fun guys

my sewing desk is growing mushrooms.

lineup; of teethmen

sba (my nephew) lost his fourth tooth, which means that i need to send him another toothman. he gets one for each of his four front teeth, so this is gonna be the last toothman for a while; until bb (my neice) starts loosing hers.

although i only needed to make the one, i couldn't help it, i couldn't stop -- i made four. i love making these little guys! check out this crew:


haha! i love how they all turn out so differently and with so much personality. i draw each one freehand on the fabric, and then when i sew, i never follow the lines exacly, so i never know what they're gonna look like until they're turned out and stuffed and stitched up. sometimes i finish one and i go, "oh..." as in, "bummer." but usually i look at them and kinda fall in love each time. i like how the green-eyed one in this bunch has kinda dumpy hips and a really spacey look on his face. and how the brown-eyed one crosses his legs. (that happens sometimes, i'm not quite sure why! it's serendipitously unintentional.) i think i like the one on the left the best, but i've been known to be a sucker for the tall and skinny-legged ones.

and then look -- turn them around to see that they have butts! hAHA!


another unintentional feature that i love.
oh toothmen...
so -- one goes to sba and then the other three.... mmm. don't know.. i kinda think i'm gonna keep them around the studio to keep me company for a little while. we'll see.

so berry sweet

after receiving so many nice comments and compliments on the strawberries that i took with me to the recent craft fairs, i decided to make some more. this time, however, i filled them with dried lavender instead of just with scraps.
so now they not only look cute, they also smell pretty, too.


they can still be used as pin-keeps. (though i know, the traditional ones are filled with emery sand -- these, obviously, arent, but they'll still hold a pin!)


or they can be thrown in a drawer to make your clothes smell pretty and to help keep them free of moth holes. (lavender is a natural moth repellent.)
or they can be used as play food for little kids who are old enough to know not to actually try to eat these berries. or you can just put them on a pretty little dish or anywhere else and leave 'em out as decoration.


so there you have it. i listed them in sets of four (here) and six (here). if you'd like more or less, be in touch; we'll work something out.

twice apron a time

(i already used the title "once apron a time")


whew! it's been a whirlwind couple of weeks!
the latest is that i've just returned from a quick up-and-back trip to nyc to drop off a very special commission. my friend cori is getting married on saturday and instead of the traditional bridal party, she's having a whole bunch of kids (32 of them!!!) walk down the aisle as her procession. later in the celebration, they're gonna be decorating their own cupcakes and cori thought it might be a fun thing to give them all aprons that they could wear to protect their pretty white outfits and then take home with them as part of a little thank you gift for each child. she approached me with the idea and asked if i'd be interested in making the aprons. well i'd never made aprons before (just these smocks) but i was so psyched about her idea and about the challenge and the thrill that i happily jumped in. it took some experimenting and a lot of fabric, but i'd say i'm pretty darned pleased with the results.
here are some of them set up for photos the day before i drove them to nyc; first the boys':




(the backs:)

and the girls':




this was one of my favourites:

i especially love the pink rickrack with the brown polka-dotted fabric.
they are all reversible -- here are front and back shots of one of them:



a little pile of girls' aprons all tagged and ready to go:



there is one wee baby (just a year old), and i made a smock-y style "apron" for her. isabella's apron:



(love it? i got the pattern here!)

i wish i had taken better photos, but i was just way too busy to fuss over them last week. (and the sun and rain have been so unpredictable and fickle these weeks!) i'm pretty sure there'll be some good shots of the children wearing the aprons this weekend, though -- so i'll be sure to post them if/when i get them.
i'd also like to do a tutorial post on these aprons; i did so much research and took the time to make the patterns for different ages/sizes that i feel like i should share. i'm hoping that i'll get around to that within the next month.
i also need to do an artstar recap post! but now i'm frantically working to get ready for renegade brooklyn this weekend... it'll all come together... deep breaths...
cori --- good luck and congrats and thanks and enjoy this weekend! xoxo-k

picnic perfect

i took an hour to make something entirely for myself:


i found this fabric a week or two ago and COULD NOT pass it up. i think i got two and a half yards (as much as what was left on the bolt). so i just cut it in half, put the two pieces back to back (right sides out), cut the edges straight, and sewed it all together with binding tape. (i did it the quick method -- sandwich everything together and use zig-zag stitches to do it all in one shot.) it makes the perfect picnic blanket! now if the sunshine ever returns, my blanket and i are READY.

when life gives you scraps...

