sneak peek

Now that we're back from vacation, I hope to make some progress on new textile goods for the shop. Just looking at this fresh pile of fabric makes me a little scared but excited!

summer

Made some mango cucumber salsa today - perfect for a hot day like today.




I finally got around to taking pictures of the fabric I bought in Paris to share with you all. I was so excited to find the fabric used in the dress from the previous post.




And look what my sis-in-law, Janice, gave me! It turns out she learned how to sew recently and made these little drawstring pouches from a Japanese sewing book. I love it, and it's making me want to sew.




Thank you all so much for the congrats and well-wishes! It's hard to believe that I'm halfway through already. The pregnancy is going well, and we found out recently that it'll be a boy. Most of my fabrics are girly, so I'm going to need to start collecting some boy-ish or unisex prints!

Christmas is over but...

I've got another gift or two left to give.. (wrapped in a drawstring pouch I sewed, which I then stamped with a little tree I carved out of an eraser - forgot to take a picture of it until now!)
















..and I got a bunch more gifts over the weekend when my brother and my new sister-in-law came back from their honeymoon in Asia. They brought me so many goodies from Hong Kong that I nearly fainted. Fabric, trim, and a stack of sewing books! One of them is in Japanese (shown in the first picture - I've seen and drooled over this one before in blog-land), and the rest is in Chinese, which is fabulous because I think I'll actually be able to read most of it. Apparently there is an entire district of Japanese-y things!

Spoonflower

My Spoonflower swatches came in the mail over the weekend!



I had read that their colors typically come out a bit less saturated, which definitely is the case, but it's fun nonetheless to see some of my designs on fabric. I might play around with the colors some more and give it another go before ordering actual yardage and possibly putting it into the shop. We'll see.

I'd really like to move towards textiles one day, but am uncertain about how or where to begin. Screenprinting designs myself would be so fun, but it seems very labor-intensive and also somewhat limiting (size of fabric, number of colors, etc). Yet professional digital textile printers (or textile screenprinters) would require me to order a lot of yardage before the price per yard is anywhere near reasonable. Starting with something simple that I screenprint myself makes the most sense right now. It'll take me time to gather everything I need and to get familiar with the process though. Must be patient!