Portabellopixie

"Where can I get the whole thing Sandi?"

That's a question I get all the time.  The answer is Caroline. (OK-just peeking at her blog and seeing her eyes brings a goofy smile to my face, this woman is fun to be around!)  Caroline shot me an email this morning telling me that her stock of Farmers Market is in her shop now and she is offering a 10% off coupon through July 23rd on the prints.  Just enter the code FARMERS at checkout.   It seems Farmers Market is selling out kinda quickly (blush) and I believe it's on backorder right now, so get it while you can!  Caroline is good about keeping an entire line in stock, it looks like she has the Lei print from Ginger Blossom in stock right now too.  (Another question I get a lot!)  Just to refresh your memory..

And then just for comparison and because I think this kind of thing is so interesting, here are a few shots of the line from a few months back during I think the second strike offs.  You can see how it gets tweaked along the way and how a some pieces get cut.  Enjoy!  :)

 

Win a Ginger Blossom Quilt!

Dana over at Old Red Barn is giving away a gorgeous quilt made from Ginger Blossom.  It looks like a really fun giveaway and I whole heartily plan on entering under 50 code names to better my chances at winning.  Or does that fact that I designed the fabric make me ineligible to enter?  :)  Hop on over and enter!

I'll be back to finish up my 30 days of pictures soon-I have good reason for my absence.   All will be shared soon!

Portabellopixie Patterns - Claire

I suppose we could unveil another pattern today.. :)  Claire, meet everyone.  Everyone meet Claire!  Everything in this pattern was a spin off of this dress.  I had people email me wanting to know if there would be a pattern for it and I had initially said no.  But Eliza loves that dress!  She wore it constantly until it became too small and then I made another one.  I decided that if my little girl loved it so much, then just maybe another little girl would too.

From there, I thought that the bodice was such a good universal style and would lend itself to some peasant tops very well so I threw in a Peasant top and Peasant dress.  And from there I thought that it would complete the pattern to have a jumper style dress to wear over the peasant top or dress.  And then I thought I'd made a different style apron so you could mix and match the whole thing.  (You're going to get a lot of that with my patterns.)  With that being said, here is the line up for the Claire Pattern:

The knot straps on the square dress have a pretty petal shaped end that is also the ends of the straps on the apron dress.  The Peasant dress on the very right is the perfect length to fit under the Petal Knot Dress.  The Peasant top is super cute with frayed jeans.  Have fun.  :)

My Shirring Tutorial is also being printed in the pattern to have on easy reference.  :)  You'll notice that the peasant bodices and the ruffles are sewn with a rolled or marrow hem.  (The crafting community calls it a rolled hem but apparently the *industry* term is marrow hem so I'm calling it by both.)  All of my patterns are designed for this because it makes a cleaner finished product, but I realize that not everyone has a serger.  Instructions are given in the pattern how to do a turned hem if you would like.

So sit tight!  We're almost there-just waiting on printers at this point.  It will be a matter of weeks before you can get your hands on them.  And I still have 3 more to share, so I'll space it out over that time.  :)

I also want to send you guys over to Jennifer's!  She helped out with a bunch of the photography for the patterns.  If you don't recognize the kiddo in the picture, she probably took the picture.  I've been under deadline after deadline and she has been amazing to work with.  I highly recommend her if you are needing something modeled, photographed or just want to talk to a fun person.  We came to find out that Dustin and her family actually lived in the same town and were in the same church for a few years.  Her mom knows Dustin's mom and they went to the same school!  What a small world..

 

Pretty Little Flowers

A few months ago as I was picking Eliza up from school, the teacher stopped me to ask if I would be willing to think up a few craft ideas that they could do with the kids as Mother's Day gifts.  Ooh hoo hoo..my kind of fun.  They settled on a simple yoyo flower pin and asked if I would be willing to come in the day of the craft and help out.  Montessori is usually pretty "stay away and let the kid learn" so I jumped on the opportunity!  That was a fun day.  I was amazed that the skill of sewing with a needle came very easy to the three and four year olds.  Montessori teaches living skills and "up, down" was something they knew.  I remember trying to explain "in and out" and having this gorgeous little girl look at me like I was speaking Alien.  So I showed her and she exclaimed "oh! you mean up, down."  I sat there dumbfounded, clearly out explained by a 4 year old.  Anyway, it was a hit and up there is the one that Eliza, my 3 year old at the time, made for me.  :)

On other flower news, I recieved an email from Susan who created an etsy treasury yesterday out of items created out of my water lily (otherwise know as warter lily) print.  The treasury is so pretty!  I had to have her explain to me what exactly it was, and basically it's a way to have items with a similar theme / fabric / color recognized.  At least that's how I'm understanding it.  So go take a look at the pretty creations!

