Summer seems like a dream, but I’ve been meaning to tell you about three rainy days of sewing bliss I had at Jacqueline‘s cottage at the middle of August.

In a nutshell : 5 girls, 2 dogs, 4 Berninas, 2 irons, 14 rulers, 7 pairs of scissors, 5 rotary cutters, lots of good food and sewing from morning til night.

See all the photos here. Next summer can’t come soon enough.

Here’s my improv patchwork from Sewing Summit. Half the scraps for this came from Amanda and the other half came from Lizzy, who let me & Katherine dip into her collection for some bits we wanted for our stash. I really like sewing with other people’s fabrics. It’s fun to sew with fabric that I might not normally use.

I’ve been a bit afraid of free motion quilting. Okay, ALOT afraid. So far all the machine quilting that I’ve done has been straight lines, using a walking foot. I mean, after all the time that I’ve spent putting together a quilt, the last thing I want to do is ruin it with some bad quilting. This is why I knew I had to sign up for the Free Motion Quilting class at the Sewing Summit.

Our teacher, Alison, showed us lots of examples of different styles of quilting and quilts that she had done. She gave us some tips and gave demos on her technique. Then we just had to go for it. We had quilt sandwiches to practice on. This is definitely the best way to learn. Practice on little fake mini quilt sandwiches! There was a lot of wonky stitching on my practice mini, but I really liked the look of the overlapping square pattern, so I kept practicing that pattern over and over.  Finally, I just decided to just go for it. SCARY! If you look really closely, this quilting is hardly perfect. But it was really exciting to finally let go and stop worrying about how perfect my little squares are. From a distance, it looks pretty good. Of course, now I want to do all kinds of free motion. I’m going to stick to mini quilts for now, but I can’t wait til I am ready to tackle a larger quilt. Bring it on FREE MOTION!

This year was the inaugural year for the Sewing Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah. Sewing Summit is a two day sewing & blogging conference that was held at the Little America Hotel. Since Katherine and I had such a great time at The Makerie in the spring, we knew we had to be a part of the Sewing Summit, too. It was also a chance to meet up with lots of friends IN REAL LIFE that I’ve made on the internet. Most specifically, Amanda aka Ms Mcporkchop! Amanda and I have been chatting pretty much every day for well over a year. We’ve worked on projects together, sent each other packages in the mail and video skyped with each other. You can imagine how amazing it was to meet up with her at the SLC airport and room with her & Katherine for five whole days. It was the best!!

We had flown down a few days early so that we could spend time with Lizzy House and have a chance to explore Salt Lake City. This was one lesson we learned from our Makerie trip. We didn’t schedule in time to really check out Boulder and Denver. Thursday was our shopping day. Armed with a list of local quilt and yarn shops, we headed out in our rented SUV. We took a short drive outside the city to visit Material Girls and Quilt, Etc. Both were huge shops with so many great fabrics. We had a lot of fun scouring the shelves and picking out fat quarters for ourselves. Back in SLC, we visited Piper’s Quilts, which sells both fabric and yarn. This shop is in an adorable house with quilts hanging out on the porch and a classroom upstairs. The last stop on our craft tour was Blazing Needles. It’s been a really long time since I’ve knit anything, but I always love to check out the colourful skeins of yarn. Something about this wonderful shop inspired Katherine & I to buy yarn and start knitting a cozy cowl. The owner, Cynthia, spent a lot of time with us making sure we got everything we needed and giving us advice. We left the shop feeling really inspired. I think everyone who visited that shop felt the same thing because at night huge groups of gals were huddled together in our room or the lobby knitting away.

Friday was another exploring day. This time with Lizzy and her sister, Melissa. We drove out to Sundance Resort, which is located in a gorgeous canyon surrounded by mountains. It was actually snowing in the mountains, which made them even more breathtaking. We also drove out to Park City, which is actually the setting for the Sundance Film Festival. In our wandering around we happened upon a Banksy, which totally made my day.

The Sewing Summit started early on Saturday and wrapped up Sunday afternoon. We took Handbags 101 with Bari J, Free Motion Quilting with Alison of Cluck Cluck Sew, Creative Fabric Selection with Jeni B of In Color Order, Marvelous Minis with Amanda of MsMcPorkchop Quilts, Photographing Your Creations with Vanessa of V and Co and Improv Piecing with Jessica of Urban Patchwork. That’s a lot to jam into a couple days, but I learned a lot and felt really inspired.

