T-shirts, t-shirts, t-shirts

Do you sew?  These are so cute!  And easy.  Use some stitch witchery, or steam a seam, etc and cut it out just a bit smaller than your applique.  Apply to your -shirt.  Stitch.  That's it.  With each washing, the edges will fray and create this cute vintage look.  I'm having fun designing new things all the time...here's a few that are now at Harvest Moon Coffeehouse in Canal Winchester.  Grab one while you can!

And I'm so happy to report...I know have INTERNET access!!  Yeah!  Yeah in that I have access.  Boo, in that it is expensive so please, go to my etsy site, buy a few shirts so I can keep blogging!  My dial up just wasn't doing it and it was getting really old running into town all the time to use the wifi.

And because I know have internet, I have very slowly started to get my dot.com working.  So, pop over and take a peek.  I don't have a lot going on over there but I do have some things loaded in the shop.  I hope to work on it more later, ahem, this year.

Don't forget, I'm still looking for ideas for our Frankenstein's Laboratory.  (see previous post).  I have some goodies for someone - we'll choose a random person from the comments and mail out our Halloween package to you.  Comments will close Oct 21st so bring 'em on!

Happy Hump day!

xoxo,

Trish

April Giveaway Winner(s)!

Why is it after everybody else gets sick - then Mom gets sick? Blah...I've been battling a cold this week and working with my design team to get my design portfolio done in time for Quilt Market and I have totally gotten behind! I REALLY meant to be able to draw the name for the giveaway for April AND actually post the item but that will have to wait...the photo I mean, because I'm still working on the item. BUT - we chose two winners. Couldn't just choose one - it's Sophie's birthday month - so we picked two. And I will post a photo of the uber cool accessory bag I'll be sending out to both of them...

The winners for April: Carrie and Nova437. I'll be emailing you both to get your mailing addresses. See?! Wasn't that easy...and you said, you never win anything and yet, ta-da! You won something! Yay!

Don't forget, giveaways every month. For May, it's a shirt! Check out my kids and adult tee's over at etsy

Post a comment or email me, just talk to me so I'm not just talking to myself out here - and you'll be entered to win. Super simple, who doesn't like to chat? And I could really use your feedback...I'd love to know what you like, love, have mildly warm feelings for in my designs and creations.

Be back soon with more stuff...but I have got to sleep off this sinus goop.

xo, Trish

{My sweet little one turns one...}

My sweet little Sprout turned one over the weekend.  We had a little lunch party with family and then went to see the twins in a musical, Noyee's Fludde, at church.  Big crazy day but fun!

The best is that the day was so sunny and perfect we went outside.  I "tried" to put Sprout in the grass and she completely freaked out.  Wouldn't let her feet touch, started to shake, cry, wave her hands about wildly.  Is this a common baby thing?  I mean, we LIVE outdoors so this can't be good...

Her favorite gift - a toothbrush.  She LOVED the toothbrush that her Grandma gave her - it was too funny!  Would NOT let it go, for ANYTHING!

I also tried to come up with a couple of new designs...which requires several tries typically.  Hence why this little purse went to a friend of the neighbor to give her little girl.  I know, I know...it's lopsided.  Hello?!  That's why its a design sample!  I freehand cut this stuff and who knows what will happen with it.  Any thoughts?  Like, love, hate?  Not sure where to go with this one...

The little wristlet one I like very much - but it is also all crazy lopsided.  I'll figure it out sooner or later.

Be sure to check out the etsy site because I have loaded both adult and kids embellished vintage like shirts over there - they are $15 and $16 and right now, FREE SHIPPING!  Can't beat it for cute-ness like this and I'll have more designs coming soon.

At the moment, I've been busy with color palettes, and naming collections, and looking over proofs for my fabric designs.  Quilt Market is in a couple of weeks and I'm gonna try like heck to get in there and get on board with one of the textile mills to produce my designs.  Wish me luck - prayers preferred since really luck has nothing to do with it.  The gardners' Aunt Carla is coming with me to help with Sprout while I'm chatting up with design directors.

It's been fun to choose my colorways and see my artwork get digitized.  I just hope somebody else likes it besides me!

Anybody using the placemat tutorial I posted?  Share your photos if you do!  Later this week I'll post our April giveaway winner so stay tuned and don't forget to keep in touch!  We'll have something else fun to giveaway for May - one of my t-shirts!

Happy Monday,

Trish xo

{Homemade is best...and a little easy Mother's Day tutorial}

OK, so last week when I was visiting family for Easter, I started to notice that everywhere I looked - um, there was stuff I made hanging around. Little paintings, a fabric covered journal, quilts, stockings made from my great grandmothers old raggedy quilt, napkin rings, placemats and of course, purses. I'm really all about this handmade thing - it truly is a wonderful gift when you can give someone something you made by hand (or something someone else made - something unique - you get the idea!)

