Today

You can still enter my blog birthday giveaway here.

Better Photos and a Blog Birthday Giveaway

Thank you to everyone who commented on flickr and here about this block while I was sleeping last night! A little bit of sleep + positive feedback helped me feel so much better.  Sometimes when I’m creating on my own, I know I’m on the right path and I’m delighted with the results. Other times, I’m not so sure and I really appreciate all the kind feedback. I also realized this morning that a big part of my problem with the block was that I took the pictures of it at night and they were not showing it at its best. This morning I tried again and I’m much happier with the results.

I promised a giveaway and a giveaway I will deliver. This blog is one year old this week and what an intense year it has been! My husband has two teenagers who have lived with us every other week since we got married five years ago. This time last year their mom told us that she had taken a job in Florida. It took almost a year for her to move, the kids are now living with us full time, and it has not been an easy transition for anyone. We’ve spent the last two weeks dealing with some pretty serious crises behavior that I think has settled down for now, but has left everyone wiped out.

Why am I telling you this on my “birthday”? I think because part of what I like about the online sewing community is that I don’t have to tell you what is going on in my family–we can interact around ideas and projects and give feedback and I can escape into a world that doesn’t have anything to do with hurt kids in crises that I’m not able to fix. But I also struggle with feeling like there is something untrue about presenting myself in such a limited way and sometimes the family stuff breaks through. So this is where I am today: tired, humble, grateful for family and friends who have been bringing us meals and grateful for you all who inspire me and encourage me to take time for myself to make something beautiful.

Here is what I want to give you on my birthday. I have a set of five letterpress cards that I made as holiday gifts this year (printing is by far my favorite new skill this year) and a stack of fabric that is ready to move on from my stash and hopefully will find a happy home in your stash. There is some Amy Butler, Michael Miller, Michael Kauffman, Jay McCarroll, a random Japanese print and a couple unidentifiables, held together with a lovely piece of trim that I won on Sew Mama Sew’s giveaway day. 

Here’s how to win:

Leave me a comment telling me one of the following things. I’ll pick a winner Friday, Feb 24 after 5pm CST.

• something real about yourself (define “real” however you choose)
• a photography tip
• something you are grateful for

Eat me, Drink me Block

This is my second block for the Pastiche bee, and I hate to say it, but it looks an awful lot like my first block. Obviously, the shapes I chose are similar (little cake and bottle vs. teacup and bottle), but I also think I am not so fantastic at choosing fabric. The other women in this bee are so amazing at painting with fabric (for example) which is something I’ve not worked up the nerve to try yet. As a result, I worry that my blocks look too simple. Aieee.

I do like the hand stitching details–the little “drink me” note that is tied to the bottle and the “eat me” frosting on the cake. Smoochee asked for Alice in Wonderland inspired blocks and I chose “eat me, drink me” because I knew I could manage it. Next month is my month and my theme is vintage school/office and I’m super excited to see what people make. Here is my pinterest board for the bee. Maybe while everyone else is working on blocks for my month, I should try making a more sophisticated block.

(i carry it in my heart)

 On Saturday I attended a paper making and valentine printing workshop at the Soybean Press. This is the press that I took my students to in the fall when we visited the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois. They have a new initiative called Fresh Press that is researching ways to make paper from agricultural waste. We got to make heart shaped paper (natch) for valentines and then use their type to set valentine messages on paper that they had prepared for us.

We made paper from recycled cotton pulp. You can see the big vats of water and pulp that we used to pull our heart shape pieces of paper. Once a bunch of pieces of paper are pulled and stacked between layers of felt, they go into a press that squeezes all of the water out of them (I saw it go up to 2,000 pounds of pressure), and then into a drying box. The finished paper is so soft and lovely, I just want to keep fondling my finished valentines. I would like to figure out a way to hang one of them in a way that shows off the edges.

In a week, I will be working with the artists at the press to do a four day class for my high school students. We will make our paper on Tuesday, set our type on Wednesday, and then hopefully print a folio of their writing on Thursday and Friday.

I wish I had taken the photos in this post. They are all taken by Eric Bensen, one of the two artist/researchers behind Fresh Press. The line on my valentine is from this e.e. cummings poem. It’s one of my favorites.

What is the Up?

This blog is nearing a year old (2/23/11 was my first post). When I started the blog I promised myself that I wasn’t going to impose any rules about how often I post, make myself feel bad about not posting, write long posts about why I haven’t been posting, or keep blogging past the time when I was enjoying it. Now that I am almost a year into this project, and have been absent more than present in this space since the beginning of the new year, my resolve is being tested.

The truth, for me, is that life happens sometimes in a way that doesn’t leave much space for creativity. Or the space is so small, timid and rare, I don’t want to point it out to the world, lest it run away. I’m in one of those places now–when work and life and family seem to be taking up all the available oxygen in the room. I have faith that this too shall pass and that I’ll be back soon with creativity to spare.

