And some more gratuitous eye candy...

Look at these gorgeous fabrics...




These are from Anna Maria Horner who should be at quilt market tomorrow. (Insert squeal of joy here)

And look at this!



.... and this...



from Tanya Whelan who will also be there tomorrow. I'm so excited I could burst!

On a sewing/crafty note, I made this little dress for Miss E for the summer...





She needs some simple summer dresses that she can just pull over her head and go. There is not much out there in the pattern world that is cute for kids. So many of the patterns from McCalls and Butterick have that "Yes, my Mommy made this look" about them. This is a top from a Burda pattern that we modified.

Ready for some serious inspiration...

So my friend Mo and I are going to Quilt Market this Friday. Once every four or five years it comes to Portland... and THIS year is it!!! We are so excited. Here are some tid-bits from Joel Dewberry's site.





And how luscious are these from Portobello Pixie





We are so excited, I think we are going pop!!! How ever will we make it to Friday???

Happy Mother's Day!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day yesterday.
Mine started off with some serious gardening planning...



This is my favorite book for garden strategy...


As a firm believer in zonal denial, I constantly plant tropical plants for their beauty and outrageous foliage. Of course they don't last much past October, but until then they look great!

Then it was off to Portland Nursery for some inspiration and plant purchasing..





Honestly, I could just move in here.



Everything is so beautiful.



All the purchases have been planted, but they are not really showy yet... sort of small plants in big pots. We are supposed to get some very warm weather this week which should make things grow quickly. I'll post some pics once things start filling out.

Vintage Suitcase Redo

I love old suitcases. But sometimes the remnants of their previous owner's uses are still attached.



In this case, the Sky Queen (how cool is the name!!!) spent some time as a tool box. There was a mysterious stain on the bottom resembling oil.



So I made a new bottom out of cardboard and covered it with some striped fabric. The new ties are twill tape that was laid in the suitcase before the new bottom was pushed into place.



Now I just need to figure out how to tighten up those pockets. The elastic is really baggy, but the pocket is sewn to the lining which is glued into the suitcase. I don't want to rip the whole thing apart. Maybe I can thread a new piece of elastic between the rows of stitching and hand tack it at either end.

New uses for old things

It's a VCR...


It's a Parking Garage!

Trying to find some color...

in this grey and cold spring.

I do not have any beautiful outdoor pictures, since it has been cloudy, cold, raining, hailing, snowing, sleeting or some combination of the previous. I have always admired Alicia's and Jane's abilities to capture beautiful still lifes. So here is my first attempt:



However, if you click through to Alicia's blog, it is a riot of color due to a weekend trip to the tulip festival. At least spring is happening somewhere.

So onto other color news in my life... here is my latest purchase:



It seems a little bit Hello Kitty sometimes with the purple/pink.





My previous iron died due to a fall on the cement floor. Also it had an auto shut-off time of 8 minutes which was stress inducing to say the least. I would be sewing away at my machine and hear the iron click as it was shutting off. I would have to run over to the iron and tip it a few times to get it to turn back on. This new one has an auto shut-off of 15 minutes which so far seems to work well. Does anyone know of an iron that does not have auto shut-off? or are the manufacturers trying to save us from ourselves again?

Oh the aches and pains of outrageous gardening...

So last fall I had all the grass removed in our upper front lawn. Our house sits up above the side walk, so we had these little bits of grass on either side of the front walk... which required the mower to lift the lawn mower up and over a short rock wall. This was not fun... nor easy for myself, since I'm 5'0" tall... very challenging. To fix this problem and to provide more planting space, the grass was removed. Since we had 3 days in row of sun forecasted starting last Friday, we ordered pea gravel and mulch and rented a rototiller Friday morning and set to work.

At the end of Day 1 and beginning of Day 2, we had the site leveled and the path edging put in:





The rest of Day 2 involved hauling and spreading the pea gravel. Two cubic yards of it!
Day 3 was consumed with the moving of rose plants and mulching, mulching, mulching. The neighbors have remarked that the mulch smells much like poo, to which we have replied that the smell will go away... over time.



We still have about 16 roses to move. The original rose bed is too shady and we get one good bloom of roses and then nothing but leggy plants for the rest of the year... which does not work for this rose loving lady. Now we can plant more small perennials and edging plants. But it is raining again and I am really, really sore and having seriously bad allergies after this grand event, so that will have to wait for a bit.
For now here are some gratuitous flower shots to show that spring has really finally arrived:

A little spring color

I had a whirlwind of errand running this morning. I grabbed my camera hoping to take some blog worthy pics... since I have posted very little in the way of inspiring photos since the beginning of the year. I'm in love with the Oh Joy! blog. It is full of color and beautiful pictures and ideas... not that I want to copy what she has there, but I would at least like to contribute in a similar fashion.
However, upon arriving at IKEA which was full of their new fabric collections and spring/summer merchandise, I realized that my battery had died. There was no way of even fooling said camera into taking one picture of their glorious fabrics hanging in space. So I will have to post these images from their website....







So I returned home in a fit of color inspiration. Last week Miss E and I had purchased some new grosgrain ribbon for belts. So we put them together on this grey afternoon... right before the hail and rain.



I love all the grosgrain stripes that are available now. About 4 years ago, these belts made a huge comeback at retail, but there was very little choice for the home sewer or even the internet shopper. So I wound up using a rainbow stripe for a 2 year old Miss E, who was perfectly happy with it... but these stripe combos are waaaaaaaay better.



She's a well accessorized little lady.

Death of a Serger

The old serger is no more. It functioned for 14 years and was in need of some serious help. So all the work and twiddling from the other night has resulted in the purchase of this....



Ooooo... shiny!



I can't wait to have some time to use the rolled hem and the ruffling/gathering settings... AND you don't even have to switch out throat plates! There have been some good improvements in the last 14 years.

Quiet Chaos

The blog has been quiet once again while my sister and I have been working on Mister Judy. She and her family are in town this week for spring break, and we have been sewing away on samples... until the serger started to seriously malfunction. And as I was adjusting the tension dial, it came off in my hand and the back part fell into the machine. Since it was, of course, 8:30pm at night and everything was closed, we took the serger apart.



We found the piece and reassembled.



Only to have the same thing happen again 5 minutes later.



And of course I need this thing to work, so we can get these samples sewn! So today we are taking it into the shop and hopefully they can fix it on the spot... otherwise I may be coming home with a new serger.

On another note, we have been leaving the spouses unattended with the children and the house. They made a discovery in the kitchen while cooking dinner and are attempting to sell the item on eBay. So far no luck.

Finally decorating the house

After being married for almost 10 years, we have finally put some of the spouse's art collection up.



This is his collection of Howard Finster who was a prolific folk artist.



I feel so grown up now that I don't have blank walls.

Yay! Loobylu is back!

Loobylu aka Claire Robertson is back after taking an entire year off from blogging! Her things are so inspiring, and she is such a talented artist. And since she's in Australia, I can get my summer fix looking at her photos... while I'm waiting for spring to arrive here. She's doing some darling embroideries. As does Miss Hillary over at Wee Wonderfuls. Check out her Stitchette's in her shop. Maybe I will get moving on embroidery some day soon. I have a good size stash of vintage embroidery transfers.
In the meantime, here is some general gorgeousness from my spouse for Leap Year.



I always get flowers for Leap Year... luckily, he does give me flowers at other times... otherwise it would be a long wait between bouquets.