little bit of liberty

Carol sent me wonderful news - Target is going to be carrying lines by Liberty of London in their stores on March 14th!! My calendar is marked.

In the meantime I have these to tide me over:

Trish sent me a yard of this for Christmas. I love having a friend who travels to London on business.

These were made around the holidays to hold back hair that I'm growing out again.

(The bobby pin blanks are from Hobby Lobby. The covered button blanks were thrifted, but are available everywhere. The Liberty scraps are from the fabulous rummage sale I went to with Poppy.)

While I was at it, I made a couple charms for myself.

(All the jewelry making supplies are from Hobby Lobby. The buttons are doll sized. I used a paper glaze, but think it needs a few more coats to look right.)

I plan to be waiting for the doors to open March 14th.

thrifty thursday - part three

You knew I wasn't leaving there without a little fabric, right?

A few repros(mostly fat quarters):

Some wool for felting, a yard of cordorouy and a floral lawn to make summer tops for the girls:

A mix of vintage and new that just appealed to me:

Some are scraps, some are fq's.

And the find that set my heart aflutter -

Liberty of London scraps. Each print has about a half yard of fabric in it, cut into 6" strips along the grain.

What to make? Headbands, covered buttons, little pouches...

library tote

I'm still working away on projects even though it's been quiet around the blog. For some reason, I've lost my routine here and can't seem to figure out a good time to catch up and post.

I'm trying to work through projects that have sat half finished or are just piles of fabric pulled for a reason, but never started. The pajama top pillow seemed to give me a little momentum.

This one was next:

Nothing exciting, just a basic, very large tote. There are actually two of them. I needed some large bags for trips to the library that will fit oversized picture books and the puzzles that Trixie likes to check out. They also needed to be very smooshable so I could cram them into my purse or keep one inside the other when we don't need to use both. For that reason, they aren't structured with any interfacing, but they are lined with some pockets inside for the paper receipts the library gives at checkout. Those usually wind up lost or wadded into a ball at the bottom of whatever other bag I was using and then I miss due dates too easily.

The fabric was bought at a garage sale in the neighborhood. In fact, the sale was put on by the people selling Jan's new home. The lining is out of the stash and the webbing was from the quilter's garage sale. (It seems I've made the straps too long. They're perfect for slinging the bags over my shoulder even with large items poking out of the top, but the bags drag on the ground if I just hold them in my hand. I'll probably be grateful for them in the winter when I have to get them over the bulk of my coat.)

I do have some fabric left with the following letters intact:

scrap 1- x,y

scrap 2- e,f,g,j,k,l,o,p,q

scrap 3- same as scrap 2

scrap 4- x,y,z, x,y,z, a,b,c, a,b,c,e,f,g,h,d,e,f,g,h,d,e,f,g(i-m are on this scrap, but there is very little seam allowance below them.)

I loved this fabric when I saw it and hate to see any of it go to waste. If you want any of the scraps, I'm happy to mail them off. Just email me with what pieces interest you and your address. One other note about the fabric - I'm not sure what the actual fiber content is, but I know for sure it isn't 100% cotton.

Edited to add: The scraps have been claimed :)

have a cuppa

Have you seen these travel mugs? You're able to put pictures or kids' artwork inside them. I picked one up last winter wanting to put some of my favorite fabric in it.

Prints like these:

Problem is - fabric is thicker than paper and not very stiff. It definitely doesn't want to go into the very narrow space of that travel mug. Starch didn't work. Interfacing would make it thicker. The solution finally hit me a few weeks ago - color copies of the fabric:

Three of my favorite feedsacks are on the left. The fabric on the right is a Japanese print given to me by Jan. I think some of my liberty fat quarters would be great for this too. You can't see it in the picture, but the copier (just our HP home printer) even picks up some of the fabric's texture. The colors aren't exact though and the very nice texture of the Japanese print showed up the least. However, I think they're a great representation of the originals.

How could I not smile drinking my coffee out of that? I wonder how I can get the string quilt on the copier...

vintage fabric from the states

Glenn and I spent a wonderful afternoon at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Friday. We had an outdoor lunch watching planes practice for the air and water show, a guided tour from a friend, and of course, a trip to the gift shop. I found the book in the title while browsing and had to bring it home when I opened the pages and saw the following:

Feedsacks from my collection!

Not the same colorway, but thrilling just the same.

Definitely worth picking up if you're a vintage fabric junkie like me. It's all about the pictures though - the writing is in Japanese.

like sorting buttons

There's a down side to having a great year of thrifting. Somehow it all needs to find a place to live once you get it home.

I returned home from vacation two weeks ago to piles and piles of things I've acquired over the past few months. Most had no place to go. Even with all the studio moves and reconfigurations I've gone through this year (which is why I've yet to post pictures), there just wasn't much room or a good system in place for new things. It seems I'd carve out enough space for what I had in the stash and then when I brought home new fabric I was back in the same boat.

Two things have happened over the past month. First, the kids have lost more space in the basement to my crafting. I really did feel some guilt over it at first. When they saw the pile of toys I was thinking of selling or donating though, not one of them flinched. Ellie and Glenn flat out told me to get rid of them. I then discovered that when I moved things out to make more room for crafting, they actually wanted to be down there with me a lot more. Amazing what a little room to breathe will do for a space.

Second, I purged my own toys, I mean fabric. Ruthlessly. Two large laundry baskets of fabric and a few other odds and ends have made their way to my quilting group for others to use. (One quilter's trash...) It seemed only fair to bring what I didn't need to the place where I've gotten so much.

That's left a lot of room for what I'll really use and some room to grow. Now that I think about it, that's where last week went - my basement - weeding, sorting, putting away.

That part of the process took a lot longer than I anticipated. How do you sort your stash? By fabric type, color, potential uses, amount of yardage? It starts out innocently enough, but there's always a pile that doesn't seem to fit into any particular category nicely. I've gone mostly with color, but even that threw me when I got to the odd greens - or are they more blue - or aqua? And what about this lavendar/periwinkle one? Do I put the solids in their own pile away from the prints? I think I've got something that will work for me in the end. More importantly, there's room at the top of each pile so I can get fabric out and put the pile back neatly. The key to keeping it organized isn't about shoving it away, it's about ease of retrieval.

The buttons are from the garage sale. Luckily, I already have a pretty good system in place for storing those. They're where they belong now.