Stop staring and start sewing!

Hey Duvet! It's curtains for you....

The 3 winners of a signed copy of my book (hot off the presses) are Flavia, Eleanor, and Gill.  Congratulations!  If you didn't win this time you can quickly run over to SewStylish and enter to win their constest for my book (nice folks).  If you still don't win they are shipping quickly from Amazon right now.

I'm slowly moving forward on my home spruce up here and I just made a big leap by finally getting around to making new curtains for the front rooms of my home.  This room is now the dining room (it used to be a dark, depressing tv room).  I want it to be fresh and breezy in here (so when folks walk by they will look in the window and ask themselves "How did she get her dining room to be so fresh and breezy?  What is her secret?").  The secret is a cute, reasonably priced duvet from IKEA (and a little fabric from my stash).

 

Here are the old curtains (which are now in storage as the Christmas-Valentines curtains).  They are nice but they sure draw all the attention in the room and I don't want that.

 

Here is my new, lighter look.  I used a queen sized duvet from the Fjalltag collection at IKEA (this print was in and out of the store so fast I'm glad I snapped it up when I did).  I'm in love.  My new curtains are soft looking but not bland.  They are a nice golden yellow and I love the way the sun shines through them.

 

I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to paint that sideboard a lighter color or not.  Any ideas or opinions would be greatly appreciated.

I'll share my process of converting that duvet to curtains pretty quick here.  It was super simple and I think you'll be inspired.  I hope you're having a great week!

My best give away ever! My book (signed)!

I was thrilled to receive a box of my books from my friends at Stash Publishing the other day!  I'd completely forgotten that it was in my contract so what a treat.  I'm thrilled to be able to share 3 signed copies with you. Seriously thrilled.

Here are some of the beautiful pictures from the book.  I'm so grateful for the beautiful cover and set photos done by Tea Ho in the San Francisco bay area.  Dreamy.

The book has shipped out to all online booksellers and should be showing up on the shelves at local book and fabric/craft stores pretty quickly here.

Just leave a nice comment after this post and I'll draw 3 winners later this week!

Oh, and I'm finally figuring out InstaGram so join me there (I'm jonagiammalva) and here's my flickr group for my book (c'mon over and show off!), here's my blog facebook page, and I'm trying to get better at tweeting so you can find me there too (@fabritopia).  I think that's all (oh wait! Pinterest!).  :)  I'm so not joining Vine, in fact I'm not even going to go look at it in case I'm tempted.  Have a wonderful week!

Bringing a little order to my life

I've spent the past couple of months sorting through every last thing in my sewing inventory and trying to make some sense of it all.  I got rid of yards and yards of fabric that represented so many good intentions but it was time to be honest with myself and pass it on (to other people with good intentions, ha!).  I'm not a very organized person by nature (it really taxes my brain) but once I find something that works for me I can usually keep it together.  I was looking at some before/after rooms by Candice Olsen (I love her!) and it hit me....drawers!  I really needed my stuff out of sight but accessible.  Enter IKEA (again). 

I found these new shelves called Bitrade.  They are not on the website for some reason but are like the Expedit shelves but smaller (and only 29.99 each).  So I bought 4 and stacked them.  I love them.  But I think my favorite part is the two 6-drawer units underneath.  They are the Malm drawers and I love the fact that they are so plain and sleek (it brings a little calm into my crazy, multi-purpose room).  I'm planning on moving it all to another wall (when we re-do the floors) but here's how it's working now.

 

Fabric, books, and things I love.  All right there looking cute and orderly.  Sigh.

Check this out!  This stuff used to be oozing out of my old storage "system" and I hated seeing the mess.  Now everthing is neat and available in these Skubb fabric storage bins.  It's heavenly.  It took me forever to sort and organize this stuff but it was so worth it.

I've still got a ways to go in this room but I'm so encouraged and inspired by the progress that I can handle the still messy areas because I know they are temporary.  Yay!

BOOM! That was the sound of my book launching!

Today is the day!  After nearly 2 years and countless tears my book is now available from Stash Publishing!  Now you can wait a couple of weeks to get it from Amazon but then that's two weeks without a new, amazing skirt (you decide).  But you can take a peek at the inside over at Amazon (read the beautiful forward by my dear sweet friend Heather Bailey).  

I'm thrilled and oh so proud and wanted to start sharing a little bit of the inside scoop.  First, the cover....

When I first saw this picture my heart nearly leaped out of my chest.  I could not believe how hip, sleek, and sexy it was and when they picked this for the cover I was over-joyed.  Dang, that's my name there.

Here is how that skirt started....a couple of little sketches combined into one big idea.  This skirt is called the Take Ten Skirt and I named it that because I'm sure this skirt will take 10 pounds off the person who wears it (visually, not literally so call off the lawyers).  The solid fabric on the side becomes negative space and the focus is on the narrow center panel.  The Waist Trim pieces (the epaulet type attachments) are optional or you can do them all different colors or use different buttons or just about anything.

