T-shirt Yarn, anyone?

So my friend, Cyndi Coon, is a making, blogging, artsy, craftsy, chefy, supah-stah. She’s a writer, designer,promoter of all-things-craft, a marketing whiz and all around cool person. I adore her and have done so for a long, long time. She is a real, live human– real the way you wish everybody could be. You can see her blogging about craft here and here and visit her website here. Now, I’m no dummy…and I can see a good thing when it is staring me in the face. I saw one of her tutorials for creating jewelry from old t-shirts a while back and I just couldn’t shake it. It is so good. So simple. So fun and easy to make something that looks fabulous. I thought about her amazing and addictive T-shirt Yarn jewelry tutorial and collaborating with her somehow (read: vulturishly profiting off of her talent and/or promoting and supporting her by publishing and selling her pattern so we can both become rich beyond our wildest dreams off of recycled t-shirts.) And I just had to ask her if she’d like to be a guest designer for SUCH Designs. To which she said yes. So, SUCH Designs’ two newest patterns featuring Cyndi’s designs will be coming out in the next two weeks! These are kits including the items you need to create your own jewelry and hairwear. Check back at my etsy shop to buy yours soon! I will give you a sneak peek of our incredible…nay, words-cannot-describe-the-greatness photo shoot with the mind-blowingly talented photography duo behind www.jillandjill.com (Jill McNamara and Jill Richards or rather, Tall Jill and Short Jill, as they call themselves.) In an effort to promote all the people I adore, let me just say: hire these women to photograph your life, your business, your kids, your house, whatever…just do it…you’ll be glad you did. So, Cyndi wrangled up some models (who are not models) by simply putting out a call to her friends on Facebook. Little did we know that we would get the three perfect girls on the perfect afternoon with the perfect photographers with the best T-shirt Yarn jewelry this side of the Mississippi. Allow me to stop writing so you can see the splendid fruits of that day.




Craft Camp!



Now that summer is here, it seems that whenever we scrape a few kids together over here for a play date it turns into Craft Camp. Oh, the joy! Last week we had two kids over for a lantern project. I just love Todd Oldham‘s book, Kid Made Modern. This ain’t your grandma’s kids crafting book. It is whip smart, hyper-cool, super gorgeous and just plain fun! Each chapter is introduced by the work of a modernist artist or designer and the crafts relate to that genre…Noguchi, Marimekko, Luis Barragan, Alexander Calder. Tremendously cool. So, this lantern project is from the book. read more

sad and unnecessary post


This post isn’t about craft or parenting or sewing or art. If you have laundry to fold, you should go do that instead of reading this.

Two weeks ago, my kids had a t u m m y b u g and then I got it and the whole thing left me feeling weak and weirdly sad. And the main thing I was thinking about afterward was how much I miss my grandmother, Nanu. As a child, she was my in-town grandma. She would brush my hair with a way-too-stiff bristle brush for hours on end– til it felt like silk. And I would run to the mirror to see how beautiful I looked with silk hair, but it never really looked very pretty. It only felt pretty and so, so smooth. She could scrub a pan til the plating came off. She was maniacal and obsessive and controlling and I loved her so much…all one hundred pounds of her. So tiny. read more

Ladybug Stuffie




Today was one of those dreamy marathon playdate days. We had six hours of peaceful goodness involving one trip to the grocery, a house relocation, swimming and pre-dinner popsicles. Perfection.

Now you know that there is nothing I like more than a kid who wants to sew something and I basically rope every child I can find into making a stuffie of some sort these days. After a year of it, the big boy has grown weary of sewing cute pillows and stuffies, but he occasionally obliges me. read more

Trivet?

My dear friend had a birthday recently and she is a baker. She always bakes birthday cakes for everybody and I wondered who was going to make hers. So I sewed her one. It is a trivet/mini-quilt/giant pot-holder thingy.

When the creative act takes over sometimes I forget to do some basic planning…like measuring, for example! This would-be pot-holder is now probably a trivet. But it says, “lovely baker girl” on it for my lovely baker girl friend. I like the ric rac raspberry filling and the crumpled ribbon frosting. (Don’t look too closely at the binding. I attached in about five minutes and didn’t even pin it so it is super wavy and crooked.) read more

Makedo




I just found this jaw-droppingly cool company, Makedo. They sell little connector kits for assembling sculptures and creatures from leftover cardboard, yogurt cups, etc. I see hours and hours of fun for my family when I look at these little plastic bits. Their product is one part genius and one part no-duh! In fact, I have used little brads for similar purposes with the big boy, but they aren’t nearly as effective as these humongo plastic brads. The little accompanying saw tool looks like it cuts through cardboard so easily. Watch their cute video here.
read more

Sockies!

The Original Sockie

Lately, we have been making Sockies in our house…that is our made-up name for sock stuffies. There is nothing perfect about a Sockie. They are down-and-dirty, cheap-and-easy fun! All you need is a sock, a rubber band to close it, a marker and some polyfil (or rice…or sand…or crumpled newspaper!) read more