sarey poppins

Sarah of Belle & Sebastian has an Etsy shop? Yup. And she's got good taste in fabric. Of course.

ham rash on your bum hole

Ever since this ran on SNL I can't stop thinking about it.



I mean, what if you mixed up the ham and the tp? And I'm kinda obsessed with Jon Hamm being all over tv right now, on 30 Rock and Best Week Ever ("I like being on television and I don't like it when I'm not.")...
So Erica and I decided I should make something with Jon Hamm's face on it that says "Don't get a ham rash on your bumhole." Kind of in the style of towelbama. But what should I put it on? A towel? pillow? kleenex box cover? help! And then I'm gonna send it to him. He'll love it, right?

who can clean up this mess?

TheNest.com has featured Towelbama among Obama related goodies like Narciso Rodriguez tees and OBALMah lip balm. One of these days Towelbama will pay the bills!

wompus

Maybe Erica and I spent a whole evening recently whipping up this little bag. Made the pattern up ourselves and everything. It's to be a gift for her friend.

It's nice and stiff so it can hold scriptures! And maybe there's also room for a Relief Society manual. We used what Erica likes to call Thomas Tricks, which are techniques my mom has taught me, to get the features we wanted.

You probably want one in which to take your lunch to work.

hey there, towelbama

May I introduce you to Towelbama. For Obama fans who have kitchens. Amy, Ashley, and I collaborated on this project which sprang out of a ridiculous conversation at Sunday dinner. I quite like the result. Amy inspired, Ashley drew, I hand embroidered. We feel like there could be a huge market for our creation, available now at Etsy. Leave a comment with your email address or contact me via Etsy if you'd like to buy a made-to-order Towelbama. Soon to come: Pillowbama, Scarfbama, and Shower Curtainbama.

Poppies

I'm enamored with the poppies at my local library. In fact, I couldn't get them out of my head.

So I embroidered some and made them into a pillow. It looks like red, but it's really a very bright orange. I think I like it too much to sell it.

A Very Ghetto Father's Day

My dad is hard to get presents for because he tends to forget to use them. So these days I go for the cheap but thoughtful presents. For Father's Day I took a fat quarter of soft woven fabric and made it into a hanky with a hand rolled hem and hand embroidered monogram. Got the idea here. And since my Dad is a good music appreciator, a mix cd is always a safe bet. These are a few of the father-friendly tracks selected from my recent listenings. I've been enjoying the new albums from these artists a lotty lot (thanks, Dirk).

mp3: Jim Noir - What U Gonna Do
mp3: French Kicks - So Said What
mp3: We Are Scientists - After Hours
mp3: Keren Ann - Lay Your Head Down

Bad, lazy blogger. Rather be making stuff, like these.

My first quilt, for Alison & Sam's Baby Ren. The machine quilting is super sloppy but I'm still happy with the outcome.

Needed a new pin cushion and something to do while I hung out with my Mom tonight. So I raided her 30s reproduction stash and vintage buttons and whipped this up. The pattern is super easy and from this book by the genius of Purl.

NYC Part IV: Fiberosity

Obviously I did lots of shopping on NYC. Top on my list of new places to visit this time was Muji, the Japanese non-brand, where I got tons of modern office supplies. Another new and exciting stop: Purl Patchwork. Probably nobody in the state of Utah sells Liberty of London fabrics, and I am now obsessed. The patterns are just gorgeous and the cotton is so fine and soft. This is how they are displayed in Purl's tiny fabric store in Soho.

[image from purlbee.com]

They had that peacock print in black and pink, which I could only afford to buy half a yard of. I love that the girls running this fabric shop are young and super cool, not like the crotchety old ladies I sometimes run into in fabric shops. [edit: After a complaint I shall specify that many old ladies I run into in fabric shops are quite amiable.] Being that I've been making lots of stuff lately, I also had to make rounds in the garment fashion district. Got some vintagey silk organza at Mood and buttons & vintage ribbon at M&J. I just love the possibilities there.

Now what do you suppose I shall do with all of it?

Meet Stolen Pony

All I want to do these days is make stuff. So, inspired by Ashley, I decided to start an Etsy shop. I'm adding new things slowly, but Your Heart Out already featured one of my bags on Friday! This is a close-up of the bag I made Erica for her birthday, of which there is another on Etsy that has yet to be monogrammed. I also realized I can put my vintage shopping luck to use here. One thing I love about living in Utah are the D.I.s and other thrift shops. Some of my favorite items in my closet and jewelry box are thrifting finds. I figure the time I spend scouring would be worth the price for somebody to acquire some of the gems that I can't keep myself. Like this dress my sissy modeled. So my Etsy shop is part my own sewing experiments and part vintage treasure trove. I'm taking the approach that I wouldn't sell something on Etsy, whether I made it or found it, that I wouldn't want to keep myself. Take a look, it has been christened Stolen Pony. Maybe I'll put a widget in the sidebar so you can see the new things that get added.


Speaking of Etsy, I got some adorable rings and hairpins the other day from this cool shop.

Hallelujah!

I finally got my laptop back! I actually had to stop myself from kissing it as I was leaving the Apple store. Now things can go back to normal.

Back when I dropped if off to be fixed there was this awesome guy with the thickest glasses ever next to me at the genius bar with his old school desktop. I loved the image of crazy genius old man sitting there with his old but space-agey computer under those florescent lights, so I had to surreptitiously snap his photo with my iphone.
Other things that happened while I was computerless:

I reunited with Alison, an old college roommate and the kind of friend who will always feel like family. I hadn't seen her in a couple years but now she lives just a few blocks away, and by a lucky turn of events I got to go to the blessing of her new baby.