I've always wanted to make mommy skirts to match my girl skirt patterns and so I did!  The nice thing is this skirt (The Apron Skirt), which was inspired by my Evelyn Apron Skirt, is really sleek around the waist instead of full and fluffy like the girls pattern so you get the cute, matching look without the added "girth" of an elastic waisted skirt.  Nice.  The skirt in the book is above the knees (the added ruffle is right about at the knee) but, as with all the skirts in my book, you can make it as long as you like (there are a multitude of cutting lines for different lengths).

This one (The Contrast Layer Skirt) turned out a little different than my original sketch and ended up being one of my very favorites (I'm buying boots just for this skirt).  You can go absolutely crazy with all the different layers and put small ruffles in between each, or a small folded bias trim, or both (like I did here).  Each layer only takes 1/2 yard of fabric so you can pull from smaller pieces in your stash and come up with something fun and lively.

I'm completely in love with this one (the Double Pleat Skirt). There are only two pleats in the back since I didn't want to add to much business back there.  It's so sweet and spunky and the pleats are sharp and crisp.  It reminds me of Catholic school (but I made this one too short to pass the "kneel so we can see if it touches the floor" test the nuns liked to use).  Like all the skirts in my book, this one can easily be lengthened if you're like me want to hide your winter legs (and it's got belt loops!)

I've started a Flickr group so please come join and when you make a skirt from the book post a picture so we can all see and be impressed!  Thanks!  I'll post more pictures soon and share a little more of the process (the good, the bad, and the....well it's all pretty so nevermind!).

Doohickeys and thingamajigs, etc.

Who knew shopping for industrial sewing supplies could be so much fun?  I've been getting little accessories to go with my new/old Juki and it's really been nice.  The one thing I really needed (that isn't part of this particular machine) is a built in thread cutter.  When I've got my little assembly line going it's kind of pesky to have to stop and pick up my scissors and cut the thread by hand (sounds like a small thing but I'm all about efficiency here baby). 

I found this nifty little item on eBay and it really does the trick.  It attaches to the side of the foot (using the same screw you use to secure the foot) and has coils to hold the thread while the razor cuts them.  The razor lays flat on the coils so it's not a slicing danger for my fingers.  The coils also keep the thread secure while you start on your next stitch (so no more pulling out a length of thread to avoid having it pulled back through the needle).  Fun!

 

And then I found this little goody.  A magnetic seam guide.  You just move it to wherever you need your seam and it holds tight.  Nifty!  You can get them from any place that carries Dritz notions and they run around 5.00.  Well worth it.

 

Here's an idea of what it looks like in action.  If you're not ready to invest in a 1/4" foot then this is the way to go.

 

And here's some eye candy.  Daffodils in bloom!  Joey bought that cute little milk jug for me from a local crafter (he saw me swooning over it at the local Art Walk and snapped it up for me, nice man) and it's the perfect place for my flowers.

 

And I got a chicken (it's ceramic but whatever)!  We're not allowed to have chickens in our housing development (it grates on my nerves that we pay the mortgage and they can tell us what we can't do with our backyard but that's a whole 'nother episode....) so this little cutie will have to suffice.

Anyway, we're just enjoying the Spring and taking a break from school this week.  The Arizona weather is lovely so I may just go outside and see what's going on.

Thinking outside the jar

I've spent the past 3 weeks on the excruciating task of de-cluttering, sorting, and re-arranging my sewing/fabric space.  This room has been many things over the past 9 years we've lived here and it's new purpose will be school room/design studio (which sounds fancy but is pretty accurate I guess).  It was incredibly trashed since I barely had time to sleep with all the sewing-to-fill-orders I did before and after Christmas.  I tried my best to avoid looking at the floor since it was just piles of sewing detritus and there was no time to deal with it.  But I finally dug in and have spent hours picking through fabrics, pattern pieces, oodles of spools and way too many lego pieces.  It's now time to put everything back but in it's new place and that's the fun part.

I wanted to store some of my smaller items (bobbins, appliques, buttons, etc) in jars with spray painted lids (which I still may do for some things) but as I was finishing up at IKEA today I saw these lanterns and BAM, it hit me.  I set my jars down right there (I already had them in my cart) and grabbed some of these fantastic lanterns which are only 1.00 more apiece.  They have them in white, silver, yellow, turquoise, orange and hot pink.  I picked up yellow and turquoise for now.

I stuffed it with my little crocheted flowers and strawberry appliques and closed the door.  Simply cute.

It looks right at home on my new shelves and I'm patting myself on the back for finding an unordinarily cute storage solution.