The stress puppy is in the house

Ok, I'm in the "What was I ever thinking?" stage of new company development. Much manic emotional behavior over here, jumping for joy one minute because of a new business development, and wringing my hands the next minute because I'm so mired in the minutiae, technical details, and loads of work yet to be done.

It's coming together, very slowly. I really need to focus, to stop baking cookies, cleaning the refrigerator, washing windows and organizing closets, and just get through the last month of pattern testing, revising instructions, creating various processes, and finding people to help me with the stuff I can't do, etc.

And at the same time, I just can't do all that without a little crafting time. It's my sanity time; the time when I feel like I'm in control of things, doing something I love, and just creating.

Really, it was that need to create things that got me here in the first place, and I would lose all perspective if I didn't allow myself a little time to make something once in a while, despite the other stresses and pressures right now.


So again, a little something from Joelle's book, Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts, to keep me going. This time I started with the coaster instructions and made a trivet or a hot pad, whatever you want to call it. Love turning all those corners while getting progressively smaller! Very easy, although I think I should have started with a new, sharp needle: I used heat-reflective batting, and my somewhat dull needle didn't like the foil inside it very much. No matter; I adjusted the top tension a bit and it worked out ok. And I like the navy thread in the bobbin vs the creamy thread in the top spool because now the trivet has two different personalities.

I'm feeling a little less stressed now, too. But I think it's time for me to take a bigger step back and keep it all in perspective, as well; the recent passing of a dear family friend reminds me I'm a bit too mired in my own problems right now. That's easy to forget when you're looking at everything from the eyes of the stress puppy.

Time to take this puppy for a walk. Maybe chase a squirrel or dig a hole or something. The work will get done, and the puppy needs to play once in a while.

Sort of crazy

Joelle's book has been burning a metaphorical hole in my sewing kit. I mean, so many fabulous projects! I finally had to give in and make something, anything, and this pincushion fit the requirements: small, quick, and so cute!

I justified the time spent making it (in my own mind, anyway) because I was able to follow a Photoshop tutorial for creating the Polaroid-style image at the top of this post using one of my photographs. Fun, hmm? I actually learned quite a bit about Photoshop while doing it; I'd never used textures or shadows before, so now I have a general idea how to fiddle with them in the future.


But now I'd better get down to business again. Although I think those coasters are calling my name quite loudly. Oh, and the birds?

But what about that (Sort of) Crazy Quilt? That's been driving me really crazy since I saw the initial layouts for the book, long before it was published. Not only is it gorgeous, but the instructions for it are PERFECT: exactly what I've been looking for with regard to instructions for a free-style quilt. No pattern pieces, just intuitive directions (including a paper bag--love it!) to make your own version.

There's absolutely no time in my schedule right now for making it, but I'd have to be completely crazy not to do it.

Autumn wrap-up

I love fall, and post-Thanksgiving always feels a bit melancholy because it mark a very distinct end to autumn and the simultaneous full-fledged launch into winter and Christmas. Just when I finally got some real harvest-oriented decorations up, too!

Truthfully, with all the business deadlines and stress around over the past few months, I had forgotten how much fun it is to entertain. But somehow, despite our usual low-key style of celebrating most holidays, we actually managed to gather together some friends to join us for a celebration!


No turkey here: roast lamb, garlic mashed potatoes, sauteed radishes with watercress (my new favorite side dish), delicata squash (the ones on the right), with cranberries and a few more traditional items. And then an amazing selection of artisinal cheeses, cranberry-almond pie (with a polenta crust--who knew one of our guests was a professional cook!?!), and pumpkin cheesecake! I love celebrations with a non-traditional twist, especially when that twist is so tasty (and I didn't have to bake)!


I was amused to discover that all our guests have websites: here, here, here, and here. What a talented bunch, yes? You must watch the Food Commander make chocolate mousse; since mousse au chocolat has been all the talk since Tsia and her dad returned from Paris, we were thrilled to try it at home, and it's really delicious. Tsia has been watching the Commander make mousse on Youtube, endlessly. Future chef, or simply an obsessed mousse-eater? We're not sure, be we know she loves his crazy hair at the intro.

