love forever

Our Little Corner of the World

 

This weekend, my mom and Aunt Bean descended upon our new home like two very active fairy godmothers and helped us unpack the kitchen, buy lots of stuff at IKEA and most exciting, set up our new garden! They are both expert gardeners so it was a real treat!

First things first, we pruned the very pretty Rose of Sharon tree that hangs over my neighbors yard into ours. The branches were hanging so low that our tiny yard was basically cut in half. Good thing my mom is a junior tree warden (no, I'm not kidding)! She is an expert pruner and quickly achieved the perfect balance of just enough tree to frame our kitchen window but not so much that we can't use the yard!

Then we did lots and lots of container planting! We now have pots of herbs and lettuce plus lots of flowers, succulents and ferns. The herbs have changed my life- we've been making agua fresca with mint, lemon and cucumbers all week to battle the heat.

The next part is my favorite and something I can't wait to dig into: decorating! My goal is to make the little yard into a little french-y paradise with bistro chairs, striped linens (like this scene, below, at Terrain) and some sort of hanging luminaries or chandelier.

Too bad these chairs cost a fortune! Anyone know of a cheaper alternative?

I'll have more pictures soon as things start to shape up!

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!

Finally, a New Fish

Well, after making this guy, the plan was to make lots of fish but it's hard to focus on making fish when I have to make money. If only I could sit around my apartment and sew up softie fish all day. Actually, scratch that. That might get boring.

Anyway, the plan is to make all the fish on this list. 

This here is the Atlantic Flounder.

Eventually I want to work on a series of Poisonous Berries and Mushrooms. This is a long-term goal!

domestic-construction

Domestic Construction is a multi-disciplinary design studio, founded in 2007 by Trish Andersen and Maureen Walsh, specializing in interiors, environments and one of a kind fashion and home products.  This Brooklyn based duo strives to keep the touch of the hand present in this world driven by mass production and conformity.  Through this process a new sense of individuality and identity are formed.

I met Trish and Maureen working at Anthro and they also contributed a project to/were sassy models in my book. These ladies are super-talented! They can do anything.

If you are looking for an amazing handmade wall treatment or a beautiful display in your home, office or store, give them a call. Oh and check out this awesome video on their site that shows their process of working on a custom wall surface. It's so cool!

Fabric Stacks and Holiday Planning

It's getting to be that time again. Last night I gathered up a bunch of my saved holiday magazines (Gourmet, Martha, Marie Claire Idées) and skimmed through them in bed. I like making food gifts for people each year so I am always looking for new ideas and packaging inspiration.

On the flip side, it's also time for me to start making things for holiday craft fairs (like the Handmade Cavalcade!) and for bulking up my sad, neglected Etsy shop. This year, I am going to try something new: kits! I have been really enjoying teaching people how to make things so I thought I would give away a few of my secrets and make up some crafty kits.

What would you like in a kit? I have a few ideas up my sleeve but I thought I would ask too!

Making a quilt

Ok, I am finally going to take the plunge and make a real quilt for me and the Mr. The problem is, I am having such a hard time deciding which on to make! It's a pretty big commitment and once I start there's no turning back.

I have always wanted to make a Denyse Schmidt quilt (her Chronicle book is still one of my favorites) and I have it narrowed down to a couple. I'm leaning towards the first one but what do you think?

Our bedroom is mostly pink and brown so I'm thinking Liberty prints mixed with something a bit more modern like a Japanese fabric or even Ikat. Sounds a little crazy but I think it will work.

Oh and ps- A couple of people have mentioned that the adding part of the comments is a little confusing. All you have to do is add up the little equation. I don't want to make things confusing but this prevents me from being over-run by spam!

More adventures in paper piecing

This paper piecing stuff is endlessly fascinating to me. I've been hit by a pretty bad cold this week and all I can manage to do is watch stupid television and make millions of hexagons and diamonds for paper piecing. It's the perfect project when you need something repetitive and have a vast amount of time. And I'm not kidding about the vast part; this is a seriously time-consuming craft. I think if I were stuck in a Jane Austen novel and had to find a hobby to fill all of my idle-lady time, my hobby would be hand quilting. This star shape is the first one I made and it's a little wonky but I am still beyond impressed. If I do say so myself.

My plan is to appliqué these pieces onto linen to make kind of modern pillow covers and table runners. Someday I would like to commit to a whole quilt but at the same time, I love the idea of making the pieces look really graphic and modern.

Bread and Hexagons

It was a pretty crafty weekend around here: bread was baked, paper piece hexagons were made, patchwork quilts were repaired.

Mr. Loveforever has turned into a bread baking machine lately. Usually he makes Pullman- style loaves but he has started making big crusty rounds in the dutch oven. Yesterday, he tried out the infamous Mark Bittman "no knead" recipe that took the world by storm last year and it was delicious.

I have an idea that's been kicking around in my head for a while and it involves hexagon paper piecing. After helping out on the spring windows at Anthropologie, where we whip-stitched photo murals of hexagons together, I knew I had to do something about my idea. There's something about quilt-making techniques that seem so serious and daunting: the thing about paper piecing is that it's simple but time consuming. Traditionally people made quilts out of thousands of tiny hexagons but I've got a different plan for these guys. More about that soon.

Oh, and the sweater squares? Mr. Loveforever's sister just had a baby girl and we are going down to visit her in Mexico and she requested a simple back for a childhood quilt that was starting to fall apart. I had a bunch of felted sweaters so I cut those up and threw in a few adorable Japanese prints for fun. As I was cutting sweaters, Mr. Loveforever started sewing them. This is by far the simplest way to make a quilt top (or back) but I was still amazed at how quickly the whole thing came together.

I can't tell you how lovely and nice it was to spend the whole day crafting for myself and not for work. It had been a really long time.