SO...here's a cool idea for you crafty types for a Mother's Day gift for YOUR Mother - a set of placemats and napkin rings! Seriously, easy project. Here we go:

Materials needed - the obvious, sewing machine, thread, etc you'll need fabric (see below), fusible interfacing and prequilted fabric.

Pick 4 different fabrics (I picked some Amy Butler dots to coordinate with some vintage kitchen prints I found). For each placemat, CUT four 5" x 14.5" panels.

Using 1/4" seams, piece your panels together. Press your seams open. Next, cut a piece of fusible fleece interfacing to fit on the rear of your front panel. Cut it 1/4" smaller all the way around than your front panel. Following the instructions with your interfacing, fuse it to the wrong side of your front panel. This will give your placemat some extra oomph and keep your cotton panel looking crisp - in my opinion.

Once you have your front panel complete, use it as your pattern to cut a solid rear piece from your prequilted cotton fabric. I used a cream color - the same I often use in my purses - sound familiar?

With right sides together, pin and sew with 1/2" seams. Leave an opening for turning. Turn right side out. Top stitch. I also typically add some "steam a seam" to my opening just to make sure it stays shut. That's it kids! Done! Now repeat for the rest of your set of placemats you want to make.

Napkin rings are loads of fun when you use old buttons. My parents had given me an old tin that belonged to my grandmother full of buttons. I glued some of the pretty and larger ones to magnets and gave those to my family. For the rest, I cut a piece of wide elastic just big enough to fit around my napkins. Then I stitched buttons galore until the elastic was fully covered. I warn you - it takes a lot of buttons to cover one and it actually took me several, several hours to stitch all of these on for 6 rings.

What a great gift set. My Mom still loves hers and I loved seeing them adorn her table last week at Easter. Even my kids were impressed. "Did you make these Momma?" Ah, yeah. Hope that gave you a good handmade gift idea.

A few more dresses and embellished jeans went out this week and a cute little tie tote that my girls gave to their girlfriend for her 8th birthday. These will be finding their way to my etsy site pretty soon.

Lots of orders being mailed out this week - thanks to my neighbor Barb for helping me cut everything! We need to do that more often because we never did get to our banana split desserts!

Don't forget - just a week or so left on this month and our April giveaway will be done. The two peas will be picking a comment out of a hat and we'll be sending you, the lucky winner, a way cool, patchwork accessory bag with an awesome buckle...I'll share that photo with you later next week.

Keep Spring coming - I'm begging for the sun and warm breezes to start coming every day instead of snow, rain, sun, snow, rain, rain, rain, sun...we just need some SUNNNNN to stay in O-H-I-O for awhile!

xo - Trish

{Our Easter parade...}

Where do I begin?  So much I want to share with you but so little time!  The girls enjoyed a great spring break last week and if you were following me on Twitter you know we headed out to the zoo...in the snow.  I love working at the largest university in the country - gives me a chance to network with loads of people and luckily, one of our alumni board members is a keeper at the Columbus Zoo SO, she was wonderful enough to give my girls a behind the scenes tour.  We got to see exactly what she does to care for the animals and a chance to see a grizzly bear, 2 alaskan brown bears and a cougar very close!  So cool!  No photos to share of that as we were not allowed to take any in the back areas but...check this out!

This is the cafe at the zoo.  See anybody else there?  That's right...when it's 20' windchill and snowing - NOBODY goes to the zoo.  We saw two other people there all day.

Here's the girls in the "jungle" with a researcher!  Ha!  And some cool looking birds we saw in one of the aviarys...where it was WARM.

The flamingos were out...

The manatees and sea turtle at the aquarium section...

And so on to Easter...we went to my parents house which was fun.  The girls got these really cool little jackets for their American Girls from the sewing room of the easter bunny, aka The Doll Closet on etsy.  Really cute!

And they had a blast!  I have to say, they looked BE-AU-TI-FUL in their easter dresses.  They turned out really well, if I do say so myself!  I got the pattern for these from PinkFig.  I used the Lily pattern and had to adjust some because my girls are a size 8 and the pattern only went up to a size 7.  I added some extras on the ruffle, etc.  They LOVED them!  If you are looking for an easy EASY to use pattern line - PinkFig is it!

OK, so I never did get them to stand very still for a photo but here's a few portfolio shots...you get the idea!

And then...I've had quite a few orders for dresses lately.  I have some already listed on my etsy page. But here's a peek at a few..

And matching ponytail ribbon explosion thingy whatevers on their way to etsy soon...here's a peek at just one of them...

