Today I had the great delight of making a sample dress for Paula Prass out of some of the fabric from her new line which is aptly named Flights of Fancy. She asked me to make it out of my scalloped dress pattern (which will hopefully be ready in time for Quilt Market in spring) and I think it turned out so darn cute! I love the fat stripes and the scallops together, it has a sort of "big top circus" feel.
Paula is debuting her line at Quilt Market (2 weeks to go!) and all her plans were going along swimmingly until she stepped off of a curb in New York City (while visiting those wonderful Michael Miller folks) and ended up on the ground with what turned out to be a severely broken arm. It's her left arm and as fate would have it, she's left handed. And to make matters worse she just found out that not only did she break her arm but her shoulder too. So her arm has been strapped to her body and I'm thinking that makes it pretty hard to get things done.
Paula thinks I'm so sweet for offering to do this but I'll be honest here....I just wanted to play with her fabric before everybody else did! And I'm not the only one because look over here at the incredible outfits that Jenn did! Oh my gosh, I think my heart skipped a beat when I saw these (and isn't her daughter a doll?)! I can't wait to take pictures of Paula's booth to share with everyone, it's going to be a feast for the eyes.
One more picture (side view) and this baby's going in an envelope and heading back to Paula.
For a few weeks now, Liz over at Sweet Funky Vintage has been leaving comments about my turquoise dresser set (she has a serious crush on it!), and I'm glad to see she finally took it upon herself to paint a mirror for herself (now mine is safe, whew!). Isn't it great? And I love her comment about the camera adding 10 pounds of dirt to the mirror, snort! What fun!
And look at all the new lines Free Spirit is releasing! Gaga! I'm tickled to say I've ordered all of House by Annette Tatum. Her blog is here and I hope she's at Quilt Market (did I mention it's in 2 weeks?!) because I don't know anything about her and that drives me nuts (I'm very nosy that way I guess. I hope I don't scare her off.).
But I have met Melissa Averinos and she is fabulous for sure! Her debut line Sugar Snap (free quilt pattern at the Free Spirit blog) just hit the "released" page on the Free Spirit site (which means it's shipping out) and I'm getting all of that one too! Melissa is a real hoot and I saved some of her emails from the spring because she had some terrific (and some just plain interesting) ideas for the title of a smocking book she thought I should write (no plans for that anytime soon, actually ever). Here are some of them: Smock it to Me, Smock Around the Clock, Smock and Awe (my fave), Smock this Way, and Smock Therapy. She had a severe cold at the time so I think the Nyquil might have had an inspiring effect. The only idea I had was Smock me Amadeus (which is not bad but still falls short compared to hers).
We've had some interesting creatures visit our house lately. Lots of praying manti (is that the plural of mantis?), the leaf bug in my previous post (which is actually called a katydid, thank you Pam!) and now this...A roadrunner (in the road of all places!). Sorry about the bad picture, it was taken through the screen before I went out the door and tried to chase him down with my Acme camera (I was trying to be wily, get it?). He got away too fast though (meep, meep!).
Oh, and Mary Engelbreit's (you know I adore her!) latest line called Recipe for Friendship (oh my gosh it's cute!) just shipped out and since it's coming from Dallas I'm betting it will be here Monday. Yip yip! All sorts of good stuff going on! The economy may be iffy but The Sew Must Go On (I just made that up!)!
