2023 Free Holiday Tags

This week I met up with a friend to catch up over delicious green tea, and we both marveled at what a blur this year has been. I can’t, for the life of me, remember much of it. There was the excitement of K’s launch of her first EP, of course. One of her songs from the EP, 1000 Paper Cranes, was featured on KNDD (a local radio station), and we waited with bated breath for her song debut during a segment called Locals Only. Thrilling beyond words.

A big highlight for me was working on a picture book that will be released next spring, and I’ll do some promo activities at the beginning of 2024. If you’re interested, though, Sashiko’s Stitches is available for preorder now! It’s a heart-filling story in a good way (available wherever books are sold!).

In addition to book-making, I taught a bunch of workshops and Creativebug classes (make sure to take advantage of the free ones this month here), and I’ll be teaching more next year. I adore the Creativebug staff, and every filming session in California has been enormous fun.

There were many other brazenly momentous as well as quietly significant situations in 2023. I have been wanting to tell you about an extraordinary health crisis reversal that happened — I had quite a scare in the beginning of the year, and though there IS a happy ending, I’m not sure that I have it in me to describe it in full at this juncture. It was a lot. It seems to me that the fact that I’m still here, fairly intact, is enough. A friend called me a “DIY Medical Miracle,” and I like the sound of that very much.

I have been mulling over this quote:

“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final” 

― Rainer Maria Rilke

It’s a good one.

But let’s bring it back to the main point of this post: holiday tags that I designed. Every year I hope that these little freebies are helpful and that they add some festive flair during this often stressful season. I kept it simple and focused on just tags this year instead of furiously trying to add mini wrapping paper designs as I have done in the past. Simplifying has been my theme for a long while now. I just want to declutter and un-complicate life as much as possible. M and I may move next year once K is off to college, so I’ve been steadily purging. It’s really amazing how much stuff accumulates. Even more amazing is how very little I actually need. 

M occasionally gloms onto the notion of moving into a mobile home (college is expensive, ya know), and though it wouldn’t be my top choice, I do wonder what it would be like to minimize my possessions to fit into a double-wide. Or a beautiful small cabin nestled in a forest near a big lake…I wouldn’t say no to that.

Anyway, I got sidetracked again. Holiday tags! To download, click on the images below.

Please let me know if you have any issues downloading/printing them! I know that little frog is totally random, but I think it’s so cute!

As usual I’m going to take the rest of December off, and I’ll see you back here some time in January. This Christmas is extra special because I’ll be spending it with my Mama. Now that she lives in Japan, traveling has been more challenging so I haven’t seen her in person since 2019! 

Wishing you the loveliest of holidays, my friends, and let’s make The Year of the Dragon a gorgeous one! 2024, I’m ready for you!!!!

2023 Advent Calendar – The Final One

This is it, my friends. The final Advent Calendar for my not-so-little girl. Next year around this time, she’ll be somewhere on a college campus, taking exams or grabbing food from the dorm cafeteria on her way to a class. The daunting phrase is looming above me all the time lately: empty nester. I have a plethora of thoughts on that. But I won’t go into them right now.

For 11 straight years, I’ve handcrafted a different advent calendar during the month of November to set it up by the last day of the month. I can’t believe we’ve come to this point.

Mushrooms. And acorns. K has an abiding love of shrooms (strictly decorative, mind you — at least as far as I know). Since greens and browns and neutral hues are her faves, I used those as the color palette guide for these sweet wool felt “ornaments.” And yes, I embroidered each one by hand, though I machine-stitched the actual mushroom/acorn shapes. As per usual, I added a touch of gold by painting a sheet of watercolor paper and punching out little circles.

It’s a similar concept to last year’s in that each day she’ll transfer a mushroom or an acorn to the Christmas tree as part of the countdown. I used these Merchant and Mills French safety pins, which I’ve had tucked away in my sewing desk. Cute, right? They work perfectly for this set-up because the clasp part grips nicely to the twine and she can easily remove each ornament. I could have gone blingier and bigger and way over the top for the grand finale, but this simple and homespun advent calendar feels just right.