On Friday Tsia and I vowed to uphold our traditional celebration of Buy Nothing Day but were forced to acquiesce when we completely ran out of laundry detergent, dishsoap, and diapers late in the afternoon. Can't do without those items, can we? Drat.


Now we're back to our usual routines, save a few special outings. In fact, today we managed a run to Tinsel Trading for a bit of Christmas magic (no one does it better: hurrah for real glass glitter, bottle brush trees, and gold buillion tassels!), sushi at an old favorite lunchtime haunt, and an extended viewing of the holiday train display at Grand Central. Wow, that kid loves trains! We'll be going back soon; I promised, just so we could go home at last!

Thanksgiving in New York

Have a wonderful holiday!

Only Martha

could inspire me to go home and actually make a spicy pumpkin bundt cake. That fabulous bundt pan we were given didn't hurt, either. What a lot of fun it was to visit her show! I've never been in a studio audience before.

The studio itself was breathtaking: enormous and beautifully decorated, and it was genuinely fascinating to see how the show comes together. Julianne Moore is gorgeous in real life. And didn't Anna Maria do a great job? I loved how she decorated the craft area in advance of her project. So much fun! I'd go again in a heartbeat.

Just a little more time, please?

Ok, it was a little touch-and-go there, but I've finally found a sitter and am headed across town tomorrow morning to see Anna Maria work her magic for Martha! Whoo-hoo! Have you seen Anna's new website? And look who else will be there with us! I can't wait.


I met the folks at Clover while in Houston; they have fantastic sewing tools, don't they? Mom gave me some of their yo-yo makers a while ago and I'm obsessed. Good TV-watching activity, not that I've had any time for it lately.


But here's what I'm really excited about: smocking kits! No need for a pleater; you rub the little stickers onto your fabric and follow the guides to create rows of precisely stitched pleats. Several different sets are available so you can mix various patterns to create your own combinations. And you know I've been obsessed with smocking for a while now; these kits make it easy to try smocking without taking on a huge project. You could add a little smocking to almost anything. And of course my mind is whirling about the possibilities. Christmas stockings, anyone? Little napkin rings?

Yeah. I've still got a half-finished quilt from last Christmas that's languishing around here someplace. But I bet I could finish four napkin rings in time for next Thursday if I stopped sleeping for the next few days.

Time-filling list

Notice I didn't call it a time-WASTING list? Here's my current list of favorite things:


++Blueprint's feature on David and Amy Butler's home.

++Dharma Trading's selection of dye-able bamboo fabrics. I'm so glad bamboo as a textile is catching on; it has many wonderful qualities.

++I've been on a mission to reduce the number of catalogs we get at our apartment, and it was taking forever to contact each company individually until Amy mentioned this site. Couldn't be easier: you log in, select the catalog you want to eliminate, enter the customer code number on the back of the catalog, and you're done!


++Hable Construction's Design Your Mantle feature. Very cute! Tsia has been playing with it and loves the "pirate" stockings. (At our house, anything with a skull and crossbones is known as a pirate.) I wish Hable would design a quilt fabric line. I'm sure it would sell phenomenally well.


++Heather Moore's wonderful tea towels. I just purchased this one (Heather's photo, above) and love it. I'm thinking Christmas gifts. Hmmm. Here's another designer who should be doing a quilt fabric line!


Crest spinbrush. I never understood why people like electric toothbrushes until I tried this. And for under $7.00?!? Battery operated, and my teeth feel so clean afterwards! Plus, it's better for the environment to replace the just head than to buy a whole new toothbrush. Just be sure to use re-chargeable batteries.


++Paper Source holiday catalog. Here's one I won't be removing with Catalog Choice. Current drools: the snaps, Xyron 900 machine (someone tell me: are they really as useful as they seem?), and that cute pinecone stamp. I guess it's time for me to get busy making our Christmas cards. Hmm, can I justify placing an order if I buy stuff for the cards?