In particular, Jeni & Amanda’s classes were totally energized and informative. Jeni gave a really thorough presentation on how to choose dynamic colour palettes and surprised the entire class with Kona colour cards. Such a useful tool for selecting colour.  Amanda brought so many examples of her minis and they were all incredible. My favourite all time mini is her Oregon Star. I felt like I was in the presence of the Mona Lisa, seeing this mini quilt in person. Incredible. Also, you have never seen anyone as passionate about getting you excited to make mini quilts and be creative. I am pretty sure everyone in her class went straight home after the weekend and made a mini quilt. I know I did.

There were so many friends that I met at the Summit that were so fun to hang out with. I’m so happy that I made sure to take lots of ‘people’ photos on this trip. Amanda J, Amanda Hall, Jeni B, Kait, Lindsay, Angela, Deedrie & Jessica – I had so much fun with you ladies! Saying goodbye to everyone on the last day was really hard, but I hope we’ll meet up again soon!

Check out my 100+ photos from Salt Lake City and the Sewing Summit here!

I’m pretty excited that in less than two weeks I’ll be in Salt Lake City for Sewing Summit. I’m heading down with Katherine, my sewing retreat partner. We’re rooming with Amanda and hanging out with Lizzy, so now matter what we’re going to have a blast.

Sewing Summit is a 2 day sewing and blogging retreat where we’ll be taking all kinds of fun classes, like Improv Piecing, Marvelous Minis and Free Motion Quilting. I’m really looking forward to meeting so many internet friends in real life. Finally!!!

For those of you heading to the Sewing Summit, I wanted to offer you a discount in our online shop. If you place your order by October 3rd and use the code SEWINGSUMMIT, I will bring your order to the Sewing Summit and hand deliver it to you, so there will be no shipping charge.

If you’ve been thinking of treating yourself to a Cosmo floss palette, Japanese Dress book or Sparkle floss, now is the time.

Can’t wait to meet you in Salt Lake City!

June hasn’t been my favourite month of the year, that’s for sure. It seems like I’ve spent the month focusing on problems and drama rather than moving forward. The biggest setback has been losing two months worth of our inventory and sales data at the workroom. I wrote about it here. It’s the kinda thing that you hope will never happen and when it does, (despite all your back-up systems) you are crushed with helplessness. Then you need to suck it up and work for several nights until 4am, 2am, 1am to start getting things back on track. If you’re really lucky, like me, when you ask for some help there is an outpouring of kind words, receipts (in person, emailed, photographed, scanned) and offers to do data entry. Thank you. So much.

If you’re just hearing about this now, we are still hoping to get as many of our receipts or emailed invoices from April 5-June 15, 2011. Even if it’s for a spool of thread or a class you took, we’d love to have a copy. No receipt is too small. We’ve been able to rebuild so much quicker with the receipts you have sent in so far. It’s taking a while to go through all your lovely emails, but you’ll hear from us very soon. Please read more details here, if you think you can help.

After four intense days of emergency computer mayhem. We took off to Andrew’s family cottage for 3 days. Perfect timing. Quiet. Escape. Hand stitching. Food. Naps. Nature. Family time.

Last week, Jacqueline, Chris and I made our second annual road trip down to Brimfield, Massachusetts for the big Brimfield Antique & Collectibles Show. If you haven’t heard of this fair, it’s a week long, outdoor event with over 5000 vendors. The sheer scale of the show is incredible and I have yet to make it around to explore all of the fields on the mile-long stretch. If you like antiques or vintage things, even just a little bit, it is pure heaven.

Since this was our second year, I felt much more prepared in terms of what to expect, how to properly dress (two pairs of socks for the 6am start in morning, a winter hat & gloves) and which fields had vendors that I really liked. Last year we only spent a half day walking the fields, this year we planned for a day and a half and I thought it was the perfect amount of time.