I am quite emotional right now. K and I have been working on her college applications these past few months, and she’s nearly done (only two more schools to go!). So many changes afoot, so many amazing developments.

There are a billion other things going on, but for today I just wanted to share this assortment of fungi and oaknuts. Also! I included a couple of other store-bought advent calendars with chocolates and teas to add to the fun:

Incidentally, I hand-dyed the silk fabric under the advent calendars with red onion skins — I spent a delightful day with my awesome friend Rachel, who taught me many, many ways to dye with plants. We even did some indigo dyeing! More on that later!
 
At any rate, for some nostalgia, here are all the advent calendars from the past:

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

Alright, it’s time for me to design some stuff. I’ll be back in the next couple of weeks with the annual holiday tags and other downloadable goodies!

Creativebug: The Hanten Coat

Hello my friends! I know, I know, it seems like I am constantly updating you on Creativebug classes. I’ve had the enormous pleasure and honor of filming approximately 20 classes with them, so there’s a lot to talk about. My latest class on how to draft and sew a Hanten Coat just launched and I love, love, love this coat. It’s an enthusiastic nod to the traditional Japanese quilted short jacket by the same name.

You can also check out a fun little styling reel I created with the Creativebug team here. I know I’m biased, but I think it’s a very versatile coat, and it’s surprisingly easy to construct.

I’m a firm believer that everyone learns differently, and I’m delighted to be able to offer the Hanten Coat not only in book form (check out Sewing Love!), but in video format as well.

I actually just returned from filming even more classes with the lovely folks at Creativebug, and a plethora of craftiness that I designed will be available on their site early next year. If you browse through the vast class options on Creativebug, there’s no doubt that you’ll be fully inspired to crank out one beautiful project after another — many of my personal heroes are part of the roster of instructors.

To see all the classes I’ve taught to date on Creativebug, click here. Those cute li’l baby slippers might be just the finishing touch needed for your babe’s Halloween costume (okay, it might be a bit late for this year, but maybe next year?).

This is off topic, but I’ve heard from those in the know that blogs are back. Is that true for you? Are you reading more blogs lately? If so, please share some of your favorites!

Well, it’s time for me to wrap up a few more deadlines (October is always my most hectic time of year), but I will be back with pre-holiday goodness next month! 

Photo credit: Creativebug

 

Foxtasia + Squirrelly Thoughts

It’s the end of September and here I am, pondering life as usual. I found this watercolor doodle in my sketchbook, and it reminded me of how M used to jokingly call me “Foxtasia.” He has all sorts of nicknames for me, and the cutest is probably “Honeybunny.” He has a thing for animal references, as you can tell.

I just read an alarming article about how easy it is to create picture books with AI. I am overwhelmed by how it’s not just picture books that AI can seamlessly generate, but anything “creative” that has historically been a purely human endeavor. It’s natural to wonder what my career will look like as technology advances, but I hold onto the belief that our humanness is irreplaceable, and that my creations will endure in their own way.

I have been practicing digital painting, because I’ll be teaching a Creativebug class on the subject in a couple of weeks. Although it isn’t technically AI, I often think about how digital painting makes it easier to paint and fix errors. The irony is that flaws and imperfections and textures need to be deliberately added in when using programs like Procreate, which is my go-to. Otherwise, like much of the AI-generated art that I see, the digital paintings can look too smooth, “perfect,” generic and — perhaps it’s just me that thinks this — un-charming.

I painted these squirrels using Procreate. I go overboard with materials that I’m interested in, so I’ve invested heavily in many, many digital brushes and have also been creating my own. For the left squirrel, I used the moreslowly brushes, which are some of my favorites lately. I also enjoy the native brushes that come with Procreate. I don’t know when the Creativebug class will be available, but I’ll let you know when I find out. It’s gonna be a fun, casual one.

