Stop staring and start sewing!

It's all coming back to me now...

I love to sew!! I really do!  It's been so long since I could drop everything and just play in my sewing room and I'm relieved to find that I still get so much satisfaction out of it.  I made myself the cutest (seriously, crazy cute) pajamas from a sheet and now I'm finally re-covering my little chair.  I've had good intentions about this chair for a couple of years and it has turned into a cat scratching post which really makes me cranky.  I received this chair at the same time I got this dresser from my parents rental (tenants left it all behind, lucky me).  So it's been neglected for 3 years.  Look at how sad it is!

I was so inspired by my sheet pajamas (I'll try to get pictures because they are seriously cute!) that when I saw this Scotty dog sheet set at Ross for only 15.00 (twin set, Tommy Hilfiger) I knew it would be perfectly cute.  I think the size and shape of the chair lends itself to "cuteness" so I didn't even try to do anything remotely sophisticated.  It's staying in my sewing area so I want something that makes me happy when I look at it.

So this is what I'm up too.  I'm going very slow and trying to be somewhat meticulous since it has some interesting curves.  So far I'm pretty tickled with it.  I have a very cute ruffle planned and I think this chair is going to look like a piece of candy when I'm done!



It's still over 100 degrees here but next week is looking very nice so I may actually step outside for a look around.  Meanwhile, back to my project!  Then on to Christmas sewing (anyone started already??)!  Have a great rest of the week!

Messes and milestones

I'm in the middle of rearranging my studio/office right now and it's finally starting to take shape.  I went to IKEA and got this wonderful laminated fabric to re-cover my sewing table (it's just a door) and it makes me very happy every time I walk in the room.  I love big polka dots.  I'm happy to have my sewing space back in the big room since it felt very cramped and lonely tucked into the office. 

 

I've been pulling out my own stash of fabric from the boxes I had it stowed in and it was really fun to re-discover some of the goodies I've been holding onto.  There were also a few "why do I have this?" items but my kids were happy to snap most of those up.  I love having fabric out where I can see it because it's such a cute decoration all by itself and it really gives me a lot of inspiration when I can see it all.

This pallet has been keeping me very busy.  When the gal at the printing company said I'd be getting a delivery from UPS Freight I didn't realize what that meant (as opposed to regular UPS).  Wow.  Once we had some envelopes stuffed I spent a few hours running around my part of town to all the quilt stores (there were 6!  Who knew?) and received lots of friendly responses and sold quite a few.  I'm putting links in the sidebar so if you live in the Phoenix area you can see who's carrying them (and online stores too).

And we hit a milestone here at the house.  I came downstairs and found my baby making his own peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Yay!  He ate two yesterday so now I realize I'm going to have to hide the bread or he'll eat them all day long if left unsupervised.  He hasn't learned the whole "with great power comes great responsibility" thing yet.

5 weeks to Quilt Market and I'm already getting excited!  I'm going to have some great roommates and I'm really looking forward to meeting a bunch of my internet friends in real life.  Fabric people are my favorite!  Yippy!

Have a great week!

Ready for launch

We have a winner!  The beautiful bundle of all four of my new patterns goes to Tonya Richard.  Yay Tonya!! 

The patterns are launching today and I wanted to share the dresses that my pattern testers created (and have been keeping under wraps since July).  They all did a beautiful job and it was thrilling to see their fabric choices and the finished results (it works, it works!).  The dress actually comes in three different variations but they all wanted to do the scallops (go figure!).

Here is the dress Kelci made and I'm nuts about the dots!  Such a perfect combinations of fabrics and such a pretty girl (I think she likes her dress).  Thank you Kelci!!

Scallops!  How I love scallops!

Here's Marie's dress and I gasped when I saw that fabric.  I had some of that a few years back and it's still one of my favorites.  I'm so happy she pulled it from her stash and used it because I think it looks amazing.  Looks like another happy model!  Thank you Marie!

And here is Angela's creation.  Angela and I are pretty much neighbors so I was thrilled to get to see this one in person.  I'm nuts about the fabrics and I love the stripes at the bottom.  Thank you Angela!!

If you're thinking of making sewing patterns don't do it without a team of testers!  Each of these ladies asked some great questions, made some helpful suggestions, and caught a few big mistakes (whew!).  I'm eternally grateful (because they saved me oodles of "what does this mean?" types of emails).

So here they are, finally.  They are in the store and I'm running a special (when you purchase all 4) for one week.  There are pictures of the backs of the patterns so you can see how much yardage you need for each project.  We will be stuffing envelopes Monday night (frantically) and shipping them out on Tuesday.   I have 4 more designs coming in the spring (!) so I'm going to take a small breather and then head back to the drawing board!  Thanks for all the encouragement and kind wishes!

Don't forget to add pictures of your creations to my flickr group!!

Winners announced and my best give away ever!

Alright!  The 3 lucky gals who have won a book from my book review post are:

1.  Amy, who left a comment at 4:41 on September 1st.  Congratulations Amy!  You get first choice!!

2.  Hopeful Homemaker, who left a comment at 10:37 on August 30th.  Congratulations Hopeful!  :) You get second choice!

3. Jennifer Griffin, who left a comment on August 31st at 12:34.  Congratulations Jennifer (you get whatever's left, but I think you'll love it any way)!

Okay, I mentioned last time that I was going to have a very special give away.  Some of you probably figured out what it is but I didn't want to announce anything until I was sure about a delivery date.  My patterns will be here Monday (I just got off the phone with UPS Freight) so here it is....I'm giving away all 4 patterns (a 48.00 value!).  I will draw a name on Friday morning so leave a comment!  Thank you all for your support and enthusiasm!  These are available to buy starting Friday so be sure to join the mailing list (over on the right) if you want to receive the announcement!

The proof is in the pattern

This is when it hit me.  I'm done!  The proof of the pattern pieces showed up and my eyes teared up.  They are beautiful and look like they were made by a real expert.  Crazy.  I could not be happier and the folks at McCall Pattern Company could not have been nicer to work with.  I did all the grading myself.  Someday I hope to be able to pay a professional because my brain still hurts.

I inspected the other proofs and made quite a few corrections and adjustments.  Rookie mistakes I'm figuring.  I left off a vital dimension and fixed a silly spelling mistake too (a huge thanks to Jane at TriState Printing for catching that one).  I thinked I saved myself from having to answer a bunch of emailed questions (sigh of relief!) from frustrated sewists.

Fixed a spelling mistake here.  These ones make my heart flutter.

 

Here's what the backs of the instruction sheets look like.  I bought the UPC barcodes from some guy under a bridge.  He was wearing a trenchcoat and said they had "just fallen off the truck".  Not really but it sort of felt like it.  I've learned so many things in this process...barcodes....bleedlines...machine folding vs hand folding....who knew?  Not me.

Here's a peek inside.  This is a small part of the Evelyn instructions and by the time I created these images I had a much firmer grasp on Illustrator CS4 than when I started.  My first drawing in illustrator was my simple Shopgirl Apron shape and it just about put me in the loony bin.  Now I'm having fun with it.  Practice practice!

So all these pictures represent a very long and often tear-filled journey. I muddled through my ignorance and learned to be a little more assertive in asking questions even when I knew they would make me look dumb (at least it felt that way). I found out there were things in me that I never knew were there (Those patterns covers! Did I do that? Indeed).  This must be how Peter Parker felt when he realized he could make webs from his fingers.  

These will be ready to ship on Sept. 15th.  I'll put them in the store for pre-sales next week.  Please be sure to join my mailing list (at the top of the right hand column) to get the first notice.  I'll be having a very special give away next week.  :)