It's time to highlight the utter loveliness that was the Secret Valentine Exchange! In total, we had 39 participants including me and my indispensable co-organizer Ute - amazing! There were ladies from the U.S., Germany, Canada, Australia, Singapore, India, France, Spain, Ireland and Italy. So international, right? I'm overwhelmed that these are all -- in some capacity -- readers of this little blog. One of my favorite aspects of this project was that I got to know the various folks that stop ... Read more
Seam Allowance Curve Ruler
As I down coffee after coffee and scurry about with watercolor pans and digital painting tools in the background, I deigned it high time I finally cross off an item from my "must-write posts list" (lists breed like bunnies in my notebooks). One of the distinctions of Japanese patterns is that seam allowances need to be added. I know that this is often a turn-off for many folks, but I happen to love it. There's something about adding that extra 1 to 3 centimeters to the traced pattern pieces ... Read more
Monday Outfit: The Un-fur-trimmed Coat Dress
It started with a vague excitement for my very small but very pretty faux fur stash. I thought, "Wouldn't it be so unnecessarily sophisticated and chic to make a fur-trimmed wool coat for K?" I'm all about unnecessarily sophisticated and chic. Alas, faux fur is NO FUN to work with. As soon as I came within an inch of it, it started to shed all over the place. In my crazy deadline-ridden state of being and due to my slightly OCD personality, I just couldn't hack it. So I resorted to an ... Read more
Happy Friday + Randomness
Happy Valentine's Day!! My goodness, with the way I kept going on and on, you'd think it's the only holiday that matters to me. Case in point: I can't seem to stop making bookmarks, though my excuse is that I'm practicing my digital painting. So these are the ones we ended up assembling for K's class (K helped punch holes, though she quickly lost interest; she did, however, write out all her classmates' names for each bookmark bundle). K said that the animals looked too girly and was ... Read more
And Then There Was Love
It's Valentine's Day tomorrow and I have love on the mind. Let me start by saying that I've always been a late bloomer. I didn't have my first kiss or boyfriend until I was seventeen (I somehow managed to miss out on the requisite pre-adolescent spin-the-bottle games). The other stuff came much, much, much later. I was angst-y in my twenties, and I'm certain that I emitted a "stay away from me" vibe for most of that decade. It was terribly confusing to me that I sailed through my prime dating ... Read more