...use 'em to make something pretty.


hey look, strawberry season's come early!
yesetrday, i took a little break from apron-making and my craft-fair production schedule to make something just for the fun of it. i've been wanting to make a little pint box of these strawberries for a while, and now i have. (and now i just gotta pick up a pint box to put them in.)
with all of the sewing i've been doing this month, my scrap basket is almost over-flowing. see:


i kinda hate any kind of waste, so i put the scraps to use and made these little pincushions. i bought little 1/4 yard pieces of the two solid red fabrics, and of the wool felt for the leafy tops, but everything else came from the scrap pile. they're stuffed with scraps, too.


i got the basic how-to and the pattern template from martha's site. (find it here.) i copied the template at a few different sizes and played around with the shapes a little to get some variety, but other than that, i pretty much stuck to the pattern. it's rather basic, simple, and quite perfect as is.


(above: photo credit: friend dave. thanks, dave! also, in the shot you can see where the sewing machine needle bit my finger. it ain't so bad!)

apron preview

(more soon!)

the toothman cometh

remember this guy?


probably not --- i made him a REAAAAAAAL long time ago. (i was gonna let him go, but i just couldnt!)
well a few weeks ago, sweet baby aidyn got his first wiggly tooth and as soon as i found out, i sent toothman on a journey though the mail so that he could be with aidyn for the momentous occasion of his first visit from the tooth-fairy. luckily, toothman made it to flemington new jersey in plenty of time; that darned tooth wiggled for two weeks before falling out. (and when it did happen, it went totally unnoticed by s.b.a. as he ate his bed-time snack of pretzels.... he seems to have eaten his tooth, too. and then, when he realized he lost the tooth, he ran around the room screaming "AWESOME! AWESOME!" it WAS awesome; i was lucky to be there with him and toothman that night.)
toothman was such a hit with the kids that brother-in-law suggested, "hey sis, we had a great idea; how about you make a new toothman for every tooth he loses? and then when b.b. starts losing her teeth, you make her a set of pink teeth?" um, yeah, cute idea, but, um, no.
but i'm a sucker for a project so of course i made more toothmen. he's gonna get three more -- which will make one toothman for each of the four front teeth. and will you believe that all three of the other ones are already wiggly?
well i gave him toothman #2 this weekend.


that's toothman #2 on the right, the blue-eyed one. he's pictured here with his buddy toothman #3, before they had to part for a while. #2 and #3 are a quite a bit more busted-looking than the last batch of toothmen. it's been a few years. i was a bit rusty.
more teethmen to follow...

capture the flag

after a whole lotta waiting, my good friends molly and dave finally had their baby on saturday night.
(hooray, hooray! a healthy baby boy!)
i've been house and dog sitting while they've been in the hospital and i wanted to make something a little special for them to come up home to, so i made a flag! (well, i guess this is maybe called a banner? or a string of flags?)


this was dave's idea, actually. it's funny -- they have a flagpole outside of their house and molly and dave have always wanted to have some sort of flag to fly on it. a couple of weeks ago, dave said to me, "hey, how about a flag to announce the birth of the baby?" of course it's a great idea so while i hung out with the dogs and kept the woodfire burning, i whipped one up. it took practically no time at all and was such a fun project.
at first i was just going to make it quick-quick-quick and wasn't concerned with the craftsmanship of it. but then i thought, well, heck, i may as well make it nicey nice. so i did. i took this as the opportunity to use up some of the fabrics in my stash that i knew i wouldnt be using so soon. our friend jen, of clothesline, also donated some fabrics to the cause.
here are the flags all strung together aside the sewing machine:


and here they are waiting for the ascent:


hurry home molly and dave and oliver james! we miss you!


