a little inspiration

I have been the recipient of some amazing things the last few weeks. Cindy brought a big box of her grandmother's old sewing things this past weekend. It was full of wonderful things, many of which I actively knew I needed (how often do you get that lucky?!) The scissors are great, old, heavy, entirely reliable. Almost the moment she gave me the box I had put up the thread holder. Not the day before I had looked in my annoying drawer of thread and thought, "I must do something about this mess!" And then Cindy showed up with all those fantabulous things. And right on top was the thread organizer thing! { You can also see on my inspiration wall a washcloth that Erica knitted? for me for x-mas. It is far to pretty to wash my dirty face. I hung it up instead. Also, that blue thing you can just see the side of Seńor bought me at x-mas. And then there is the embroidery hoop with nothing in it... It is just waiting... } The books all look cool and I can't wait t...

I was out for a late night snack with Seńor last night after class and the waitress looked at my bag and said, "Cool bag!" And I said, "Thanks, I made it!" "NuUh! That is too cool! Do you sell them?" She replied. "I don't, but I plan to." "You should make some and come back by, I would buy one, it is the perfect size! And then I could tell everyone where I got it." "Really?" I beamed. Then we talked about color and things like that. So I am making it my mission this weekend to put a few bags together. Yay!

So, we started with these: They were $25 at the Salvation Army for the whole set. I had been looking for chairs to replace the ones we had in the dinning room and knew the going rate for new, nice chairs was $150 to $200 and I knew I didn't have that to spare... So I bought some Amy Butler fabric in a perfect blue and green (it is called "spinach" what could be better for my house?) some black enamel, and some foam. And Seńor and I did this: I think they are gorgeous. Seńor guesses if we sold them we would have to get about $300 a piece to make up time and materials... I love that I now have designer up cycled chairs. I have coordinating place mats and napkins on the way (they are getting held up in the sewing room due to the American Craft Council being in town.) If you click on the pictures it will take you to flicker where you can see the steps of the transformation.

(This picture is from Christmas because there has been no sun to take good pictures in months.) Zo is still worn out from her weekend trip to Grandma B's house. In order to keep her record as "Most Beat Up Puppy In Town" Zo got a big ol' swat and scratch on the cheek from Grandma B's cat Charlie. I could hardly get her to go in the backyard yesterday after work. She came and got in bed with me at eight last night (I was working in bed.)

Lookie! Can you guess what I am doing?

I hope you all had a lovely St. Valentine’s Day! We sure did. (These are from The Black Apple. I got them a month ago. They are called "Mr and Miss Sweetiepie". From this amazing woman. I love that they kinda look like us!) (I did the framing myself. I am very proud of how close to perfect the ribbons are. I gave them to Seńor for Valentine's.)

Seńor’s show was great- thanks to all you guys for coming out! I know he really appreciated it! His mom and my folks stayed the night and we went out for breakfast on Saturday at Miss Shirley’s (yummy, fried green tomatoes!!!) When we got home my dad came up to the sewing room and we sat down to make a few little pockets for his camera strap. He wanted one to hold memory cards and one for an extra battery. I used some linen scrapes left over from my weekend purse from last week because it matched the gray strap pretty well. Because it was so tiny already I wanted to leave the raw edges out and cut it all out of one piece. I used frey-check and the selvedge. And very tiny pieces of Velcro. I think they turned out great; we will have to see how they hold up. It was cool to make something with no pattern, on the spot, to someone else’s specifications that will be so useful! After everyone left we went by the CompUSA that s going out of business and Seńor got me a lapt...

How is it that every time it is Friday I am thrilled all over again? Hope to see you all at the Ottobar tonight!

Building community is one of my goals this year. I guess when you move into a house and know you are staying that comes naturally. I just have never had the experience of knowing that where I live right now I will also live in five years, and maybe ten or fifty. So I was delighted to be invited to a neighbor’s house this past Sunday for bread making, tea drinking and soup eating. Thank you Dag and Joyce! I hope to put up some pictures of the fantastic bread Dag made for us sometime soon. He is such a good baker I think we will buy all of our bread directly from him in the future. Seńor is playing out on Friday at the Ottobar. You should all come! Smoke-free fun. Yeah! We are lucky enough that his mother will be coming and so will my parents. I cleaned the sewing room last night and installed some closet shelving things so Pat can find her way to the bed. I will have pictures, I love looking at all the fabric folded and neat and categorized however my strange ...

For those who know me, you will know why it is funny... Anyone want to go to Sonar? (Thanks Cindy !)

So this bag was supposed to be just a little tiny tote for the weekend when I didn't need all that other worky/gym stuff. Of course, that was how it started out... My first mistake was trying to do homework when I was only half way done with the project. I was trying to give myself motivation to do twenty pages of reading and then I could take a break and finish sewing this simple little thing. But then, my eyes were scanning the pages and my mind saying each word but I was thinking of the handles of the tote. Then I was thinking of the base, how maybe if I sewed a little "T" at the bottom the felt would be strong enough to stand up... and maybe I didn't really like the dimensions, maybe it should fold over. then I could use it taller, or fold it over if I only had a wallet, phone and lip stick in there.... You see how there are no thoughts about psychology on this train? So I put down the book and went over to sewing machine and after about 30 minutes I came ou...

#1 I love Lotta Jansdotter’s book Simple Sewing. I made the “All day tote” (above) a month or so ago and have carried it every day since. It is perfect to hold all the things I need for work and the gym. Yesterday, while waiting for my hair appointment with Leah , I went into RedTree (my favorite thing!) and saw that they had Lotta’s stuff for sale there. I fought off the urge to purchase (because we are poor at the moment) and decided instead to make a little tote bag from the book with some minor changes to the handles. I want something little for the weekends. I should be able to finish it tonight. I am using a piece of linen from my mother and some more of my felted thrift store sweater. I traced one of her little birdies onto the linen. It is sooo cute. I will show pictures once I am done. #2 I just made my first order from fabric.com . I will be getting a swatch to see if it right for covering our new chairs. I now have a deadline for finis...