doilies and denim

The doily addiction continues...I was just gifted a bunch of doilies from a friend, which was perfect timing because I was about to patch up some shirts. My pretty little flower shirt (that I just freakin' bought) got a hole smack in the middle of the back. After the first patching job, a second hole appeared right next to the first! Che palle...

My first idea was to use the doilies as patches on the back for the hole but their future home was not my favorite. Then I had the idea to do doily elbow patches with the patch to tie it all together. But that led to worries that the shirt would be too busy...as well as ridiculously girly. 

Instead...I changed the plan entirely! I stitched up some vintage lace ribbon I got from my Grandma's sewing bubble straight up the back, covering all previous evidence of the ghastly hole (out you damned spot!) and threw a little patch on the front pocket to tie it all together. 

Now for the doily elbows. I got pretty fixated on making these happen on a shirt. So, after some closet digging, I found another Grandma gem. An old denim button up in need of some love. After pinning the doilies in place with some help and a lot of pins, I started stitching by hand. Not fun. I started in the center and secured it, then started sewing little rings every half inch or so outward.

I was 3/4 on the way through the first one, and through 1.5 episodes of Breaking Bad...with the daunting thought of having to do this a second time. At that point I decided to try it on the sewing machine, which worked surprisingly well but was still pretty tedious. It was completely worth the time to go slow, I'll worry less when I end up throwing it in the wash. And I love it to bits now! I've been wearing it every since I finished it! Feeling pretty snazzy in it too. 

Edit: Just went outside to snap some more photos of the shirts with Fia in this killer fall light! 

snail mail

I started making some cards from some scraps of lace, watercolor paper and paper bags I had lying around in my little (big) mess of an art bubble... so happy to have found another use for the piles of paper bags have lying around.        

























I'm pretty happy how these turned out, for how randomly they came to be created too! I'll be sending them up to my friend's gallery in Los Alamos, The C Gallery, where they'll be for sale for Mother's Day! I think I'm going to make a couple different variations of them too.

I especially love the sewn paper bag flower detail...I used the same shape for when I made my Daisy Chain Box series back in school...and I love to have any excuse to sew on paper and use some ombre effects.

I got the idea for the tags on the envelopes from a post I found through Craftgawker. It was actually for making a stamp but I didn't have anything to make a stamp out of so paper bag cut outs resulted instead!

My little art bubble has been a pretty big disaster zone lately but I really love how some cute and random things can spontaneously occur in it...and that it somehow still makes for some lovely pictures among the mess...

( I converted my little fennel jar that I found awhile back into a little glue jar...)

Both of these scissors are my go-tos for sewing projects. I found the big Gingher scissors and the tiny crane ones among my Grandma's (equally disastrous) sewing center...I guess messy work bubbles run in the family... 

daisy chain

It has been far too long since I last updated. The semester has been pretty intense and is nearly over.
And it's only going to get crazier after that! I got offered an internship at the facility I stayed at last summer while studying abroad in Italy. So I will be skipping my college graduation and opting for a plane ride to Rome! So, come May 21st, expect more posts of drawings from my sketchbook!

Now, on to the latest work! For Artist's Books I was assigned to make an edition of five and this is what happened. This project really came to fruition as I was making it. It was mainly inspired by a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise.

For this is wisdom, to love and live.

To take what fate or the God's may give.

To ask no question, to make no prayer.

To kiss the lips and caress the hair.

Speed passion's ebb as we greet it's flow.

To have and to hold, and, in time, let go.

I used my purple and white handmade paper finally too. Each little 'daisy chain' flower book is housed in a drop spine box. I had to make up a stitch for the pages since they were irregular and needed to behave more as a hinge. So this is what happened!

Here are all 5 of my little lovelies!

Christmas gifts

Funds for this past Christmas were rather small so I ended up making sewing and painting most of my gifts.

My mum wanted an enlarged painting from my Italy sketchbook. This was the view out of the studio we used while staying in Castiglion Fiorentino.

At Christmas my family uses a draw for anyone who is 21 or over.... this year was my first year in the draw. I got my cousin-in-law Jessica, who was just married this past summer. 

She also graduated from the University of West Virginia. So I made her this little creeple.