See me in DC

Hello friends! As I mentioned in the post above, I'll be bringing the chez-sucre-chez show on the road and stopping in Washington DC on Saturday, October 28th for Crafty Bastards. I did this event last year and it was amaze-ing.
The fair is running two days this year - both Saturday and Sunday. I WILL ONLY BE THERE ON SATURDAY, so if you're planning on going, but unsure of which day to go -- go Saturday! I don't have a booth assignment yet; when I get it, I'll be sure to post the info on the chez-sucre-chez facebook and/or twitter and/or instagram pages...
You do need to purchase tickets to attend Crafty Bastards.. They're cheaper ($5) if you get them before the event. Info about vendors, tickets, times, etc. can all be found here. Also, if last year was any indication of what this year will be like, I highly recommend getting there EARLY. Seriously, I was *sold out* of several items before even two pm. I am working like a mad woman to make lots more stock for this year, but still, get there early if you can! If you do make it out to Crafty Bastards and you come by my booth, please make a point to say hello and introduce yourself; meeting you who've been supporting and encouraging me all this time really is one of the best parts of doing these events. Hope to see you there!

stockpiling

In my absence from this here blog, this is a lot of what I've been up to:


I've got a big wholesale order for 500 of my "Enjoy!" napkins and I have been stitching, and stitching, and stitching to make that happen. I stopped counting after I got to 300... now I'm just going to keep on stitching until all of the napkins are gone.

This shot was taken maybe early last week....

That was still a lot of napkins to be done....

!!!

It's not so bad.... At first, I was letting the job overwhelm me, and it was ALL I could focus on, even when I wasn't making my quota of at least 8 a day (now that quota is at least 10-15 a day). When I first got the order, I thought, heck, 500 isn't that much... Oh, but it kind of is, when you're a one-woman production line, and each napkin needs to be washed, and dried, and ironed, and prepped, and stitched, and labeled, and tagged, and packed.... Thankfully, my mama came over the other day and knocked out a lot of the ironing. I'm feeling good about where I am as far as my progress and getting closer to the due date. I think.... like I said, I stopped counting at 300, but that box of un-prepped napkins is nearly empty now. (Hooray!)

Now that I'm feeling more on-top of it, I do hope to start posting again more regularly.... I hope.
In the rest of my time, I'm busy crankin' out the product for Crafty Bastards, and the Martha Stewart American Made event. Last year was my first time vending at Crafty Bastards and it was AMAZING. I'm thrilled to have been accepted again this year. Same for the Martha Stewart American Made event. Last year was the first year that they did this, and I was over-the-moon to have been selected and invited by the editors of Living to set up shop in the Marketplace for the event. It was such an honor to be there, and such a fun event -- I blinked several times in delight and disbelief when I got the email inviting me again this year. I'm sooooo excited!

Bowl covers were great sellers at both events. In fact, I sold out of them before the close of the day at Crafty Bastards, and by the end of the first day at American Made. So, I've been rocking my sewing machine making these up in hopes of being better prepared this year. The studio bed is getting covered... But I definitely still have more to do.


So see, I've been busy! I'll post later with week with details of both of the above mentioned events.
xo!

where'd she go?

hi hi -- i'm still here... just haven't had so much to post about lately. i took a little bit of vacation time this month, and otherwise i've been stitching stitching stitching up a big (for me, at least) wholesale order, as well as getting ready for FALL SHOWS! woohoo!
i'll be doing a little more catching up and organizing this week and then, next week, i'll be back to posting! meet me back here soon! xo.

Sunday Funday

Next month, two of my very good friends are getting married. It is going to be a very small (just 20ish people) and rather casual ceremony at a lake in California's wine country. I am delighted that they've asked me to help take care of some of the details, like the decorations and the food -- two things I love to take care of!

As everyone is traveling to get there (bride and groom included), we're aiming to keep things simple. They've rented a bungalow and the idea is to gather loved ones and to celebrate amidst the beauty of the natural surroundings. I'm told that the bungalow itself is such a lovely place, that we really won't need to do much to make it feel beautiful and festive.

The three of us (bride, groom, and myself) set up a Pinterest board so that we could share ideas and inspirations. Pinterest has always seemed a bit intimidating and overwhelming to me, but for this purpose, it's been fantastic! We shared some ideas for decorations, and came up with one that we liked -- simple flowers that we could make together whilst sitting by the lake. The idea came from here -- but rather than paper, we're going to use fabric. That way, they can be taken home by the guests as favors, and they might hold up to weather and travel better than paper would. I'm thinking it'd be fun, too, to attach some smaller ones to barrettes or bobby pins for any ladies who might want to decorate themselves as well.

