Back Home to Portland

I have been AWOL from my blog. I have spent the last week and a half in Idaho at my parent's house and at the University of Idaho and in Las Vegas. Last year I started teaching a summer course at the U of I (Adobe Illustrator for Apparel Design). It was received very well, so I was invited back to teach again. I have a bigger class this time, but things seems to be going well. I have some flexibility with the class dates, so I lined it up with our 10 year anniversary.... so we could conveniently leave the kids with my parents and jet off to Las Vegas for a 3 nights.
It was really, really hot... 115 degrees on some days. We had our vows renewed by an Elvis impersonator... which was SWEET!... and made me giggle. He made about $20 a minute... pretty good wages if you can sing and act like The King. And we did a fair amount of shopping... because it was air-conditioned.

Anne Fontaine does the most beautiful shirts...



Chloe had some of their early fall in...


I love the pink tweedy-ness of this jacket.

... and Nanette Lepore was having a sale!



... so in I went and bought a fabulous knit dress.
We flew back to the farm yesterday and drove home today.. 7 and a half hours with neither kid asleep for longer than 20 minutes. I'm beat! I haven't even checked on the status of my garden, but it sort of rained this evening, so I figure I can water tomorrow.

Dress Redo...

This is a picture of my mother and myself about 1971 or 72. She is wearing the dress from her brother's wedding. A lovely yellow cotton number with flocked white flowers and a train. She gave this dress to Elsie a few months ago for dress-up play.

Fast forward to about 2 weeks ago, when Elsie was going to participate in her school's Storybook Parade. Each student was to dress as a character from their favorite book and march through the neighborhood led by a police escort and a parade marshall in a red convertible. Quite the To Do for a grade school! Of course, Elsie did not want to be any character that we already had a costume for.... Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, Tinkerbell from Peter Pan, Cinderella... etc. Even though I presented each of them in an exciting manner with the promise of accessories and a grand styling event. She wanted to be Belle (or Beauty) from Beauty and the Beast and that was it. So out came the old dress. I took it apart and re-made it into this...



Here she is in action on the wet parade day...



We had to do a lot of layering underneath to keep her warm. Next year maybe we can do a character than involves an umbrella... probably good for this climate.

It's still raining...

So many of my roses are in bud and it is not warm enough for them to open. Some of the buds are rotting or just falling apart... depressing. I was able to find a few that were open and gorgeous this morning.




If we could have one warm sunny day, everything would bloom and smell wonderful.... just one day... that's all I'm asking.

It rains a lot here....

...sometimes I don't think warm, dry weather will ever arrive. We are skipping spring, so I'm hoping for summer.
Here are some pictures of our hanging fuchsia pots on our front porch...





I didn't grow these. We opted to spend our Memorial Day weekend gas money on two baskets of fuchsias and stay home. I think in the long run we saved money and will get to enjoy what we spent all summer long.
Now if it would just warm up so I could have my morning coffee on the porch.

Beautiful colors...

We had an incredible thunder and lightening storm last Friday night. Of course the sky and light were really intense right before everything started. I took this picture of the Empress Tree out back...




The colors are amazing! I need to make a quilt like this, or an embroidery... or paint a room.... or something!

New Products at Mister Judy

My sister and I have added some new shirts for boys and some new tea linen sets for the tea parties over at Mister Judy.

More Eye Candy from the show

I'm getting very interested in these embroidery machines.

Wow.... what a day!

Quilt Market was in a word... incredible!

Here is a bit of the booth of Sandi Henderson of Portobello Pixie...



and Amy Butler's booth.


Yes, that is Amy in the orange sweater in the back.
And this booth of publications had a wonderful display of Hillary Lang's Wee Wonderful Put-Together Books and Hand Sewing cards.



And then there were winners from several national craft/quilting/embroidery competitions. The first display were these incredible garments. Not just wearable art, but gorgeous crafted gowns and coats...







And this corset inspired number...



Look at these modern interpretations of quilting. The first one is such an amazing log cabin.



In this one the pieces were so small, they were almost like mosaics rather than quilts.



To me this is so inspiring.... much more so than traditional quilt patterns or techniques. The visual effect is subtly shaded and almost 3-dimensional in appearance.



All in all we saw or talked with the following designers:
Amy Butler
Heather Ross
Joel Dewberry
Tina Givens
Valori Wells
Jennifer Paginelli
Anna Marie Horner
Kaffe Fassett
Denyse Schmidt
Sandi Henderson
Melissa Averinos
Tanya Whelan

And then Bolt hosting an evening gathering at their store. Heather Ross, Denyse Schmidt, Heather Bailey, and Anna Marie Horner were all there.

It was a good day.

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!