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Finding Inspiration

I’ve not been posting many projects lately because I am working like a dog on my book. Do dogs work hard? Most dogs I know don’t, but maybe if you’re a sled dog in Alaska or something. Anyway, since I can’t give you many details about the book, I thought I’d share a couple of  things that have been inspiring me lately.

Quilts of Gee’s Bend: I can’t remember what year I first laid eyes on these amazing quilts, but the power that these women put in their work is amazing. I think these quilts speak volumes about the beauty of necessity. Pictured below is Mary Lee Bendolph’s Blocks and Strips of 2002.

mary-lee-bendolph-quilt

Children’s art: As always, I’m influenced and inspired by my children’s art. There’s something about the simplicity and directness in the work of a child that can’t be imitated. My seven-year-old’s apple drawing is pictured below. She was working on a cardboard box, which created those great textural lines.

apple-drawing

Liberty of London: Always an inspiration. And I will definitely be making a trip to Target on March 15 when their new line arrives. Look at this adorable girl’s dress. You can see a few other images on the Oprah website. Thanks to Laura for sending me that link!

liberty-of-london-for-targe

Oh, and one more thing that I wanted to mention. The very talented Kristal of The Rikrak Studio is holding a fun competition called the Handmade Olympics and I was nominated in the category of Favourite Blog with a Handmaking Focus. So I wanted to say thanks to Kristal and to Tara of Scoutie Girl for putting me on the list of finalists. If you’d like to vote for me here, I would be grateful.

handmade-olympics

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Revisiting the Past

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Sometimes having children is about revisiting the past. Do you have any of your childhood toys left? Lucky for me, my mother is a bit of a packrat and kept many of our things. Now we regularly drink from Smurf and Muppet glasses, my children play with my old doll house and use my handmade wooden doll beds. It’s nice to see things come full circle.

But these Ant and Bee books were a different story. I had them squirreled away on a shelf, intending never to share them with my children as they are too precious. The books were originally printed in the UK in the ’70s with a re-print in the late ’80s and early ’90s, but are  now out of print. They are selling for rather outlandish prices, as you can see here. But mine aren’t in very good condition and what’s the point in having something that you can’t share? So I pulled them down from the shelf and had a flood of memories as my daughter read them aloud. So sweet — and really great books. As my seven-year-old was reading Ant and Bee and the Rainbow, my five-year-old followed along reading the names of the colors. Angela Banner’s words and illustrations are still relevant today. They should print these again.

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Then my friend Laura brought the girls a super awesome gift – her Barbie townhouse that she had as a girl, still in its original box and in perfect condition. My husband said this was the Death Star of Barbie toys. I took one look at that elevator and remembered that I also had this as a kid. Somewhere down the line it didn’t make it back to me, but it’s so nice to complete the circle. My younger daughter especially loves Barbie, though I have rather mixed emotions. But then I do that “Well, I played with them as a kid” thing that we as parents often do. You know, since we turned out so well. And this Barbie house has a working elevator. Now that’s just cool.

barbie-townhouse

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Hearts Handmade

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Looking for ideas for handmade Valentine’s Day cards? Making cards with the kids seems like such a chore when we have to mass produce them for every kid in the class. Check out my post over at Alpha Mom for seven easy heart-themed craft ideas.

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Fabric Covered Table

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A few of you asked about the children’s table in my sewing room that was featured over on Craft. I recently painted the table and covered it in fabric. No one likes to put together IKEA furniture, but the benefit of this table was that I was able to take it apart to attach the fabric. For $40 plus some fabric and paint, I think it turned out to be a pretty cute table and chairs.

We had been using this table for a while and it was painted pink, but became covered in paint, glitter and glue. So I removed the table top, laid it out on the fabric, cut the fabric about 2″ wider than the table on all sides and stapled it to the underside. Now we’ll try to use this table mostly for drawing and sewing, but I’m sure one day we’ll manage to spill glue or paint on it, so then we can simply remove the fabric and replace it or paint the table again. I used some IKEA fabric leftover from our bathroom shades, and at $6 per yard I’m not too worried about ruining it. You could also try an oilcloth or polyurethane-coated cotton to withstand spills.

Oh, and the drawings on the table are from Erin McCamant, the budding talent who is helping me test patterns for the book. Thank you, Erin! My girls are enjoying playing fashionista with her designs.

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Baby Shoes

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After seeing these shoes in an Etsy shop, I decided to make some little shoes to go with the baby gift that I posted about yesterday. I mostly used the template and pattern for reversible baby shoes from Maked.

Well, this was my first attempt at making any kind of shoes. On the first go I tried to alter the pattern thinking “I don’t remember baby feet being that small.” But then I found some old baby shoes in a storage bin and realized that baby feet are that small. Adorable. Then I sewed a shoe correctly and decided that I didn’t want to fool with hand sewing the tiny thing closed and these didn’t need to be reversible, so I started over and used a different method for putting them together in the last step. I found this video helpful.

So once you get the hang of making these little slippers, they are quite fast and remarkable for something so simple. After all, who makes shoes? Factory workers in China, mostly. But that was a rhetorical question, wasn’t it?