Once we nailed that down, we needed to figure out the colors. We'd spoken about them, and I had a pretty good idea of what they had in mind, but I kind of wanted to see swatches. I was envisioning Pantone chips, or paint sample cards, but didn't know how to do that online. Silly me, I soon learned that pinning regular old images that utilize the desired colors is a much more dynamic way of getting the whole picture. I asked for color pins and this is what I got:



Fantastically helpful, right? I also loved that I could view all of this on my phone as I was shopping, and this is what I came home with:



Add to that some fabrics that I already had in my stash, as well as some hoarded vintage trim, and buttons:



For the process, I pretty much followed the how-to, but had to make some adjustments for the fabric.
I decided it would be better if the fabric were stiffer -- thus holding shape a little more. Luckily, I had fabric stiffener; I'd gotten it YEEEEEEARS ago for some project and it had been taking up space ever since - woohoo for using up supplies!

I made some petal templates and then used embroidery hoops as templates for some simple round circles. (Embroidery hoops make GREAT templates for tracing and cutting circles -- I've used this trick so many times!)



Cut out the shapes and painted them with the fabric stiffener. Allowed petals to dry flat (lifting them off the cookie-sheet work surface a few times during drying so they wouldn't stick) and put circles on top of inverted bowls to give them a little bit of shape.



And then put the flowers together with wire and floral tape.



Et voila:



I'm happy with these! I think we'll add some colors and shapes and textures, but this is how I wanted to start -- getting a feel for the project and knowing that I have the right supplies and technique before getting out there.



The flowers can be as simple or as fancy as one wants, so it'll be a good project for a few friends and family members sitting around a table whiling away some lazy hours by the lake in the days before the ceremony, right?

See the original inspiration/project here, on the blog Oh Happy Day (pretty sure I found this via Decor8) and if you'd like to try these and have any questions about the process I used, feel free to get in touch!

can you dig?

On the hoop this week (carrying over from last week) are some custom pieces for a small independent chain of restaurants in NYC called Dig Inn. I did the first of these pieces two years ago and I can't believe I never posted about it. (Maybe I did and I just can't find it?)



Though I've never been to one, I've stalked the site of Dig Inn and it all looks really good to me. The restaurant focuses on healthy seasonal foods -- seems they've got the right idea, and they must be doing well, because I've been asked to do a few more pieces. Woohoo all around!



I found a photo of one of the pieces here. Cool, right?
Well, my calendar is booking up with events and reasons to go to NYC this fall (many exciting things! I'll share with you as those things get closer...), so maybe I'll get a chance to visit one of the Dig Inns... Have any of you ever been?

HOOPLA!

Hey friends --
I went a little overboard with my last hoop order and now, I have A LOT of five & six inch hoops. Sooooo -- it's sale time! All five inch kits are $2 off, and all six inch kits are $3 off. Click on over here and stock up for summer projects!


(PS -- Three and four inch hoops -- that's a different story; those are as rare as hens' teeth these days! I've been waiting over two months for them on backorder... so frustrating!)

vignette love

A few weeks ago, I turned our bedroom upside down in an effort of getting a specific photo that I had in mind. (Obviously, I didn't turn it upside down, but I did make a mess, as usual.)

It was this one:



and lots of variations on it... I always tend to take too many photos and then can't figure out which one I like best...

I *really* wanted to get one with Emil in it, but he absolutely would not cooperate. I tried to lure him in with treats...



but he's a cat - he prefers to knock the treats off the chair and onto the floor.

When B came home I asked him to try to get one with Emil in it, even if it meant I had to try to trap him in my lap or something.



Again, no luck.

And you know what, all of this was just because I was remembering a photo that I had taken fourteen years ago, when I was living in my spartan (illegal) artist's loft in Boston's Fort Point neighborhood.

I was at my parents' place this weekend and dug that photo out:

(I have no idea why it is so large here -- tried everything I could think of to make it "normal" size... Ugh. Blogger keeps changing things and I can't keep up.)

Anyway -- I used to love creating little vignettes in that studio. It was an artists studio, so the walls and floors had been painted and repainted and spackled and slopped all over, so it didn't matter where I put holes or what color I painted all or part of a wall -- which were long and straight. When I first moved to Boston, I worked at a fancy-pants tobacco store across from the Harvard campus. Whenever we put out a new box of cigars, we ripped the tops off of the boxes. Ever the re-purposer, I used to take the box tops home with me and turn them into frames. I'd paint them to look like dark wood, mount a postcard or photo or magazine clipping to the center, and then use the latch hardware to hang it; small nails fit through just perfectly.

