chores

see this piece all framed and finished and nicey-nice next friday at the banana factory (such a funny name!) in bethlehem, PA. it's being included in a show titled, "chores: a contemporary discourse in domesticity." i'll post the flyer when i get it!

feeling grey

reeeeally feeling this colour combination.
(thanks for the idea, heather! it's ready for you!)

zips in the totes

though i sometimes wish otherwise, i am just not a fancy handbag girl. i love shoes, and pretty underthings, and dresses, but with purses - i simply cannot be bothered. i once fell in lust with a lovely little number from hayden-harnett, but in the end, i didnt go through with it. i'm a tote girl; even if i am carrying just one thing -- a zippy pouch containing my money and cards and keys and such -- i throw it in a tote. (except when i am going out - like going out at night -- then i just carry the zippy.) nine times out of ten, however, i've also got a project or three in that tote with me; due in part to my nomadic lifestyle and part to my getting-worse-all-the-time seeming inability to go anywhere or spend any time without a project in my hands. since i cant just throw my needles and thread into the tote without getting tangles and pricked fingers, i kinda like to contain everything within what i call a project bag. for the past couple of years this has been my project bag:


haha - it's great. my grandmother picked it up for me years ago at her local knitting place down in the outer banks of north carolina. having a knitting needle bag that i really liked, i didnt quite know what to do with this one, and then somehow it became that bag that goes almost everywhere with me. i put a collection of needles in the zipper fabric:


and the bag itself is just right for carrying a small pair of scissors, a spool or two or three of thread, skeins of embroidery floss, buttons, measuring tape, rotary cutters -- etc. etc. i switch out the contents frequently, depending on what i'm working on.
recently, however, i realized that this one is looking a little beat up. there are holes in both corners (most likely from me jamming scissors that are just too big in there) and now stuff is starting to fall out and get lost. and then i realized that i had lots of vinyl scraps left over from when i first started making the sandwich wrappers and was not cutting the material efficiently. so -- i decided to use that vinyl to make some new project bags like this:


hooray! i wanted to make a couple, or a few, so that i could have different bags for different projects and so that i wouldnt have to switch things out so frequently. i also wanted to make them a little bigger so that all (or at least most) of the parts needed for the project could all fit into the bag.
success:


this one contains all of my strawberry-making supplies (except for the lavender and the stuffing...). next i'm gonna designate one for all of my sandwich-wrapper-making supplies and another for basic cross-stitch and embroidery (with extra 3, 4, and 5 inch hoops).
but guess what -- i still have some extras. i figured that maybe one of you may need and want a project bag, so i went on ahead and listed two of them in my bigcartel shop. there's another one just like the one i'm using for my strawberry-making supplies:


(get it here.)
and then there's this one:


i love this one; but i thought i'd be nice and offer it to you... it's got this great old-lady kinda look to it -- very retro! it'd also make a great toiletries bag. that listing is here.
what do you you think; should i make and list a few more of these? i've got the material, and the zippers - the time, i'm short on, but it can be done somewhere down the line...

snotty collaboration

boyfriend got a new embroidered snot rag. it was a collaboration project; he sketched the lettering on it with pencil and i went over it with the embroidery stitches. i asked him what the skullcrusher was all about and he said, "it just sounds cool." at the time of taking this photo, it'd been crumpled up in his back pocket and maybe even snotted into a few times.... heeheehee, ew.

THIS is happening

my friends claire and jeremy, the amazing duo behind day19, have joined some other very talented and motivated people to create a new art space/gallery in los angeles. (you should read the backstory - it's really rather exciting and inspiring.) for the very first gallery event at THIS, the group decided to put together a show of work created by their friends. i feel seriously honored and flattered to have been invited to send one of my x-stitch pieces out there to california to hang on the walls among art by some very impressive peeps.
the opening for this show (called "these friends") is happening tonight in LA. if you are near there, you should go. i can promise you it'll be a very special event. these kids know a lot of really cool people, and i am sure that much of the work hanging on those walls will be top-notch. for details, click here. (and if you cant get there tonight, but you're near enough to LA to pay a visit, the show'll be up for a few weeks more!)

a day i loved

picture pages (testing)

Chez Sucre Chez
Originally uploaded by needleanddime

the chez-sucre-chez flickr pool has begun! super huge thanks to leila for making it happen and posting the first two photos. leila has just moved into a new home - a process that's been in the works for several months - so i am psyched that one, she stitched up these two kits that i sent her as two of the very first projects in the new home, two, that she got so creative with my home-sweet-home pattern, and THREE, that she took and posted photos to the flickr group. way to go, leila! seeing her interpretation of the home-sweet-home piece made me really excited and eager to see more; i made the group so that you could show off your chez-sucre-chez stitches or photos of your home-sweet-home with chez-sucre-chez items living happily there. click here to see the group "rules" and please do add to the fun!
hmmm, i did this post through flickr -- i gotta figure out how to format it like my other posts... until then, though, it stays...

tying up loose strings

in just a few short weeks my floss collection went from this:


(eeks! i am scared just looking at it! i swear this image wasn't set up - that is REALLY how i stored and carried my ever-growing collection of floss for the past year or two. horrendous! shameful! embarrassing!)
to this:


aaaah.... that is SO much better.
it took several hours of untangling knots and winding cards while watching netflix movies. a lot of the really messy stuff in the middle of the jumble got thrown away -- stuffed into strawberries, actually. i've got several more skeins, though -- i think i may need and want a second box!
hooray organization! so - my advice to anyone starting out with embroidery or cross-stitch: get yourself a floss box - right away -- as soon as you get your first skein of embroidery floss. these little boxes are only like $5 and it'll save you a lot of aggravation down the line!

mentions and notices

here are a few mentions of chez-sucre-chez on blogs that have come to my attention recently:

one on belgian blog la vie en mode (in english)


see the sweet post here.

one on the cross-stitch/embroidery blog mr. x stitch:


the post is here -- it was recommended by the sweet and talented nicole, of astulabee (you gotta click on her link and look. at. those. ponies. !!!!!!! scream-into-pillow freak-out awesome!)

one on beautiful blog freshly blended:



here's the post.

and one more ( which i meant to put up last week!), from the super-duper blog super duper things:


here is that post.

thanks so much, bloggers! one of these, or all of these, or one i missed, sure did bring a bump in traffic this past few days. hooray! thanks again!

more dutchy wonderfulness

gaaaaah! i am so swooning over this newest piece. i found a few more of those dutchy squares and this is the one i was most NEEDing to make. i worked it in red on this light grey (it seems to me to have a little bit of blue in it) and cannot be more pleased with the way it turned out. (except i just noticed that it is missing ONE stitch -- easy to fix.) now i am working on commissioning a custom made frame for it -- those square ikea frames are pretty cool, but i think this one deserves a little something more special. more photos to come!