Survival

This year I barely survived the festival that is Independents day fully intact. For whatever reason this year it was much harder then the past years for me. I left feeling upset even for a few days. Not because anything failed but because I knew it was such a great event and I didn't get to enjoy it like I normally would at all. I wished there were two of me, one to run my parts and the other to enjoy and wander and take in all the great new things that happened this year. It was on all counts quite successful and I'm happy for that.

One of the good things that came out of Independents day for me was working on my tags and branding for future craft shows and just in general for my Fashion design. I'm always in love with using Moo mini cards as tags and they come out looking so great!

 In other news I have moved many more things into the Studio and it is starting to look like my space. Both knitting machines up makes me very happy as I can freely work on projects without worrying about kitties and tear down. I also brought in one of my sewing machines and  most of my painting supplies. I'd really love to get back into a little oil painting and mess around with gouche. I think gouche could be a great flat medium format for me in more controlled ways then water color has been.

 I'm still organizing but I'm happy with what I've got so far. I brought in my little vintage knitting needle collection to hang for decoration and a jewelry chicken wire frame  for when we have open studio to put some of my jewelry pieces on.

The addition that I am most excited about is the pegboard wall panels that my friend Adam put up for me and I painted what is call a Caribbean blue. It's most like a grey toned baby blue.

I've also been making time to work on a  new wound embroidery that I am very excited about. It was from when my friend Jen took a hard spill on her bike on the way to work. I think as I make them I am going to just give them the title of what the wound's cause was from. This will be Bike to Work and the previous one is Self Defense. Having a narrative title will be fun for the viewer or at least I hope it will be.

Fame & Fortune!

No not really. Well maybe a little bit of fame. My friend Grace Dobush's sequel to her widely popular craft business book "Crafty SuperStar" has just been republished. It still has the same great content with a good number of additives and I am proud to be one of them!

I  chimed in on my experiences on Regretsy. Yes that was plural, I've been on Regretsy more then once and not ashamed of it at all. In fact let's take a gander back at those links here and here. It's nothing personal just bored people who love to flame. I'm not upset by them at all in fact it gave me some amazing traffic on my etsy site and resulted in a good number of sales. You can read more of my opinions and lemons to lemonade philosophy in the book!

 

It was super exciting for me to have a little Bio in at the end with a shout out back to my blog. I can easily say this year has been one of the best years of my life, Craft Wars to another publication credit. There was a good reason I wasn't able to get into Grad School. Let's hope the good things keep happening and I can bear the work that is coming up for festival organizing and personal art/fashion projects.

To help with all of that I finally started to move into my shared studio space with Stinky Bomb Soap maker Megan Green over at Junctionview Studios! I look forward to some long nights in silence getting some work done.

So the studio has been my excuse from doing blogging, among other things. I have a lot of catch up work to do and embroideries planned. I need to put my mind to the grindstone and since all the festivals are pretty well formed it's just a matter for me not getting distracted. My biggest distractions are starting new projects when the old ones need desperate attention. ONWARD!

Clean House

A few weeks ago I spent the entire weekend cleaning up my stashes and my upstairs craft room which is also our guest room.  They were all disasters.  Above is my stash after the clean up which I am also sharing with my shoe storage because I have just as many shoes as I do fat quarters.

I decided to try and organize my fabric by themes.  So we shall see how that works out. In my head I do all my projects by themes so hopefully this will help keep it all together for me, otherwise I need to work up a new system which I am not keen on.

This is the guest bedroom/craft room.  Total anarchy!  I have this bad habit of stacking things on the bed and piling up stacks of magazines that I don't have time to flip through.  when I am in a hurry I am also terrible about putting things back once I pulled them out and leaving it there for days (or weeks).  I know that when I lose a cat in this mess then it is high time to clean it all up. One of the hard lessons I am still working on as an adult owning our own home is that there is no one else there to clean up after you and we certainly need to get that lesson learned before we add some human babies in our lives rather then furbabies that can fend for themselves mostly.

Once everything is clean and organized it does feel fantastic! Sure there are still some small piles on the bed but these are different.  These are things on the bed because I can not have a guest here till the prints are hung or things that need to be moved to the basement studio because they never belonged in this room in the first place.  Keeping them on the bed is like a visual to do list instead of piled up catch all.

In addition to cleaning up I found the perfect solution of what to do with all my mini buttons I've been collecting and the fact that I have several inspiration cork boards with no pushpins. I simply bent the pin out and use them just like normal push pins.  It makes for a double inspiration!

Pretty Windows

The only big thing I envy about people living in NYC are the endless possiblities of different kinds of apartments and being up high with gorgeous large windows to let the light in.  I wish I had someplace with a gorgeous gran window for hanging up clothes for the next day leaving lovely silhouettes and shadows across a wooden floor.

Photo from Song of Style

I remember when I was in High School I saw a TV show that showed amazing apartments in NYC and one of them was Betsey Johnson's and I went gaga over it!  I promptly went out and bought rolls and rolls of holiday sparky wired ribbon in blues, greens, and golds and draped them across the ceiling in my room to give me that same decadent feeling.  But if you were taller then 5'6" you had to beware coming into my room or else you would be bumping into baubles of glass ornaments, and ribbon hanging down. I know I have a picture of it somewhere.  It was quite excessive for a High Schooler's room in the mid 90's and when the internet was not such a vast see of information and google. 

Photo is a scan from Gala Darling

Even now as an Adult I see myself picking up lacy slips that I will never wear myself but I just want to hang in front of somg window or use them strung together as a curtain.  Unfortunately my studio is in the basement with tiny Windows and I need all the light I can get, also boy demands that he not live in a princess palace of frilly lace and pastels.  Not that I am really the pastel and frilly type, more the deconstructed creams and greys with shots of bold blues and greens.

Speaking of my Dark Dank Studio here are the most recent pictures of the Hurricane of a dungeon that I sew in.  If you are surprised by this, I'm sorry but it is what it is and reality is often times not very pretty.

This is actually my new little drawing/painting station I set up in a separate section.

Here is a view of some shoes in their boxes stored to the right

 Clothes rack filled with my designs and patterns and garment bags in the middle

On the left is stuffed with fabrics and projects I need to deconstruct

This is my pattern table Covered in pieces of projects the need to be started/finished and patterns in use hanging from various pipes. 

I told you it was a Dark Hurricane Dungeon of a Studio

Lastly my row of Sewing machines.  Well...... Serger, Sewing Machine and Embroidery Machine.

Also stuffed underneath and behind piles of trims, thread racks and my collection of Gingher Scissors.

You might wonder how I can find anything but that table top is glass so I can see everything underneath and grab at it as needed.