As long as we're talking sewing tricks

Ok, here's another "am I the last to know this?" trick: when threading a needle, it really does work to wet your needle instead of your thread! I read or heard this tip a while ago and didn't believe it; then I tried it on my bumpy plane ride to Houston while sewing buttons on the samples. (Nothing like the last minute, right?) Something about capillary action drawing the thread through the hole in the needle or some such explanation. Very nifty.

Hmm. I think I may have one more trick up my sleeve.

Did I say that?

Maybe I'm the last person in the world to discover this. Or maybe not. It's just that sometimes I have trouble finding the end on a new spool of thread, and I recently realized that you can pull the two parts of the spool apart! Which makes it much easier to retrieve that elusive tail. Just fyi if, like me, you hadn't noticed this before. What will they think of next: automatic buttonholes? Oh, wait, they did that already.

Thank you so much for all your enthusiasm regarding the Oliver + S launch! I'm so pleased you like it, and I can hardly wait for the patterns to ship. On the other hand, I'm really glad they won't be ready until after the new year since the holidays are crazy and stressful enough without the additional responsibility of shipping hundreds of patterns, taking masses of new orders, etc.

Also, I've fallen way behind in responding your emails and questions, so here are two answers I've been meaning to supply:

-The Pay-toe backpack was made with a 3 Sisters for Moda fabric from their Paris Flea Market collection. It's an older collection, but you may still be able to locate it someplace (ebay?).

-The A Day in the Park Backpack Tote pattern should be ready before Christmas, and I'll make an announcement when it arrives. Sorry for the delay, those of you who have been waiting so patiently. When you're working with a new printer (not to mention preparing for a trade show, putting a company together, etc.) it takes a while to get everything in place. Plus Brooke just moved to California last week, which means she's even busier than her usual busy self.

Ok, that's it for now. Unless you want to watch Anna Maria and me giggle ourselves silly over on Quilters Buzz, that is. Yeah, if you ever want me to totally freeze from self-consciousness just put a video camera in front of me. And poor Brooke, being introduced as Oliver + S...

In which I go on and on and on...

Indeed, I'm back. Still trying to process it all and recover from the extraordinarily long days we put in while in Houston. So much happened in the six days I was there! Here's what I've got:

Quilt Market: I’m afraid I have very few photos to show you; it was too busy for me to take pictures. I took a few shots just before the show opened, and after that it was such a whirlwind that I just never had a chance to use the camera. But it was great! But I am hoping that someone else will share their photos, since I’d love to see more, myself.

Here are some of the people I met:

Amy Butler: even sweeter in person than all the wonderful things I had heard about her. So kind and thoughtful.

Anna Maria Horner: where do you get all that energy, Anna? And so nice!

Donna Wilder, former president of Free Spirit fabrics and a fount of knowledge about the quilting and fabric industries.

Eleanor Burns: lovely, soft-spoken, and generous

Gina Halladay: fun, fun! Gina, I wish we had spent more time chatting!

Heather Bailey: hey, Heather and Anna Maria are both tall, too! Great to get to know her and to learn a bit more about some of the many projects on her plate right now.

Jan "The Apron Lady" Lutz of The Threaded Pear: very generous in sharing her own experiences and knowlege. What a sweetheart!

Kathy Miller of Michael Miller fabrics: my hero; she came to our rescue with a replacement mannequin when ours was lost/stolen, and I am eternally indebted to her. Plus, she was just generally so enthusiastic about the booth and our patterns. Thanks, Kathy! Have you all see the new Michael Miller organic line? Very cool. I can't wait for it to hit stores.

Laura Gunn: so nice and fun. I really enjoyed getting to know her a bit and hope to spend time with her again sometime.

Laura Serna, who lives in downtown Houston and was phenomenally kind in receiving and keeping all my packages in advance of Market. Laura, I can't thank you enough!

Linda of Craft Apple who had some samples at the Michael Miller booth and was very kind to drop by and introduce herself. Laura, let's get together for lunch next time!