Does the baby look happy here?  Poor thing!  Her sisters love her TOO much!  Well, lots of photos, not too much text.  Since Easter (yesterday) one of the peas has been diagnosed with whooping cough.  She doesn't look sick does she?  Exactly why we had no idea...since all she had was a nagging cough.  Our AWESOME doctor caught it and well, things are now quite hectic in our house so I'll be back next week with an entry about handmade stuff!  (I noticed at my Moms, my sisters - dang!  I make a LOT of stuff cuz it's all over their house from paintings to placemats! More on that next week!)

I'll leave you with one last little cutie - my baby's first Easter.  Next week she celebrates her first birthday.  A very special little day.  She was born on April 25th - the same day as my oldest sister.  My oldest sister  died when she was 15 from complications from mono.  My baby being born on her birthday was quite special.

God bless - hope everyone had a wonderful Easter holiday!  Ciao, xo Trish

AND DON'T FORGET...post a comment and you'll have a chance at our monthly giveaway!

Happy Little Chefs Birthday Party 101

I know it’s taken me awhile to get back to sharing all the details from the girls party. I have had a lot going on. Dealing with a husband who has been in training a lot lately and our crazy schedules. I mean, seriously, he came home with band-aids on his wrists because they got cut up while they were in defensive tactics practicing handcuffing. Playing a bit rough aren’t we boys? I’ve been working like mad on fabric designs and trying to decide on what to present for my first line, planning for Quilt Market including things like little giveaways, booth design, and of course, product! I have an appointment with one of the fabric companies on the first day of Market to present my designs so I’m super excited that truly, this Fall, I may have my very own line! That would be a dream come true! And the baby, well, she finally got up and crawled this week and started to pull herself up to a stand all within days of each other. So, keeping up with her just got a whole lot harder. So, as I do all day while I’m working either on campus or in my studio, I’m usually listening to music on my iphone. Quite frankly, as my husband says, I’m addicted to it. My iphone is never far from my hand – I do love it. And I like to share what I’m listening to because it inspires me and keeps me focused through the day. Lately it’s been Mercy Me and one of my favorites of the week has been a song called “Bring the Rain”.   I love this song, especially when I have had an especially trying week, and it just makes me feel stronger. You’ll love it, check it out.

Little Chefs…oh yes! The twins had a great 8th birthday party. I’ll give you my “Party 101” details on what we did and maybe you’ll find some ideas to use for the next party you host. First, we sent out invitations on little note cards that looked like recipe cards and said something about good food, add friends, mix well for a great birthday celebration. We added 3D cupcake stickers to them.

For each girl, I made them an apron and an apron for their American Girl doll.  (You can find your own on my etsy site).   I just used up scraps from my scrap basket and other old fabrics. I added a pocket for each girl and appliquéd their initial on the front panel. As each girl arrived, my girls gave them their aprons to put on.

Once everyone was here, we got started on making our lunch. I used little Dixie cups to put each serving of ingredient for each girl. We made chicken enchiladas and I just brought out each ingredient one at a time and had them add, mix and then stuff their tortillas. We put them in one big casserole and then left them to bake.

While lunch was cooking, we decorated cupcakes. I had purchased treat boxes that held 4 cupcakes per box. We had mounds of different types of candies and frostings so they could decorate their treats. I must say, a lot of candy did not make it to the cupcakes but got eaten instead! They loved getting to be creative. I gave them a few ideas and they were off and running. I had set the table with 2 sets of tablecloths. The bottom layer was a vinyl tablecloth we keep. The top was a plastic disposable table covering. When they were all done with the baking and cupcake decorating…I left the entire mess on the table and just wrapped it up in the table covering and tossed the whole thing. It was great! Then, underneath, I had a nice clean table ready for lunch. The girls went off and played for about 10 minutes while I set the table and got the rest of the food out.

I had just a simple centerpiece which consisted of wooden spoons with the chicken enchilada recipe attached. This was one of the favors the girls took home. I also had playdough thinking we would make mini treats for the dolls but we ran out of time so they just took that home with them. I had treat bags to pack their aprons in as well that had cupcakes on them and pretty much their favors were their apron sets.

After lunch, we did an egg relay race. They had to balance a plastic easter egg on a spoon and go on a course through our house. They were nuts doing this and had a lot of fun. We opened gifts and then they played out in the girls playhouse for a bit and that was it. 2 ½ hours went by really fast and my girls said they had a great time.

So as I sit here trying to write this I can hear the baby up in her bed, NOT sleeping because she has just learned to stand and so guess what she’s doing besides sleeping…oh yes, standing in bed and talking. I can’t even lay her down, she instantly rolls over and grabs the rails to pull up. Any suggestions? This is short lived right because it’s a new trick? The other two are running around this afternoon avoiding chores. Of course, they are grounded today for being sassy yesterday and so today they have no privileges and have to clean all day. I’ve never seen anyone procrastinate or drag out a task longer than these two – their little “craft” area looks like a bomb went off. And when I told my little pea this, she said to me, “So! SO does your room!” Man! This is why they are in trouble for the sassing! Actually mine is quite clean right now for once…but I do need to get back down there.