Each of us had our mental list of things we were looking for. I was really just looking for some new stools for the shop. Jacqueline wanted a new patio set for her balcony and Chris is always on the lookout for jewelry and shoes. With so many incredible things to choose from and so much ground to cover, it’s good to have a strategy. When I first arrive, I like to spend a few hours by myself quickly skimming though as much of the show as possible. I focus on looking only the bigger items because I’d rather buy a few bigger pieces than lots of little bits and pieces. This is not easy! There are so many awesome tins, trinkets, accessories, and curiosities to spend your money on. By early afternoon, I had settled on a couple new desk chairs and three industrial stools. Jacqueline found her balcony set and a six foot wooden screen. Chris bought a huge glass liquor bottle for a friend. We basically filled the back of the van on the first day, so we knew that the second day would have to be focused on smaller items to fit in the cracks.

One of the things about Brimfield is that it is a week long show and and not all the fields open on the first day. Also, while most fields are free, some fields cost $5 to get into. Last year we had wondered what the difference was between the awesome stuff on the free fields and what might be behind the price of admission. On our second day, Jacqueline and I ventured into the New England Motel & Antique Market fields and were impressed right away. Most of the vendors had really great merchandising, turning their stalls and tents into cute little shops with enticing displays and vignettes. Plus all the stuff was pretty excellent too. I spent much more time on the second day looking through each booth, checking out all the interesting vintage what-nots. One of my strategies for not spending too much money is ‘shopping with my camera’. Somehow having photos of all the pretty things satisfies part of my need to own them. Weird, but true!

Next year, I hope to work up the nerve to do some people photos. There’s some great Brimfield fashion and in particular, I was loving everyone’s massive tote bags to carry all their goodies in.

You can see all my Brimfield photos here. There were some great vintage quilts and cross stitch samplers that we saw that gave me some great ideas for future projects. Last year’s post on Brimfield is here. Also, Grace has been posting her Brimfield trends here, here and here.

Can’t wait til next year!

Words and even the 100+ photos that I uploaded cannot express this past weekend at The Makerie in Boulder, Colorado. It was beyond wonderful. When I registered to go with Katherine a couple months ago, I thought it would be fun to take some cool classes in another city. I had no idea how emotionally charged, inspiring, relaxing, energizing, exhausting and full of wonder the weekend would be. OMG.

Katherine & I flew into Denver airport on Thursday morning, rented a car for the weekend and drove to check out South Broadway in Denver. Our first stop was Fancy Tiger, a seriously adorable fabric & craft shop. We couldn’t resist buying some fabric and chit chatting with the gals in the shop. Lucky for us, Fancy Tiger was participating in The Makerie and we got to hang out and get to know them over the weekend.

The entire weekend took place at Chautauqua Park in Boulder. It is located right at the base of the mountains! We literally could just roll out of bed and onto the hiking trails from the adorable cottage we stayed in. Boulder is a beautiful place and Chautauqua Park was the perfect setting for the retreat.

We had our choice of two classes for the retreat and it was pretty clear to us which ones we would take – shoe making & block printing! Yes, that’s right – shoes!! We spent Friday learning to make ballet flats that we adorned with handmade flowers and bows with Jessica Hernandez of Joyfolie. Throughout the day we learned about Jessica’s journey to creating and growing her company that started out making shoes for babies. Jessica was so generous with her skills, creativity and ‘trade secrets’ and the shoes that the class made were pretty incredible. I am pretty excited to be able to make myself some pretty party shoes out of any fabric I choose in the future.

On Saturday we took Block Printing with Lizzy House. That would be Lizzy House, the designer of Castle Peeps and the upcoming 1001 Peeps fabric collections. I was especially excited to take this class from someone that I already admired so much. We sat down to have breakfast with Lizzy on the first day and became fast friends over coffee cake, yogurt and granola. You gotta a love a girl who has a thousand great ideas, opinions and knows her astrology.

My strategy for this class was to design something really simple and geometric since my drawing skills are not my strong point. I started by drawing stars all over my blank sheet of paper. I looked over at one point and noticed a recycling bin in the corner so I drew an arrow on my page. Lizzy passed by and casually commented, ‘I like that’. That tiny bit of encouragement burst into inspiration and I started to build a little bundle of arrows. Lizzy showed me how to take my design and create a repeat from it. MAGIC!! I have always been fascinated with pattern and couldn’t believe I was finally trying it out.

