Photography Blues

I'm having trouble taking pictures of my pieces.  Frankly, I'm not a terribly good photographer even on a bright, beautiful day.  So when I need to take pictures and we are knee-deep in gloomy days, this is literally the best I can get:

Those are both heavily edited and obviously the color is a disaster.  I need to rethink my photography.

Sunny Patchwork On A Gloomy Day

We haven't seen the sun in days.  What a waste of all that extra daylight.  I've been filling up all the gloom with patchwork bathmats.

After trying every conceivable binding, I finally settled on no binding.  It was so labor-intensive and the results were not awesome.  So I switched gears and decided to use a zig-zagged edge, which is just about my favorite thing in the world anyway.  The results are more me than any binding ever would have been, I think.  Now I'm dreaming of a serger to really lock down those edges!

Here's the newest piece.  I like that, by offsetting the squares, I get the illusion of more pattern.  It also saves me fussing over those perfect corners.

Unfortunately, Josie is not impressed by any of it.

The Humble Bathmat

Everything in your homes should be either useful or pretty or belong to your child.  With a pretty bathmat, you can have two out of three.

Apparently, I forgot how to make bias tape.  I can't tell you how many hours this took me.  If I paid myself a living wage for this, I'm sure this is a $200 bunch of bias tape.

After all that work, I had half a mind to save it for, you know, posterity.  Alas, it was meant for something greater.

There were, I confess, a few false starts attaching the bias tape.  Terry cloth is sort of a tricky medium to work with.  I usually partially hand-stitch bias tape, but I couldn't imagine working with that loopy material.  So this is fully machine-stitched.  The next ones will be better.

Still, it turned out pretty nicely.

And it's fully reversible!

This one already has a home, but I'm working on some for the shop, now that I can make them in less than 40 hours.

And here are some future bathmats.  My good friend gave me a giant bag of vintage sheets yesterday.  Aren't they just the height of gorgeous?  The cat's meow?  Suffice it to say, I get a little too excited about used bedding.

Bye Baby Bunting

Personally, I'm ready for Spring.  But since we're finally experiencing Winter, I guess I'd better just enjoy where I am.

This year, March is a busy month, with St. Patrick's Day, Spring Break, and Easter.  Work in the studio is looking awfully Easter-like to me.

My photographer friend Jill needed an Easter-like bunting for her Easter photo sittings.  Here's what I came up with.  I used vintage sheets and vintage bunting along with a teal polka-dot fabric from the thrift store, circa who-knows.

I'm pleased with how it turned out.  I had intended to use pinking shears and make a one-sided bunting.  However, my pinking shears went MIA and so I made a much more awesome reversible bunting.  A happy accident, I say.

Meanwhile, embroidery marches ever on.

We're also looking forward to a St. Patrick's Day potluck replete with corned beef and cabbage.  I'll keep you posted.

February Made Me Shiver

In February, we suffered illnesses:

Ellis on his 6th day of illness

 We made Valentines:

And one of us turned 5! (Bike and giant Perry are by-products of 5th birthday.)

The birthday was the highlight of the month, complete with a Perry the Platypus party featuring a Perry cake that I made and the birthday crown on its third year.  Is it wrong that in some ways, that cake is the most awesome thing I've ever made?

So, let's move on from February and look forward to March, which is already here!