I love digital painting and I love traditional watercolors. It’s not either/or. I taught a workshop for kids and their parents/guardians at a library in Sumner, Washington this past weekend, and there was something so nourishing about getting messy with actual paints. The children were fantastic and so, so funny. Kids are endlessly imaginative, and I taught a “splotch” exercise that involved creating an “oopsie” splotch on the paper, and then transforming it into an animal or plant or anything else they wanted. I delighted in the space portal, alligator, rose garden, and so much more that emerged from various splotches. I told them that I always, always make mistakes when painting (and in life) and look for ways to make the mistakes into something better in any way that I can. 

A little splotch-turned little Japanese house from my sketchbook

Anyway. Squirrelly thoughts for the end of the month. I hope you are all doing well, and I’ll be back here in a month!

 

Summer of Sewing + Destashival in full swing

Hello, hello!

Whew, what a summer it’s been. We’ve been traveling here and there, often in the form of short road trips. Senior year of high school starts for K in less than a week and I’m feeling that surge of energy that comes with September and the beginning of the academic year. I’ve been looking forward to this.

It’s been a great few months, though. As you can see, I’ve sewn a lot. In fact, that image above isn’t everything. I stitched up a grand total of 22 items. 

I lost steam after taking all those photos and decided that the pajama sets and shorts really didn’t need to be modeled. Unless you want to see them on a human form? I’ll take photos with me wearing them if I get comments requesting to do so. I also have to fess up that I didn’t actually sew the dress with the bold graphic print this summer, but sewed the plain, cream-colored one to wear as a lining because the geometric print linen is very sheer. I think I sewed the outer dress three years ago?

Do you remember my sewing plan sketches?

Although I didn’t sew a linen hoodie, hats or more wide-legged pants (YET), I did complete multiples of everything else. Okay, so the dresses don’t have spaghetti straps, but they’re twirly and I’m happy with them. Fist pump!

My de-stashing of fabrics has officially begun, and I gave myself a couple of rules to overcome the usual angst that is part and parcel of cutting into fabric:

  1. No fabric is too precious. I’ve decided to have complete amnesia when it comes to how much I paid for a particular piece of fabric or where it came from. I tend to want to save the fabric for an extra awesome pattern if I consider it special in some way. And then I’m struck by decision paralysis.
  2. It’s more than okay if the garment/sewing project doesn’t turn out the way I want it to. I put a lot of pressure on myself to LOVE everything I make, but the reality is that the Pareto Rule is very applicable: I truly adore only about 20% of what I make. Lately that percentage has been inching upwards, but most of the things I make aren’t outright winners. Case in point: out of the 22 things I sewed, I love love love the jumpsuits, the black dress, and my lilac-y, purple-y skirt. I like the other clothes just fine, but my feelings are cooler towards them.

I also kept my word and drafted everything from my slopers. In a future post I’ll show you how I drafted the clothes based off of my slopers, but for the interim, here are some Sewing Love photos taken by Manuela Insiexiengmay and styled by Rachel Grunig.

Here are my slopers as muslins:

How can I possibly describe the sense of power that fills me when I can create clothes that I’ve designed myself for my own unique physique? I remember all those years of trying on one thing after another in poorly lit fitting rooms with unflattering mirrors. Nothing ever fit quite right. Sure, it might take me a few sewing tweaks to get the optimal fit that I want, but they’re minor quibbles. It’s not like the too tight waist and too baggy bum and too long hem happening all at once whenever I tried on pants. It’s been over 11 years since I stopped buying ready-to-wear clothes, and I may experience a kind of PTSD if I stepped into a fitting room.

I was overwhelmed by all that was going on in the last few years so I’ve been remiss about appreciating the high points. I’m so proud of my book Sewing Love, and I hope it’s giving folks the same sense of mightiness. And did you know that I did a whole slopers series with Creativebug?

Click here for the Lower Body Sloper & Muslin Class.

Click here for the Torso Sloper & Muslin Class.

Click here for the Sleeve Sloper & Muslin Class.

If you’d like to see all the classes I’ve taught to date, click here. 

It’s been a blast teaching through Creativebug, and I have more classes in the works. I’ll be flying out to California in just under two months to do more filming. Fun, fun, fun!

How was your summer (or winter if you’re in other parts of the world)? Are you ready for September? Stay tuned for even more sewing and other crafty stuff. I’m raring to go!!