honeyflake

the get-up

to margaret's surprise, tomorrow is finally st. patrick's day. to my surprise, she is super excited because it is the day she gets to wear all green. apparently she is really looking forward to dressing up and let me know this today, the day before. being that she is a wee bit irish, i felt i needed to help out the little lass. i did a quick scan of what she had in her drawers and closet... all i could come up with was last winter's smallish 2T solid green turtleneck. hmmmmm.... so being that we would be indoors all-day, due to some sleet and snow, i decided it was a good opportunity to whip something up. at first i thought perhaps a dress, then i remembered that i've been wanting to try the cool little smockette pattern from over at the mayfly blog. so i dug out some green (almost teal) fabric and went with it. and as you can see by the photo above, the st. patrick's day get-up is almost complete. i was hoping for it to tie on top of her shoulders and be reversible, however i think it is a little too small for that - so i'm going to go ahead and add some buttons to the straps, which i stilll have to choose from my slim button collection, and that should give it a little more length. so i hope.

and that was my friday. a nice ending to the week. indoors, sewing, listening to itunes with margaret, creating. and to top it off i just may have found a silver lining in having to have had that cold... it has left me with a somewhat scratchy throat, which i discovered makes it a lot more fun to sing along out loud with the ever raspy voiced grace potter. cheers.

all buttoned up

out-box

just a few pictures of what we included in our swap package. margaret did lots of painting (paper towel tube, wood frame, the box to mail it all in ...) and shell collecting and i did a bit of sewing (knapsack, wool stuffed cat, felt gnomes and pouch). lots of light blue, lots of fun.

small pleasure

i am a big list maker. right now i have a lot of lists going on with lots of things on them. things to do, things i'd like to get done, things that need to get done... all scribed on different scraps of papers and in blank notebooks. sometimes there is a prioritization and sometimes not. while i do tend to rely on these lists to keep me focused, there are days like yesterday when i ignore them all together and give in to the creative whims that come my way. creative whims are good. i somehow got the idea that a fabric sandollar would be a great little project. i'm thinking that i was inspired by the cool fabric pinecones and mushrooms that i saw created over at this blog. once i thought about it, i couldn't get the idea out of my head, so i let go of the lists for a bit and allowed myself to give it a try. i used plain white cotton fabric, organic cotton batting, and threads. it was a really simple project inspired by a simple natural object. there are some small details i think i'd like to revise if i were to make another, but if more are to be made they will need to first be added to the lists.

vintage threads

I've had this pink fabric for a while. It came from my grandmother's attic. She was cleaning out some things and offered this fabric along with several others to me. It then sat in my attic. It is really pink. Bright pink.

Then a few weeks ago, my mother surprised me with a great collection of vintage buttons that she found at an antique store. A really cool mixture of reds and yellows.

The buttons were a spark to create something new. My original thought was to match them with some primary blue vintage linen I thought I had but couldn't find. But then I saw the pink and decided I might be able to pull off a dress for Margaret. Bright colors are really out of my creative comfort zone. I'm more of a subtle, natural color type of person. Well anyway, I finished it on friday night and with the luck of unseasonably warm weather she was able to wear it to a birthday party saturday. So here it is, I still can't believe I made something so bright...