and the winners are...

Using our homemade UNO card number generator once again, the kids just picked the two lucky winners.

#545 = Emily Proudfoot who said "Ever tasteful and lovely. Thanks for offering the giveaway!"

#381 = Urska Lenart who said "I love it. It would be lovely to look at through the whole year. Thank you."

Ladies, please email me your addresses and I will get your calendars in the mail as soon as possible. And for those of you who didn't win, you can still purchase a purlsoho calendar in time for the new year. The birds shown above are for the month of December.

purl calendar giveaway

One thing you might want to add to your Christmas list is Purlsoho.com's new calendar, full of projects from their blog, the Purl Bee. I am already loving the way it looks on my inspiration board. I've been designing this calendar for the past few months, and believe me when I say it was quite a feat to pick only twelve of our favorite projects. We ended up with a nice mix of sewing and patchwork, crochet and knitting projects.

Each month features a different project, with a lovely photo on the front and the materials you need for each project on the back (along with the link to the detailed project instructions on the Purl Bee.)

And the lovely ladies over at Purlsoho have given me two calendars to giveaway! Please leave a comment to enter. The kids and I will pick a winner Tuesday 12/15, so please enter by 12/14. That should give us plenty of time to ship them to the winners before the New Year. Happy 2010! Comments are now closed!

lovely lovely

About three years ago I was freelancing on a color palette story for Martha Stewart Weddings. We needed some paper goods and the stylist, the uber-talented Shana Faust, sent a query to Sharilyn of lovelydesign asking if she might have anything we could use. Sharilyn sent us a package that had us swooning and in it she included one of her wooden card catalogs. Everyone in the office wanted one. So when my mom asked me what I wanted for my birthday that year, I knew. And I have had Sharilyn's beautiful card catalog sitting on my desk ever since.

Sharilyn has now started selling little packs of cards to add to your card catalog, she designs the patterns herself. She did a little giveaway on her blog and lo and behold, I was one of the winners! Soon after this sweet package arrived at my door.

I love them. I don't usually talk about products on my blog, I try to keep things as commercial free as I can... but when I see a product that is made with so much care, I just wanted to tip my hat a bit. Thank you for my cards Sharilyn.. I love them!

design*sponge

I'll be hosting the guest blog over at design*sponge all this week. The theme for the week is one of my favorite things - the ABC's. I hope you'll join me.

guest blogging

Most designers collect something. Old type specimen catalogs, vintage typewriter ribbon tins, french soap packaging, etc. I recently read Collections of Nothing, by William Davies King, a book about King's own odd collections (cereal boxes, water bottle labels, skeleton keys.. just to name a few). I loved King's book, but it was a memoir about collecting, what we collect and why... and what I really wanted was to spend some time with his actual collections.

This week I'll be guest blogging at Black*Eiffel. I've decided to share several of my own "collections of nothing"..  one or two a day through Saturday. I hope you'll join us.

the juggling act

I hopped on a plane on Thursday to fly to a little town in Northern California to art direct a really lovely wedding. (It was beautiful all on it's own, I can take no credit. My job was just to make sure we documented it's loveliness as well as we could.)

Every once in a while I get to run off and do a photo shoot, thanks to JR who will step in and take a day off work when needed so I can run and play "art director" once again. Photo shoots on location sound glamorous and exciting, but they are long hard days. We were up at 6 AM shooting clovers in the morning light, and still working at 8 PM trying to capture the last few minutes of daylight after the sun dropped behind the hills. Then we would race off to make it into town (a 40 minute drive away.. longer than that if you have to wait for the cows to move off the dirt road) before the only sit down restaurant closed their kitchen at 9.

Most of you know I stopped working full time at my job when I had my son C, almost 5 years ago. Now I work freelance for a few of my favorite clients, usually late at night when the kids are asleep, squeezing in a book design project when I can. It's a juggling act, trying to balance the work and being home with my family. I have tipped the scale to the "work" side, and found that I am a very cranky mother if I am staying up late each night working and always sweating a deadline. I have then tipped the scale to the "family" side and found that (after a few months of carefree bliss) I feel a little lost when I am not working on any projects. I need to be gathering inspiration, playing with color swatches, working and reworking a design until it is finally just right. I don't feel quite like myself when I'm not designing something.