i didn't realize that it was going to look so wimpy once it was up there -- i would have liked them to be bigger -- more substantial, but, well, it looks festive still. better than the plain bare flagpole, right?

somewhere there's a feather

i had mentioned this project a while ago; it's been in the works for quite a few weeks, but i've only just today gotten to finish up and photograph the pieces i was working on. a return to a past chez-sucre-chez motif: feathers...




feathers on handmade linen hand towels:



i had made the towels, oh, um, i guess about a year and a half ago. there is a great fabric store for fine fabrics -- mostly linens and wools and shirting cottons and such -- in my old neighborhood of greenpoint and that is where i picked up the yardage of linen. (i just looked it up, the store is called tip top fabric. it's on calyer street at mcguinness. it looks like a weird place, it is a little weird, maybe, but it is full of REALLY great fine fabrics at very reasonable prices -- check it out! {wow, that sounded like an advertisement.... i swear they didnt put me up to it...}) i made these towels and few others and then one little one that i embroidered with the feathers for my bathroom at the time. i've been using that towel ever since, but i completely forgot about the other ones. well i found them recently and i was so impressed with my use of the selvage for the front hem. i thought its feathery, wispy quality would pair perfectly with the delicate fringe of feathers. it does, right?


but before this project was the pillows:


first this one:


and then this one, which i just finished today:



(i had fun doing product shots at my friends molly and dave's house. look at their dog, dot, in the background; she's so funny!)
and now, the feather motif projects are complete. for now, at least, until the next time i come back to them. i really really do enjoy embroidering the feathers, but it just takes a while...
schwew! it feels really really good to finish projects. dang, i love that feeling! (and then there's the photographing, and posting, and listing, and blogging about them, but now that's all done, too! hooray!)
both the hand towels and the pillows are now in the shop. check them out, here.
now i'm off to finish some more projects....

king me

i've completed my goal. finished my quest.
aaaaahh.
here they are -- the pillows:



i'm happy with them - very much so. i was really nervous about how they were going to turn out. i'd never worked with piping before and i was afraid it'd be a nightmare. ha! this is why it took me so long to finish these -- even though they've been in the works for WEEKS, i kept putting off the finishing because i was afraid i'd mess them up. it took two pillows before i got everything exactly right, but that ain't so bad. it actually wasn't even the piping that messed me up, it was the sizing -- the first two were just a little bit too big. but now the rest are all just right. i feel good about them -- they're pretty boss.
i've just listed them in the shop.


and, there are more photos of them on my flickr site -- click here to see them.

king zips

yesterday i was going to work on the pillows, but i got side-tracked and ended up making a pile of new zippy pouches instead. i know i probably say this about every new thing that i make, but i am really excited about these. i spent the morning (after shoveling lots of snow -- which, maybe strangely, is a task i really do enjoy) trying to photograph these in a way that does them proper justice --
i tried them on the studio floor:


i tried them on the cork background in the great morning light of my bedroom:


and i tried them against black in the soft subdued light of the bathroom:


i'm not satisfied with any of the photos! aaaah! grrrr! seriously, these new pouches are SOOOOOO good-looking. i printed them yesterday morning and was a little bit frustrated that the prints came out kinda light and faded looking. but then, once i sewed the first one and turned it right side out and zipped it up, i was PSYCHED. i think i actually said out loud, "oooooh, they look expensive." haha! but really -- they do. i think they look very RRL (or maybe whatever a british equivalent to that may be). the faded-looking prints are just right and the zippers -- OH, THE ZIPPERS! they are awesome. i used these great big chunky TALON zippers that i had scored somewhere a while ago and was waiting ever since to use. they're all different, all totally cool -- really strong and substantial looking:


i dont yet know how i'm going to list these in the shop -- because each one really is so different; but yet, i don't want to create a separate listing for each one..... ah, i'll figure it out. if you've got any suggestions, though, send 'em my way!

here's the one i'm keeping -- it's the most faded-looking print of the bunch, but i LOVE it:


i love the zipper on this one, too:


here's the only photo from this morning's shoot that i really like:


and here's the one pouch that i'm putting in the shop right now:


okay -- pillows next!