around the studio

Happy Monday! I hope yours has been a productive one too.

Tonight we will take a little break and enjoy a glass of wine and some home made pizza, to celebrate getting my taxes all paid. So nice to have that behind me! Boy do I know how to cut it close.

See you soon…

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a little striped skirt

While cleaning up some piles of fabric a few nights ago, I came upon this striped jersey material I had found some time back at the thrift store. It suddenly seemed like a great idea to make a little skirt.

I used an old skirt of mine to get the basic shape from, and traced it onto paper as a pattern. The waistband is a wide, doubled over strip of a stretchy bamboo knit. In less than an hour I had a new little skirt!

If there is some interest, I may try to create a simple tutorial. This is a very easy project if you have a serger. And even if you don’t, some simple variations could be made to work with a sewing machine.

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denim and leather

New bag in the shop. This one is one of a kind.

I have been exploring some new design elements for a rucksack I’ve been working on. This bag puts to use of some of those elements.

It creates a certain kind of tingling satisfaction – almost like a rush – to bring an idea into 3 dimensional space. Definitely one of the things I love most about sewing.

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a few things…

Wild berries are one of my favorite things about late summer. I’ve been making some super delicious blackberry smoothies lately – wow, such amazing color. Now that I have a nice bit of them stored in the freezer I am wondering about other ways to use them. What are your favorite simple blackberry recipes?

A new bag soon to be in the shop. I challenged myself with this one, to create a bag with enough pockets to really stash a lot of stuff. I have been assembling most of my bag interiors with a similar layout for quite some time, so it felt great to explore some changes.

Sewed a small organizer tote last week to stash some of the things on my shelf. I really enjoyed this little project so I made a couple extras. There is going to be a little giveaway tomorrow : )

See you then…

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so much stitching

Lots of stitching happening here.

Getting excited about some new work, which I hope to be able to share in the near future.

Why can’t the days just be twice as long??

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simple things

Whipped up a quick little something for our home the other day. It was enormously satisfying for such a simple little thing. It’s always super rewarding to make things for our home, though I rarely ever do, for lack of time. I made this pillow cover with a gray vintage plaid wool, backed with my favorite-in-the-whole-wide-world Romanian hemp canvas. It’s an envelope style cover, and went over an existing pillow we had that has been laying around. Brand new now! I like adding texture to our home with natural patterns in natural materials. Adding a little color to our super natural palette is fun too. That aqua blue and golden yellow wool blanket is a really nice Pendleton I found a couple weeks ago. After 3 thorough washings it has become a new favorite, and with the addition of the new pillow I feel like we have a brand new sitting area.

I hope you all are enjoying the weekend. And Happy Mother’s Day to all the mom’s out there.

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patches

I did a little bit of sewing for myself the other day, and added some tweed elbow patches to a cashmere sweater of mine. This concept isn’t a new one, but it seems to be revitalized these days and I’ve come across it online a few times over the last few months. When I was little I often saw my dad in sports coats with leather elbow patches and I have had a fondness for it ever since. There is something both practical and playful about it – and it makes a simple sweater or jacket seem a bit smarter, don’t you think?

I enjoyed the hand sewing; it’s been a while; and I went on to dig out a few things I haven’t worn much, to see if maybe a new life with patches would renew them. I’ll be offering a few of these things at meadow + mark soon. Maybe even some cashmere. The vintage L.L. Bean cardigan is one I found just a few days ago. The patches are leather and the sweater is camel hair and lambs wool. Very cozy.  It’s available now, as are a few other things I added this week.

Have a great weekend everyone. I’ll be working in the garden as much as I can. The weeds have gone crazy with all the rain we’ve had. And, this might be a funny bit of news if you have never heard of vermiculture,  but we harvested our first tray of worm castings this week and fed it to all our plants. Our worms must be pretty happy because they are devouring our kitchen scraps and having worm babies like crazy!

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[soon to be] new for fall

Lots of sewing going on. I have just finished up a wholesale order, and am working diligently to get shop orders completed and shipped, and then I hope to bust out a bunch of new bags for fall/winter. I have made up some prototypes and I am likin’ what’s coming together.

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it’s Tuesday

…but I’m not sure I could have told you that without looking at the little clock on my computer. The last few days have really been somethin’ else, for this little one woman business. Can I just say, yowza! I was in front of my computer for much of the weekend, answering questions, attending to orders, re-listing items, thanking customers and thanking you wonderful people for all your fun and friendly, and very interesting notes. I am still working on catching up on emails, so if you are someone who I have not yet responded to, I will get there soon.

I spent much of yesterday cutting. And cutting and cutting. I can feel muscles in my arm that I certainly usually don’t. After all this excitement and sustained hyper focus I was feeling a little bit hungover yesterday, probably from lack of fresh air, proper nourishment and sleep – so we headed out in the late afternoon to mail some packages, shop for food and just get out of the house for a bit. Admittedly, I was really looking forward to getting back home and having a glass of wine, which I did, and which I really enjoyed.

a Batch of Slippers Ready for Sewing

I will be focusing entirely on filling orders in the coming days and weeks, and if there are any questions from any of my customers out there, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

With genuine thanks and appreciation…

And as Liane might say,

xo to eternity!

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seasonal decorating and the perfect plum

It’s been unusually cold and dry here on the Oregon Coast this past week. The humidity in the house has been around 35% compared to the usual 60 and there have been patches of ice in the morning that stay frozen all day. All this cold, dry, sunny weather makes me feel like I’m back in Central Oregon. Needless to say, I’m loving it.

We hung our wreath last week, a gift sent by our parents which I was so excited to learn was handmade and from a family owned business local to the pacific northwest. We also gathered some fir boughs to make a couple of swags. We don’t usually get all festive at holiday times, but this year we’ve both been enjoying a little bit of decorating. I may even decorate the mantles with some seasonal nature findings. We have 2 of them, and they have been displaying a totally random assortment of things that haven’t been touched since we moved here (the above photo is a “before” shot, which means that hopefully there will be an “after” on it’s way). And come to think of it, there are a lot of piles of stuff that haven’t hardly been touched since we moved here. I’ve been looking forward to a few days off from sewing to focus on our house again. Seems like we have been unendingly busy catching up on all the things that got neglected with the big move and the initial projects that involved.

In sewing news, the Belle Ruche is now available in Plum Organic Cotton Twill. It will be in the shop tonight or tomorrow Wednesday. I love this fabric and this color seems perfect for winter – but I think I felt that way about summer and fall too. It really is a really nice color. Trust me.

I hope you all had wonderful weekends

xo

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