Here’s a quilt I made this morning and a purse being sent out tomorrow for orders. I’m working next on one my patterns – cute little kitty cat thing. I’ll show you that sometime soon! Within 3 weeks, I’ll have 3 patterns ready to go out to testers and I have only a few bodies to edit and test for me. If anybody else is interested in being a pattern tester for me, let me know asap! Ciao, Trish

Seriously? Could my life BE a bit crazier...really? Really.

I complain a lot here don't I?  I am SO glad you all are out there and just let me unload my woes.  Yeah, seriously.  I'm taking the day off of work tomorrow to clean house.  The MIL is coming to hang with the little one so I can zoom around and sort through junk that has been deposited...well, everywhere in my house so I can put some order in place.  And quite frankly, I'm looking forward to it.  Really.  I mean it.  I have a lot to look forward to this Spring and a good place to start is an organized house.  I have 4 bins of clothes and 2 bins of junk to go through and I can say...I am done.  I have gone through every closet, corner, nook and all of our house.  Started when I was pregnant...ah, in the fall of 2007.  Sprout is 9 months...I'd say I was fairly efficient, right? Don't laugh!  I hear you snickering out there...you got junk laying around too, don't you?  Come on,  you all email me on the sly and nobody ever wants to comment out in the open but hey, don't be shy.  You can own up to it.  Makes us all feel better to know we are not, gasp, perfect.

Anyway, still have some major cabin fever going on.  The kids are back in school..and guess what, they have Friday off!  Let's see, snow day, snow day, snow day...oh yes, let's have another day off.  I don't even know why they have it off but I for one, am headed off to our local science museum where we have a membership with the girls.  I can't take not even ONE more day in the house with them and their - oh I hate to admit this - crafting everywhere.

What have I done?  My little designers...they each made a quilt this week.  With scraps.  And a lot of glue.  A LOT of glue.   Once they dried, cute...and they put their new quilts on their sock monkeys (see sock monkey post) you should see the mess they left behind.  Now, they'll clean it as best they can but really, right now, my nerves are just frayed.  I'm crazy anxious about this whole - sewing industry leap - I'm about to take and...I don't know.  Is it just me?  Am I over sensitive?  Oh whatever!  :>)

I did get out on Sunday. 

Sprout took her first whirl around the park in the backpack.  Check out the thumb in the mouth.  Her top tooth just cut through that day.  We all enjoyed the sun although the trails were covered in ice so not so good for hiking.  It just felt good to get out.  And who would have guessed that it would 45' and everybody would be running around town with their car windows down and no coats.  Does that tell you how much we've become accustomed to subzero temperatures.  The 40's and we are all..."it's like Spring!".

And Thursday, I'm off to a meet and greet with Amy Butler. Like a stupid starstruck fan, I'm packing my camera along for sure.  My husbands aunt invited me - she's a buyer with the Limited brands.  She travels ALL the time to Paris, Rome, New York, Milan, etc for Limited in the textile industry and she's been trying to find me some connections to get my fabric line looked at.  So, she invited me to this little event and I'm really very excited and also nervous.  Will I get to talk to her?  If I do, what do I say?  "Ahh, hi.  I wanna be just like you."   No, that's stupid.  True, but stupid.  I'll just carry my bag I designed made with her fabrics and stare, I'm sure.  Listen, hope to glean off some secrets that will help motivate me to move MOVE MOVE these fabric patterns off to the testers and off the printers.  I just feel like I'm paralyzed though.  As long as I don't move, nobody has said no yet.  This is the whole anxiety thing.  See what I mean?

I'll end with this - there are much greater things in this life to fret over than a messy house and my nerves over my artwork.  My dear friend Kris, from LivyMarie handbags - you hear me chat about her once in awhile with her 5 kids she homeschools?  Well, her husband is having some heart issues and having surgery tomorrow morning.  Please lift them up in prayer as you read this.

Along with that, we have a local twins family who had their sweet peas born much too early.  They have been in the NICU and I made some quilts and hats for them last week.  My peas will deliver them next week and I'll share a photo later.  Please lift them in prayer.  Visit their journal and send them warm happy thoughts of the life to come for their family.

4:17pm.  I was going to leave the office today at 2:30 so I could work on some orders.  4:17pm.  Ugh.  Aprons are the hit lately...here's some more on their way to Morroco (is that how you spell it) to travelinmama who bought these on my etsy site.   She does some seriously cute paper crafts!  And I hope her little one likes the american girl set.

NOW I'm really, seriously, really...no I mean really, going home.  Really. Seriously.

Slan Leat, (a new one for me - goodbye in gaelic - a little nod to my Irish father)

Trish