I dug out my dad's old trunk of memorabilia from the LDS mission he served in Australia many years ago, for reasons I'll discuss in a later post, and dressed my sister in a kangaroo pelt.

I raided my mom's fabric stash so I can make my first quilt which will be a gift for a friend's baby. Then I went to an actual fabric store and got more to make another quilt for another friend's baby. Looking at that first one, I may need to take out some of those yellows. These are all 30s reproduction fabrics, which I particularly like.

The thing that did not happen while I was computerless: a finished thesis proposal draft.

happy housewarming

Had to show off a little something I made this week for a friend who just bought her first house. Hopefully she doesn't read this before she gets it in the mail. I embroidered these dishtowels with a design adapted from this book.

wrappy

I tried a little experiment with my Christmas wrapping this year. I got the idea from one of my mom's sewing books. First I sewed some plaid onto brown craft paper from the garage.
And sewed a little tag for the underside, just freehanded with the feed dogs down.But I liked this thinner brown pinstripey paper from Ikea much better. And I tried a little holoshimmer thread this time. The bows could use some perfecting. They're just long strips of paper rolled together, fanned a bit, and wound with thread.
It's a bit cumbersome to sew paper for a large present, there's probably a good way I just haven't figured out yet. But you could get creative with what you're sewing--random stripes, patterns, drawings, writing. I've still got more wrapping to do so we'll see what happens.

well then how about joojle

I get pretty smart when I'm tired. In those few lucid minutes before falling asleep in bed I often compose melodies, dream up sewing projects, write imaginary emails, make mental lists, and so on. Too bad that because of all the sleepiness I don't usually remember all my grand ideas. I think I just remember the dumb ones. Last night I imagined a letter I'd write to Deseret Industries about how much I love them. I also decided it would be real funny if we all started calling it Goojle instead of Google, like we weren't sure how to pronounce that second 'g'. No? Oh ok. And two nights before in near sleep I became determined to sew a bow out of some vintage fabric I have, apparently inspired by that Project Runway dress. So the next morning I did. Then Jory took my photo with actual lighting and an actual camera. And now I'm real tired again.

[edit] I was real tired. I crashed for 11 hours after writing this post!

doin' stuff

Tonight Katie and I checked Steve and Barry's for the winning outfit from Project Runway last week, and sure enough, it was there. I didn't buy the dress (fabric so cheap!), but snapped a quick photo in the dressing room.



And just a few things about last weeks Project Runway:

1 - If Marion wasn't so freakin bashful--he couldn't even look the camera in the eye during interviews--maybe he'd still be there.
2 - I swear having Sweet P as a teammate is the only reason Elisa did so well this week.
3 - Why was the designing partner of the team have to be the one responsible to get kicked off? I deserve to go home if my name is attached to burlap toilet paper going down the runway, even if it's wasn't originally my design.

We also decorated the Christmas tree last night. We got all festive and even strung popcorn and cranberries. Looks pretty cute with my glass partridge from Anthro and the little baker man from Germany, eh?

This is what I was talking about.I sewed a bunch of long snowflake sandwich strands together for Anthro. Too bad I couldn't keep some for my own house.

dancing in the sewing chair

Spent some time yesterday on a little project that you should be seeing in the windows at Anthropologie soon. Listening to this made it pretty enjoyable.

mp3: Muscles - Hey Muscles I Love You

Carnie Gras '07

Even though I live just 2 hours away, spending time in my parents' home town of Preston, Idaho is still quite an experience. Preston is a dingy quadranted burg with a total of two stop lights and can't sustain a McDonalds, but it also boasts That Famous Preston Night Rodeo. In a place where the usual entertainment is gossip, the town bursts alive for three days every July when the population quadruples for the reunions, parades, sidewalk sales, carnival rides, and all the mutton bustin and rodeo queens you can handle. It might just look like riding a bunch of animals, catching a bunch of saltwater taffy, and buying a bunch of ziploc'd cookies from the old ladies' clubs. But this is as good as it gets in Preston, and when you embrace that it can be tons of fun.

Maybe it's just nostalgia for the events we experienced as kids when visiting from California. Grandma and Grandpa's house, the house my family currently lives in, is right on the parade route: heaven for collecting parade candy. Or maybe it's the novelty of rural cowboy life that was as far away as possible from how we grew up. The people-watching is a nonstop treat, from squeamishing at the dirties to trying to guess the locals from the visitors. But relatives and old friends are sure to stop by just in time for parade, and we're always sad when the weekend's over and Preston's next big thing is a 362 days way.

Here's an example of one of Preston's quirks. In the local video store, you must seek out your selection according to the actors it stars rather than the genre. Makes for weird browsing, and no forgetting the name of that one guy.


This year we tried something a bit different. The parade entrants seemed to be a bit lacking the first two nights, so with two hours until the last parade of the weekend, my brother, sister, and I created this giant cotton candy out of our mom's 4-wheeler, which two of my little cousins rode on to toss candy to the crowd. It's not precisely what I envisioned, but considering we didn't even leave Preston for supplies, I was pretty happy with it.


Until next year, carnies.

mp3: The Kills - Rodeo Town
mp3: The Cardigans - Carnival
mp3: The Brunettes - Cotton Candy