After our designs were finalized, we started carving out our linoleum blocks. We took a break for lunch and regrouped to start printing out our designs on fabric. Everyone’s designs were really impressive. Some people brought tea towels and tshirts to print on. Jaime printed her blocks onto printed fabrics and the effect was really great. I chose to do white ink on Kona Charcoal Solid fabric and I love how it turned out. I’m so so proud of my arrow print. My goal is to make a dress or skirt from my printed fabric, so watch out for it!

A real highlight for me was my Makerie partner in crime, Katherine. We spent every second of the four day weekend together in perfect unison. A parking ticket (still gotta pay that!), nearly lost favourite bracelet and flight delay home hardly fazed us. We are solidly firmed up as retreat partners and friends for life.

I really can’t say enough wonderful things about my experience at The Makerie. I think everyone who was there felt just as grateful and inspired by the experience that Ali created for us. Taking time away from our everyday lives, letting go, opening up and making new connections with people face to face was a real gift. The date has already been set for next year’s event and I urge you to mark your calendar.

I just realized that ‘making shoes’ and ‘printing fabric’ are both on my ‘Crafty List of Things to Do‘!!! Double Check!

You can see all my photos here or view the slideshow below. I’m still reflecting on this weekend in Boulder and it has sparked some very exciting plans that I’ll be sharing with you very soon.

Here’s what other people are saying about The Makerie weekend!
Katherine, Jessica, Jenny, and Anne

Also! If you wanted to try your hand at Jessica’s baby shoes, there is a pattern you can buy from her website right here.

It has been exactly a month since I took a little weekend trip to NYC with my friend Marie Beath, so it’s about time that I actually got around to organizing and posting these photos!

We rented an apartment in Gramercy for our stay and it worked out perfectly. The location seemed to suit us and the bonus was that we were located a few blocks away from the Shake Shack. The Shake Shack is new to me, but is a outdoor burger joint in Madison Square Park. Known for their awesome food, they are also well known for their incredibly long line ups. You can check their website’s shack cam to check out how long the line up is in advance of heading over. Luckily since we were so close, we were able to sneak over at odd times to get our fix. Cheese fries & vanilla shake!

Quite a bit of our trip centred around food and eating all sugary things that crossed our path. I am in love with New York food trucks. They are absolutely not like anything we have here in Toronto. I’m talking about organic ice cream and coffee (Van Leeuwen), dumplings (Rickshaw), natural slush (Kelvin), and tacos (Endless Summer). There are lots more. I’d love to do a tour, just sampling all this delicious truck food.

When we weren’t eating, we actually covered lots of ground, Central Park to Soho, Chelsea to West Village to Nolita and even a day in Williamsburg. Here are a few of my favourite highlights….

• Ace Hotel : Our trip started and ended here, actually. Stump Town coffee, breakfast at The Breslin and buying Japanese socks at the Opening Ceremony shop.
• Momofuko Milk Bar : A slice of grasshopper pie and birthday cake ‘truffles’.
• Grand Central Terminal : One of my favourite buildings in New York. I just love the restored constellation ceiling.
• Eataly : Italian food emporium. This was our Friday night excitement. Seriously.
• Green Market in Union Square
• The Highline
• Art Galleries in Chelsea : My favourite street for gallery hopping is West 24th Street between 10th & 11th Avenues. This is where the Gagosian, Mary Boone, Marianne Boesky and Luhring Augustine galleries are located.
• Magnolia Bakery : We walked by at a moment when there was no line!
• Purl Soho : I got to go check out their new larger location and browse all their lovely goods
• Coclico : One of my favourite shoe shops. I lucked out with an awesome pair of grey wedge shooties
• Cafe Gitane : Side walk table, watermelon juice, goat cheese with pomegranate molasses and bread + couscous = heaven.
• Juliette in Williamsburg : Met up with Canadian gal pals, Natalie & Jen, for delicious brunch in their garden room.
• Mast Brothers Chocolate in Williamsburg : American craft chocolate. I didn’t realize, but they do tours of their factory on the weekend. This is on my list for next time!
• The Strand : I don’t know how many hours I have spent wandering the aisles of this incredible book store.
• Don Hills : Dancing at an open bar fashion week party until the wee hours of the morning. Surprise (to me) concert by Crystal Castles. Fun!