I still have some of those frames... And I still (obviously, you can see it in the top photo) have that chair! One of my favourite trash picks - plucked from the curb one night as I was walking home to my little Beacon Hill apartment.

Okay, that's enough nostalgic rambling! On the work table this week are wholesale orders and some custom pieces, so I may not get to posting again before the end of the holiday weekend. Whatever your plans may be, friends, have fun and play safe!

Renegade Recap (Brooklyn 2013)

Phew! Renegade was a blast - as always! Thank you *so* much to all of you who came out to the event, visited my booth, and said hello. I was touched and overjoyed by how many folks came through and let me know that they read this blog, or have purchased from my etsy shop, or were there because they'd gotten the note I'd sent out to my NYC mailing list. Honestly, I always feel a little nervous when I send those mass emails out -- I always worry that it's looked upon as spam or a nuisance. So, it was really nice to hear that people actually do read the emails and that they were glad to get the heads up about the event; thank you!



I'm pretty terrible at remembering to get booth shots. This one, I took somewhere around the middle of the second day, and I really wish I'd cleaned up my little pile of mess in the back corner before I'd snapped the shot. I do, however, like how B is lounging in the back there like a beach hunk.
I had the back wall on my tent the day before, to make it all look a little more cohesive, but it was so darned hot on Sunday that I had to take it off in an attempt to get some airflow under that tent.


Bowl covers and kits were the popular best sellers, with the little stuffed vegetables and fruits coming in right after.


This array of stuffed farm goods came as a last-minute idea. I've been making the strawberries for years; filled with lavender, they're a chez-sucre-chez constant, and I'm happy that people come back year after year to add another or two to their collection. The mushrooms started out as a project for Terrain and, since then, I've made a few more, but used them mostly as props for my market/produce bags. The carrots, too, had been a part of my set-up, solely as prop, for the past few events. Always, at those events, I'd be asked if I sold the veggies by themselves.... So, I thought this time, why not?! I really do love making these things -- it's like play-time for me; finding fabrics in just the right color and with sweet prints; colors like orange (carrots) and brown (mushrooms) that I don't usually use, and working out the logistics of how to shape and sew the fabric into realistic forms.
So -- I made up a pile of carrots. And then, Wednesday morning, I was tending my garden and harvested all of my peas. That got me thinking -- I can make peas! Originally, I was going to make them out of fabric, and I bought all of these lovely pea-green prints. Once I got home and started thinking it through, however, I realized that felt was the way to go. And then, when I had the brain-flash to sew a piece of twine with a series of knots into the fabric - making it feel like REAL PEAS - I was beside myself with excitement. So that's how the peas happened.
The next day, by buddy Dan Colby posted a photo on Instagram of his heirloom tomato harvest, and that's what set me off on deciding I needed to make heirloom tomatoes, too. I'd made some tomatoes in previous years, but now I had some greens (from the peas) and some orange-red (from the carrots) fabrics and if I made them lumpy-er, they'd be like heirlooms.

The OTHER inspiration for this expanded collection of farm veggies was the new personalized jar-cover/topper kits that I'm working on. On one of my recent wanders through the fabric shop, I stopped in front of the burlap and realized that it has a large woven grid in it -- and so, it could be used to cross-stitch upon! I know that canning and picking is having a bit of a resurgence right now, and I thought it'd be fun to make personalized labels or toppers for mason/ball jars. So, I did! These were the first two I did:



And then I played around with some other ideas. I like the idea of a label, to be tied on the front of a jar, or hanging from the neck of a bottle, too.




Of course, having made a sample that said "dill pickles" I had to make some pretend dill pickles for my display.



This cracked me up, too. (And several people asked if the pickles were for sale -- not this time!)

So -- all this lead me to wanting to create a farm-stand-like scene in my booth. I envisioned hanging signs with the names and prices of the produce, hand-painted on old charming pieces of wood. When I mentioned this to B on Friday night, when he came home from work, he helped me make it happen by finding an old wooden frame , busting it up and cutting it apart. Hooray!



It turned out pretty close to how I'd envisioned it. I was happy.
Here's Olive, one of the most adorable and fashionable babies in NYC, with a bunch of carrots that her mama, my friend Cory, put on a leash so she wouldn't lose them:


Super cute, right?

So -- Renegade was good! It was great to see so many friends from my days of living in NYC, and to recognize and chat with my chez-sucre-chez/Renegade regulars. It was great to meet so many new c-s-c supporters and to get more people interested in picking up cross-stitch.

And now, it's two days later and I'm still exhausted! It's my birthday, so I'm giving myself the day off and trying not to feel guilty about it. :) I think the most productive thing I'm going to get to is taking those peas that I harvested last week and making them into fresh ravioli for dinner tonight. Maybe....
xo!

ra-ra-renegade!