The State of Things

So this is how our neighbor brought home my little boy the other day.  Don't ask me-I have a solid alibi of being in bed with a serious case of the "kill me nows."  This one falls on Dustin.  Ha!  Unfortunately she was not in the "LOL-how funny!  What a cute little naked boy" mode either.  Hope none of you find this offensive.  I promise he won't follow your cat over the fence.  :)

So with the holiday and the sickies-I decided to give the blog and computer a break over the weekend.  I came back today to an overflowing inbox of truly important emails and absolutely no spare time to answer them.  I picked up the phone and hired an assistant.  Just like that.  Well not quite-we've been thinking about it for a while and the load has finally reached breaking point so here we are!  The best part about all this is that my new worker bee is my sister.  She only agreed to take the job if I dubbed her Pepper Pots though.  You guys are going to Lo-oove her!  She is hilarious, (this is the stand up comedian sister) and an excellent writer.  Which is good because she is going to be helping out with customer service.  She's also a starving honor roll college student so this is good for everyone.  Maybe she should guest write on the blog sometime soon..hmm..

All right-the posting will continue.  I have lots of pretty, non-naked pictures sitting in the line up.  :)   

Just plain Gorgeous

I've mentioned that Dustin and I are planning on relocating to Oregon and that we stayed after market for a little site seeing.  Here is one of the reasons we are so enamored with the state.  This was driving down a random road.  Stuff just growing there.  Not because anyone planted it-just because it's growing there!  (We don't get a lot of that around here.  ;)

And this-oh how beautiful.  I took this right out of the car window LOL.  It reminds me of the opening scenes in The Princess Bride.  I always said that I would find a place that looked like that to live when I grew up.  Well, I think I'm grown and guess I need to find that place!

Strawberries

My memory is particularly sensitive to smell.  And when it comes to strawberries, I don't think there is another smell that brings back more to me.  (Maybe Old Spice but that's a different story.)  I remember picking strawberries in my Grandma's backyard patch for years and years.  Hundreds and hundreds of bright red juicy tasteful nuggets.  So I knew that when we planted our garden, there would have to be a strawberry patch.

Every morning, my kiddos run out and search out the berries that have turned red enough to be picked.  I used to try and ward them off so we would be able to actually pick enough to make shortcake or something, but not anymore.  They love it-and I remember how happy I was being given free reign in my Grandma's strawberry patch so I let them at it.  They run back in every morning with their little squishy hands full of berries and we wash them off and they eat them for breakfast with some toast or cereal.  Some really good new memories in the making.  :)

On other notes, I just received an email from the crew at Better Homes and Gardens telling me that they have started a new blog - Better Blog.  They were writing to tell me that they were linking my blog-how flattering!  I adore their magazine and know thier blog will be chock full of inspiring posts so I thought I would pass it along to you guys.  :)

Fabric Lanterns

More Market prep projects!  Now you are finally seeing why the last few months have been a bit project-less around the blog here.  I guess that's the one good thing about dry spells, the flood finally has to open. 

I had an insane amount of people asking about these at market-if I would do a pattern / how to make them.  They are soooo easy that I could never feel good about charging for a pattern, but I'll see about doing a tutorial.  Maybe when the website goes live, which will be soon.  I know I keep saying that, but really-soon is coming.  For the patterns too.  Thank you for being patient with me - one woman shows can be difficult but as time goes on, things just get easier and faster. 

One day maybe I'll go into the hours that launching a big project entails but I would have to seriously think about it for a while.  I wonder how many hours a designer puts into a line of fabric.  It would be different for everyone, but it's a huge job all around.  Maybe I'll have to take a tally with my friends (all listed over there on the right in the links) and come up with an average.  It would be interesting that's for sure.  Ok, tangent over, back to pictures.  I must say, I'm really loving this post a day business.  I feel like we're finally getting good and caught up with each other! 

My tidbit for the day-a link to an interview I did a while back.  Natasha of Creative Nachos (how fun of a name is that?) had asked me a couple months ago if I would be interested in doing an interview.  I had just finished doing a few others and thought I had pretty much covered the basics so I told her that if she came up with some truly unique questions then I would love to do it!  She totally delivered and I loved answering these questions.  We talk about music (if you hadn't noticed, I kinda like it).  I even touch on the surface of money a bit, which I know everyone is so curious about.  I also talk (or gush) about one other designer that I just have goo goo eyes for and think is just about the nicest person ever.  Go read for yourself to find the answers to these scintillating tales.

Farmer's Market Fabric / Ginger Blossom Boxes

First off, it looks like Farmer's Market is starting to crop up for sale!  I'll include links to different places when you get your stock in if you shoot me an email!

The pictures today are more of my "Market Prep" crafting.  Do you ever have a night that you just remember being so great?  The night I made these was one of those nights.  My family was safely tucked away in bed, the house was clean.  I settled down to watch the Jane Austen Book Club (I love Emily Blunt!) and get some work done.  This was an easy craft to do while not paying too much attention to my hands.  I spray painted the inside of the boxes (light layers over primer) and attached the fabric mostly by spray adhesive.  I used a little Mod Podge around the lid, but for the most part used spray adhesive because I didn't want them to have that "glued on" look that you usually get with Mod Podge.  Good project, good movie, good night.  :)

They Just Don't Last Long Enough.

The left side of our long driveway is graced by a beautiful long raised flower bed.   It has a bounty of flora that was already here when we got here, and is also home to my Mother's Day plants.  It's a happy place.  :)

Sandi