love forever

By the way...

my book is now available on Amazon! I am so excited!

I'll be doing lots of events in November so stay tuned.

Black and Red Eye

Lauren Denitzio is a Brooklyn based illustrator and graphic designer. I love her use of type and book pages. Her illustrations make me miss Brooklyn something fierce.

You can see more of her work here and buy some here.

The SPORE Project

"The SPORE Project is a worldwide effort developed by Doug Rhodehamel to promote awareness for the support for art in schools and creativity in day-to-day life. The project illustrates the importance of self expression, resourcefulness and creativity - specifically, how to look at one thing (a simple paper bag) and see what it can be instead of merely what it is."

More than 63,000 mushrooms have been planted throughout the world! I love it!

A Quilt Square

Thanks for all the comments in the last post about my grandma. You are all very kind. I had a very slow quiet weekend of sewing and listening to NPR and it was exactly what I needed.

I'm working on a quilt square for a quilt show and I am really enjoying the process. Right now all I want to do is quilt. I used a mix of cottons and linens for the natural colors, kimono fabrics for the blue and red and I even made some of my own fabric by printing some old scanned journal pages onto fabric (I bought the printable fabric here if you are interested). 

The journal is one that I bought a long time ago on Ebay and have used in lots of my art over the years. It is a young boy's account of a trip to Japan in the 1940s and some of it is written by hand while other parts are typed. I love old faded journals and how they look as a graphic element in my designs so I have started to scan pages of the journal before it completely disintegrates. 

I think I am finally ready to make a quilt for me and the Mr. We deserve it!

To my Grandma

My dear Grandma Eileen passed away last week. She was a wonderful woman: kind, loving, always stylish and incredibly witty in her own very subtle, dry way. I spent many afternoons sorting through her costume jewelry and scarf collections and playing dress up as a child. They are some of my happiest memories and definitely sparked my interest in fashion and design.

Grandma loved her family and she would be very happy to know that the days following her death, about twenty-five of us gathered in her home, drinking (we are Irish after all!), eating and laughing (then crying) about funny Grandma stories. 

It's too hard to to post pictures of her at the moment but these are some photos that remind me of my Grandma. Grandma liked routines and had a few favorite spots in the house: the window overlooking the long driveway so that she could keep tabs on who was coming and going (her waving and smiling silhouette was always the last thing we saw when we pulled out of the driveway) and the ancient clothesline in the back yard (oh, she loved to do laundry!). 

I miss her so much.

Sew Stylish Embellished T-shirt Dresses

I'm a little bit late in posting this but I did an embellishing project for Sew Stylish. Linda, Erika and I were all given a simple t-shirt dress and had to think up some fun ways to reinvent them.

Erika used fabric paint and embroidery,

Linda cut it into a tunic and used the extra material to make ruffles,

and I appliqued and reverse appliqued doilies to the dress and added a little smattering of sequins.

The issue is on stands until the end of November and it is filled with great sewing and fashion tips.

Marc by Marc Jacobs

I could eat up this whole Marc by Marc Jacobs collection with a spoon! Oh the colors and the pattern mixing, I love it!

via Style.com

My Wonderful World of Fashion

I can't stop flipping through this book. Each page is a cool discovery, an exercise in creativity and the illustrations are superb. The author of the book, Nina Chakrabarti, really outdid herself! 

There's a sense of fun in this book that I haven't felt in a lot of fashion for a while (not all, but a lot). It reminds me of being a teenager discovering fashion and loving style with passion, not with responsibility. OK, so maybe the fashion industry isn't entirely to blame. I hereby promise to have more fun with fashion and stop taking it so seriously. I will wear more crazy tights and heart shaped glasses.

The book, published by Laurence King Publishing, is already out in the UK and will be released next week in the states. You can pre-order it on Amazon right now though!

NY Fashion Week so far...

A few of my favorites so far:

Inky dyes and sophisticated slashes from Cynthia Rowley

Love the heart belt from Erin Featherstone and pattern mix (plus girls with glasses!) from Karen Walker

Great subtle patterns and color palette by Rachel Comey. Oh, and those shoes with socks! Love them!

More pattern mixing  plus big belts from Derek Lam and Rebecca Taylor

Incredible party dresses with layers of colors from Ruffian and Lela Rose

Do you have any favorites?

Images from Style.com

. 

Note to Self

Buy heart tights.

Image from Garance Doré