Hello friends!
If you're wondering where the heck I've been the past couple of weeks (because I sure as heck haven't put up a blog post in a while), I'll tell you -- I've been working my butt off getting ready for Renegade!

Renegade Brooklyn, my very favourite of the yearly craft fair events is coming up THIS WEEKEND. woohoo!

I *think* this is my sixth year doing Renegade; wowsers!

So, mostly these past couple of weeks I've been stitch stitch stitch and sew sew sewing. One new thing that I did and put into the shop, (which you may have noticed if you follow the chez-sucre-chez Instagram or facebook or twitter, or etsy) is the new Go 'Round the Roses kit:

I figured I'd carry on that roses kick/theme I was on and go ahead and create an x-stitch pattern/kit.

The inspiration for these particular roses -- both the shape and the color, came from two things:

One - traditional rose tattoos. B got some done on his leg recently (by the talented BJ Betts) and now I seem to be seeing rose tattoos everywhere. Almost makes me rethink my "no more tattoos (except maybe a teeny little bat)" thinking...

The second source of inspiration is the very roses in the above photo. Right behind our house, there's a sweet little building. Our landlords call it "the chapel" because, when this place was a convent in the 1960's that's what it was used for. I'm not quite sure what it was used for before that, but one of the coolest features of the tiny little structure is a set of hinged doors in the floor that open up onto a large stone-rimmed circular pit -- said to be a hiding spot from the days of the Underground Railroad!

Aaaanyways, there's a lovely little old rose bush that grows up the trellis outside the front door. Last month, those roses were all abloom, and I meant to take some photos. I never got around to that, and now they're all trimmed back and done... boo. But before they totally faded, my kit was finished and those are the roses that I used for the listing photo. I was really impressed that, without trying, I chose pretty much the exact colors for my stitching!

So -- that's a teeny little update. I've got to hop off now to get back to work in my prep for Renegade (of course, the event is only four days away and I've just come up with two new ideas that I want to try to execute....). If you're local enough to Brooklyn, you know I'd love to see you at the Renegade event. Check out all of the details and the line-up of amazing vendors here, on the Renegade site. Have a great week, all!

for the love of france...

...and good design, and golden shiny wonderfulness -- I have teamed up with Susan from the blog Fleurishing, who is hosting a giveaway in celebration of her three years of blogging.


You may remember that, about a year ago, I created a set of custom-stitched pieces for the nursery of her (then) soon-to-arrive twins. Those twins are now almost a year old and oh-my-goodness, are they precious. (Want a fix of adorable-twin-baby-cuteness? Follow Susan on instagram.)


(photos of Henry and Marie's nursery courtesy Courtney Apple)

Aaanyway, Susan is celebrating her third year of blogging in grand style; she's launched a brand-spankin' new
site design, and she's hosting three giveaways; one for francophiles, one for mamas, and one for design-lovers.

One of my pieces, a quote from Audrey Hepburn (as the title character) in Sabrina, is up for grabs as part of the francophile giveaway!


Susan came up with and recommended the quote and I thought it was perfect. Taking inspiration from Susan's love of gold and the pieces that I did for her nursery, as well as my own romantic visions and ideals of Paris and its nickname of The City of Light, I went with this golden color scheme.

Speaking of Paris -- I miss it... It was the first overseas city I visited (in 1997?) The last time I was there was in 2006, where I spent 10 days wandering the city taking photos and spending time with some of the most inspiring people I've met to date.

(a series of self-portraits I took in the mirrors of Paris:)


It was on this trip that "chez-sucre-chez" was first spoken (A mistake I made, with my less-than-stellar French language skills, to say "home sweet home.), and where I first started to feel the courage and passion and maybe the spark of confidence and hope that perhaps it was possible to live the life that I dreamed -- maybe one (I) could be a full-time maker/artist.... It seemed that all of the people I met, (especially my friends, the beautiful Hanania twins, Estelle and Marion - who continue to inspire me always with their make-it-happen creativity and talent.) were making art, or fashion, or music, -- and making their living from it. That trip certainly marked a turning point in my life.

So --- viva la France!!
Please go on over and check out the Fleurishing blog -- Susan has great taste, you may want to add this blog to your list of bookmarks! And follow the directions for your chance to win some French-inspired goodness! It's not only my piece, but also goodies from Nichole Robertson, girls can tell (a fellow Philadephia-area artist who just opened brick-and-mortar store Ocassionette), and Ink and Iron.

(PS-- Juuuust in case you're not feeling lucky, or you do enter and don't win and are really sad about that, I have the piece up on Etsy - both in the colorway above and in another, or as a custom-order in your colors... find it here.)