So I try to balance my scale somewhere in the middle. There are times when I feel I am doing poorly at everything.. that I don't have enough hours in the day to be a good mom and a good designer and a good wife. But I think I'm getting better at the balancing act.

I flew back home Saturday night, as the wedding was in full swing, so I could be back in time for Mother's day. (Homemade cards and JR making dinner? How could I miss that?) As I walked out of the airport and saw my little ones through the car window, I was happy to be home. My children are never as cute as when I have been away from them for a few days. I am always so happy to see their little smiling faces.

On the ride home I filled JR in about how the shoot had gone: the long days, the many shots, how tired I was. He looked over and said "And you loved every minute of it, right?". I smiled. He knows me too well.

Image from one of our favorite alphabet books, Bruno Munari's ABC.

dress shirt quilts #5

I know that pretty much everyone is familiar with the quilts of Gee's Bend, but while we're talking about making quilts out of recycled clothing, it just seems wrong not to mention these ladies and their amazing work. There is a lovely collection online here).

by Loretta Pettway, born in 1942.

By Linda Pettway, born in 1929.

By Annie Bendolph, 1900-1981.

Also by Linda Pettway, born in 1929.

And this beauty by Missouri Pettway, 1902-1981. Missouri's daughter explains.. "It was when Daddy died. I was about seventeen, eighteen. He stayed sick about eight months and passed on. Mama say, 'I going to take his work clothes, shape them into a quilt to remember him, and cover up under it for love.' She take his old pants legs and shirttails, take all the clothes he had, just enough to make that quilt, and I helped her tore them up." (quotation from here)

I'm in awe of these quilts. I love that quote... "Cover up under it for love." I might have to sew that into my next creation. Isn't that what making a quilt is all about?

designer fortune cookie #1

harvey faircloth

I try to keep this site as "commercial free" as possible. But I have to take a moment to brag for my friends Katie, Mara and Abby who have just launched their own clothing company: Harvey Faircloth.

I moved to New York City straight out of college because that's where the best design jobs were. There is perhaps no better place to be young, single, and employed! I had an amazing group of friends to run around the city with.. Saturday mornings skating in Central Park, afternoons spent getting to know the Met and the MOMA, dinners at Grange Hall (sadly now closed). We worked hard at our jobs all week, and we spent the remainder of our time getting to know the city we now called home.

Katie, Abby and Mara were all part of this group. They are lovely girls, and so very talented: Katie is designing the clothes, Mara handling the sales/business side, and Abby's over the design/branding. And did I mention the clothes are beautiful?

It takes a certain amount of courage to do the things you've always dreamed of. These girls are doing it, and I am so so proud of them.

weekend sewing giveaway

Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross is finally here in my hands. I've been waiting patiently to see it. I actually laughed out loud when this cover was chosen because that is ME balancing up in that tree. I never intended to be the cover model, it's just easiest to use whomever is around when you are off in Vermont on a photo shoot, it's a good thing I shaved my legs that morning!

The back of the cover shows some of the projects in the book, a great mix of clothes, bags, aprons, cute ideas for kids, and even a pup tent to relax in when you're all done with sewing. All the projects in the book are easy enough to finish in a weekend.

When you take the jacket off the book you can see one of Heather's patterns from her Kokka line "Rabbits and Race Cars". We thought it was a nice little surprise. 

Heather actually illustrated all of the how-to's in the book, I love her drawing style. To see more of the photos in this book, visit the photo gallery.

Each book also includes two huge pull out pattern sheets for the projects in the book. (And believe me, it was tricky to fit all those projects on there!)

You may not realize that book publishing is a long, slow process. The photo shoots for this book were shot way back in the summer of 2007, and Heather was working on the actual patterns and projects a long time prior to the actual shooting. The photos are then edited, and the manuscript finished and edited. I designed the book last year, between February and July, sending it back and forth with Melanie Falick and her team. So almost a year later it's been printed, bound, shipped, and finally is here in my hands.

And I'm happy to pass it along to you. Leave a comment letting us know your favorite way to spend a weekend, and my little helpers and I will pick a winner Tuesday evening, March 17th. (Comments will close at 8 PM Tuesday PST.. Wow! That's a LOT of comments!)