
(If you look closely, you can see my message written in thread at the top on the folded over flap.)

Creative Kindness :: Sew for Charity!

Little Dresses for Africa

I posted this over on carrykindnessforward.com yesterday and I just had to share it here, too:

You won’t believe this amazing and amazingly kind site– it’s called Creative Kindness and it was created by Nancy’s Notions. You know Nancy from Sewing With Nancy, her tv show? You have probably seen her sewing and quilting on late-night PBS at some point in the last 26 years! Sewing With Nancy is the longest running sewing series on television. I love to watch her show…it soothes my soul. Nancy has consolidated several large sewing charities on her site. Look at the ways you quilters and sewers can help: read more

A little nip…a little tuck

(before)
I have this Mexican flour sack dress and I wear it even though it swallows me up whole. I wear it because it makes me feel like a designer and artist…which I am, of course. But it sort of makes me look the part. Every time I wear my flour sack, people stop me to tell me they like it and the other day a friend said: “you look like the definition of summer.” My husband has never been a fan of my flour sack and he was right–it was just too boxy and big. That is…until today. Now, he says it is really pretty. It was just a rectangle before, so I took it in all the way from the sleeves to the hem to create a more feminine shape. And I created a more flattering neckline. And you know what? Because of this dress, I ate watermelon for dinner and cucumbers with lime juice. I swear I can hear faint castanets even as I am typing this. And doesn’t everything just look better with an Anthro belt? (after)

Hot off the presses!

Here they are, smokin’ hot off-the-presses and still steaming– two new patterns from SUCH Designs! These feature a design by guest designer, Cyndi Coon. Read the earlier post about our fun photo shoot here.

(These are the pattern covers. They fold in half, so the back cover is on the left and the front cover is on the right.)

They will be coming soon to my Etsy shop and a store near you! And, by the way, come take our T-shirt yarn class next Wednesday, June 22nd from 6-8 pm at Bernina Connection. Click here for more info. It is loads of fun. Bring young girls, teen girls, young women or your mom. It is fun for all ages and the results are amazing. All you need are your ugliest old 5k t-shirt, scissors and Tacky glue (available at Bernina.) Don’t have old t-shirts? Raid a thrift store. The real problem is that this is so fun and addictive you might start cutting up favorite t-shirts from your closet! read more

New greeting cards released!

And speaking of stamps, Wishfulls.com has just released three lines of greeting cards based on my artworks! I feel really honored that my work will be going to so many strangers. I just love stationery and especially greeting cards. When I was young, my mom always had a file full of greeting cards. I used to dump them all out, spread them on the floor and look at each one. It was the 80’s so there were many sarcastic, funny, hand-drawn, cartoony cards of women with pointy b o o b s and beehive hairdos. She collected them so that she’d have that perfect card for the perfect person. Wishfulls™ is a local start-up and I am one of the six women helping to build it and create products for them. Wishfulls products are designed to acknowledge the people you love by recognizing them for their unique and special qualities. Our signature Full words are used to convey these special qualities…to be soulFULL says so much more than soulful, doesn’t it? I created the art for the greeting card lines, and in some cases, I left the words off and our incredible graphics guru, Flip, added them. It was a great collaboration. For the Garden Road collection, I created paintings to illustrate our Full words by representing them as a neighborhood of kindness. There are more to come…but, umm….I’m a wee bit busy at the moment:
The Modern Quilts collection is based on small quilts that I created to illustrate each of our Full words. Forgive the cropping on the photos, some are not final images:



The Reflections collection is an artful line based on my abstract paintings and evoking each of the accompanying Full words. I chose meaningful quotes for the interiors: Interior: “Dwell in Possibility.” ~Emily Dickinson
Interior: “Follow your bliss.” ~ Joseph Campbell
Interior:

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” ~Pablo Picasso read more

The new Love stamps are here!


Oh, happy day! The new Love stamps are here. Now, you know that I just love stamps. See an earlier post on my love of stamps here. But (and I know I can tend towards superlatives) these might be my all-time favorite stamps. Sunny, vibrant, evocative of folk art and yet distinctly modern. I have been going to the post office for months hoping they had arrived and I even went yesterday. But I had no luck. My mom found these at the Hallmark store and gave them to me…she didn’t even know I had been waiting anxiously for them! She loves them, too. read more

Humility in the patchwork

Well, I just found my humility for the day. A four inch square of patchwork just took me down. No joke. If it were always smooth sailing, we’d get so bored, wouldn’t we? I’ve never met an art form that didn’t put me in touch with my humility in short order. But, $%@#!&*. I had to rip out the smallest corner of my new quilt FIVE or SIX times today and each time that little square of fabric became more and more of a mess. Weird, because it was for no technical reason or something that was beyond my reach…just simple, straight sewing. But if you lose your focus, things tend to collapse. The first time it happened I ripped it and sewed it again. By the third time, I thought of the buddhist monk raking his zen garden– the beautiful patterns raked into gravel and sand for hours and hours. And when he is done– he gathers a handful of fallen leaves and throws them onto his work. As if to say: I am not perfect. I am not in charge. I am not above nature. I am just a humble man. Things change. The wind blows…more leaves will fall soon enough. I LOVE stories like that– stories about man’s ability to attain humility and practice it is an art form. Like the Tibetan Buddhists hunched over sand mandalas for fifty or sixty hours creating elaborate patterns and images in sand. When they finish, they wipe their hands through it to symbolize impermanence. OK, so I didn’t mean to throw leaves at my quilt…but the results are the same. It is all fixed now and you can see the work in progress above. I am super excited about it. It is my newest pattern. It is the companion to my Wonky Little Houses™ Pillow pattern. The Wonky Little Houses™ Quilt pattern. It will be released and for sale in my etsy shop this month! Oh, and below are some monks making a mandala and then another erasing one.