Until then, I hope you are well and furiously making lots of wonderful things.

Slow Crafting

Do you know the slow food movement? I seem to be in the midst of a slow craft moment these days. Inspired by selfsewn’s Rose Star Block Party, I spent a day doing some English Paper Piecing, but after about 8 hours, I still don’t have much to show.

 I cut out fabric pieces for two stars, and have basted all of them to their paper patterns, but haven’t gotten far with the whip stitching together. I don’t have a specific project in mind or a deadline on these so they are only being worked on when they call my name.

I’ve also chosen my theme for the Hoop Up! Stitch & Send swap and am starting on my inspiration piece for that. My theme will be images of reading drawn from vintage children’s illustrations.  I found a treasure trove of images in this set on flickr. I received a lap stand for Christmas that I’m testing out with this project. So far it has been very nice to work with sitting at a table, I haven’t tested it in my lap yet though.

I’ve started a honey cowl with some lovely 50/50 merino/silk yarn that I’ve had on hand for a couple of years. It is a very easy project to work on while chatting with others or chaperoning a high school dance (as I did last night). I also finished this feather and fan scarf, which had been done on my needles for months and only needed to be cast off and blocked.

It’s been cold and grey and very busy at work recently and I’m enjoying working on projects by hand without any deadlines. There are days when I feel like I should be producing more, although for what or whom, I have no idea.  The truth is that so much of my mental energy is being used at work right now that I don’t have a lot of space left for my own creative projects. I’m trying to accept that for now and know that these things are cyclical. In the mean time I’m knitting and stitching when I can and reading a lot more, burrowed into my down comforter with the space heater on.

How are you spending the dark part of the year?

New Year, New Stairs

When my spouse and I first moved into our split-level house, there was mauve carpet on these stairs leading to the main level. The previous owner had cats, and I’m deathly allergic. We ended up having to take the carpet out earlier than we had intended (read, budgeted for) so that I could breath in the house and were never happy with the way the stairs looked. Because they had been covered in carpet, the risers were full of nail holes and other dings and scratches that no amount of paint could cover.

We found ourselves with unexpected extra days of vacation this winter break and decided it was time to tackle the stairs. We had discussed building entirely new stairs, new risers, or false fronts for the risers, but finally settled on filling in the nicks in the original risers with wood putty and covering them with paintable wall paper from Lowe’s.  It took some concentration to cut the wallpaper to the right size (measure twice, cut once and all), but we managed that task and made a decision about color the first night.

wall paper prepped stairs

Once the stairs were prepped and we had decided on a robin’s egg blue for the background, we went to the amazing Community Fab Lab at the University of Illinois (trust me, the fab lab is way better than their website) where a former student of mine happened to be working and helped us print out the numbers 1-7 in both red and white vinyl and in two different fonts (total cost, $2). The next morning we gave the stairs two coats of paint and, when it was dry, moved on to the numbers.

finding mid-point of numbers

We were nervous about how to position the numbers so that they would look like they lined up (I was a fan of these stairs, but my spouse is a little more aligned than that). We decided on a distance from the wall (8″) and a distance from the stair below (3″) where we wanted the middle of each number to hit. I then marked the midpoint of each number and we commenced with a complicated measure, attach post-it note triangle on stair, try to hit post-it note with the number game. As you will see later, we ended up removing these original numbers and were much more relaxed applying them the second time.

late night fiddly number application

We lived with the blue stairs with red numbers for a couple days, but weren’t completely happy with them. They didn’t feel finished and it took us a few days to figure out what they needed.

blue and red somehow didn’t seem complete

About this time my spouse, Jay, started telling people we were inspired by Steve Zissou, which made me think we should add the yellow we had bought for the stringers (the side wall that is cut to fit the stairs) to the main stairs so we took off the red numbers, masked  a six inch rectangle on each stair, and painted it yellow.

masking for yellow paint

Once we had our yellow stripe, the only step left was to reapply the red vinyl numbers (which were surprisingly resilient). This time we eye-balled the application–neither of us have much experience with vinyl decals and transfer paper and when we first put the numbers on we wanted everything to be absolutely perfect before we pushed them down. This time, we knew that they could be removed and reapplied without too much effort, so we tacked a couple points on each number, stepped back to evaluate, tweaked their position a few times, and then pressed them into place.

finished stairs

The vinyl seems like it will stand up like a champ and the wallpaper seems a pretty safe bet as well for durability. I’m most concerned about the paint getting scuffed and wonder if it is worth a coat of polyurethane to protect our work.

basement stairs

While we were at it, we put the white numbers on the basement stairs. We both like how clean the white and blue look together so we didn’t add an additional stripe to these ones.