Marianne Fons: You know, Fons and Porter? She totally “gets” the younger generation of sewers and quilters, and I’m so excited because she has an apartment in NYC just two blocks from my studio. Hoping we can have lunch or something the next time she’s here.

Moda and United Notions; what a great crew! In addition to their general friendliness and enthusiasm, they are open to lots of ideas and threw an unbelievable sit-down dinner on Saturday night for something like 1,000 people. Whoa.

Nancy Zieman of Sewing with Nancy: I nearly fell over when she dropped by on the first morning.

Sandi Henderson: a lovely, perfectly eclectic fabric line with Michael Miller, and very sweet. Can’t wait for her fabrics to be available, and she has a line of children’s clothing sewing patterns in the works as well!

Tina Givens, with a gorgeous line of fabrics from Free Spirit.

Verna Mosquera of The Vintage Spool: so kind and fun; she shared lots of advice from her own experiences and was just as warm as could be. Verna also has a new line of fabrics with Free Spirit.

And I'm sure I've missed some equally amazing people. I came home with an enormous stack of business cards and even more memories of conversations, so please excuse me if I neglected to mention you in the above list.

Everyone was so nice. Store buyers, distributors, exhibitors and press contacts stopped by the booth and were so complimentary and enthusiastic, gushing about the line and the booth, sharing their own experiences, and generally showing an amazing amount of enthusiasm. Despite insanely long days in preparation for the show and during the show itself, I kept finding more energy than I knew I had as a result of all the excitement and enthusiasm around me.

Now, before I talk about the launch of the company itself I need to tell you that you’re getting a preview here. The patterns themselves will not be ready until late January, so don’t get too excited and rush off to your local quilt shop to purchase them yet, ok? Actually, I'd love it if you would ask for them at your local shops, but I just want to be sure you know that the patterns won't actually be in store until early February. We launched the company at Quilt Market so that buyers could place their orders in advance of the actual printing, but the retail launch of the patterns themselves will happen in 2008. Just a little warning.




The booth: Brooke is just so good; I never would have thought to look for those adorable little cabinets (Ikea) or to frame the pattern envelopes. The giant banner was an adventure in itself, since our original artwork was small enought that it fit entirely onto an 8 1/2" x 11" paper but was successfully blown up to 6' x 8'. In the end, the booth came together beautifully (not without a few challenges), and we received a wonderful response from everyone who visited. It just made me happy every time I rounded the corner and saw it: our own little candy box in the middle of Quilt Market. Oh, and it's difficult to tell from the photos, but the carpeting matches the walls! Love that.


Next, the handout. Every pattern envelope will have a heavy cardstock wrapper with a paper doll printed on it, which can be removed for framing or playing. Isn’t she sweet? We hired a wonderful illustrator named Dan Andreasen who, it turns out, has done many of the American Girls books. He based the doll on my own sweet Tsia and painted each of the patterns as her clothing. Each new collection will include new clothes for our “S” doll or for one of her friends, who will be added as we progress.

The paper doll idea started as a simple packaging concept and quickly evolved into a “look” for Oliver + S. The paper doll with all her outfits is the line list for the patterns, and everyone who visited the booth received their very own “S” doll to take home. And don’t worry; we saved a few for people who couldn’t attend Market!

The website. Once the patterns are printed they'll be available via quilt stores as well as on the website itself. Feel free to browse around; we'll be adding much more over time.

And I think I need to write a separate post to thank all the people who made the launch a success. I've been thanking for days/weeks/months now and truly could not have done any of this without them: Todd, Brooke, the Gibsons, Mom, Judy, every member of our families, Laurel and all my other friends who have listened and made suggestions, Joelle and Jen and all the folks at Purl, Hemant, Yun Joo, all my students, and every one of you readers, without whom I probably would never have actually had the guts to do this. Thank you so much.

It's good to be home again, and I'm actually looking forward to cleaning the apartment, shopping for groceries, etc. Yesterday I did five giant loads of laundry; it feels nice to be getting caught up on life again.