I’ve posted all my photos from the weekend here, including my daily photos of Marie Beath with her soy latte. Can’t wait for the next girls weekend!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Back in 2002, I got to see The Quilts of Gee’s Bend exhibit at the Whitney Museum in New York. Those historical quilts made quite a stir at the time. I remember walking through the exhibit marveling at the colour, the re-purposed fabrics and perfect simplicity of the composition. Little did I know that this show would help push me towards the creation of the workroom several years later.

A few days ago, I traveled down to London, Ontario to see an exhibit of more contemporary quilts from Gee’s Bend and to participate in a workshop with some of the women of Gee’s Bend. Jacqueline of Soak organized a small group of ladies for this road trip, all I had to do was get up at the crack of dawn.

We spent the morning walking through the show. Though the exhibit seemed small at first glance, it is huge on substance. These quilts were all made within the last four years by various women from the Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective and they are wonderful. I was so incredibly inspired by many of the pieces in the show.

After lunch at a local market, we joined a workshop led by four women from Gee’s Bend. Using scrap clothing, some solids and a couple prints, they led us through their techniques to create a couple blocks sewn by hand. The true highlight of the day was spending time with these lovely ladies from Alabama. Their sweet, enthusiastic and warm dispositions had us grinning and laughing, while we tried to soak up their teachings and their southern twang. The day ended with hugs and a class photo. Perfect.

I posted all my photos from the day here.

Back in October when I went to Quilt Market with Jacqueline and Chris of Soak, we were told about an awesome antique show with a textile show happening at the same time in Massachusetts. We decided right then and there that a road trip was in order to check it all out. Somehow, it all came together and last week we piled into Chris’ car and drove stateside. It’s about an eight hour drive to Sturbridge, MA where we were staying. Of course, as soon as we crossed the border we made a beeline for Target which added about two hours to our travel time.

The Sturbridge Vintage Fashion & Textile Show is a one day event that precedes the Brimfield extravaganza. Photography is discouraged during this show, so I don’t have any photos. Anyone into vintage clothing, accessories and textiles would love this show. I tended to gravitate towards the utilitarian and military items. I found a lot of inspiration in the army bags, old newspaper carrier bags and super vintage workers denim (some pairs were $3900!). I truly wish I had photos of those things, but I made some sketches for future reference. What we noticed right away was that the show was crawling with fashion and textile designers looking for inspiration for upcoming collections. These teams of designers worked their way through the show, expertly snatching up bags full of items as they went along. After all that looking I picked up a small piece of vintage navy lace for a future dress. I was saving myself for the big event the next day.

Brimfield is a week-long outdoor antique show that is fields and fields long. You have to see it to believe it. The show is so large, that you really need more than one day to go through it all properly. It opens very early in the morning. When we arrived just after 6am, some of the field parking lots were almost full! It was a really frosty morning. For the first couple hours walking around, I wore my gloves and worried about my toes. (Next year: two pairs of socks) The sheer volume of stuff was incredible. Anything you might collect, there was tons of it. Again, the place was crawling with design teams, set designers, and interior designers snapping up the good stuff in bulk. Everywhere you went, there were piles of stuff with SOLD signs on it being held for Anthropologie, Polo, Urban Outfitters, etc by 7am in the morning.

It was kind of heavenly to walk around outdoors and just look at all that amazing old stuff and the people watching was just as good. Apparently at least one of the Olsen twins was there. Brimfield is a huge production. There are outdoor ATMs installed all over the place (How convenient!), young boys walking around with dolly’s that will porter your purchases to your car, and stands that will handle the shipping of your goods home for you. Not to mention the food. Good food too! We had a Pilgrim sandwich (roast turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce) and kettle corn. Delicious. Next year I’m making a stop at the pizza fried dough vendor.

I tried to be very wise about my purchases. I opted to not buy lots of little things – wooden vintage spools, old tins, kitchenware – they were all so tempting. I focused on making a substantial purchase. Keeping in mind that we only had a car eliminated a lot of larger items. In the end I found these huge industrial cast iron table legs that come apart to transport flat. I’ve been shopping around for a large table for the backyard at the workroom, so these were absolutely perfect. I’m going to look into making a huge table top with old grey barn board for it. (hello outdoor classes!) I also picked up ten wooden parts boxes for displaying/storing things around the shop. Jacqueline and Chris picked up some really great vintage quilts, hats, and side tables. I think we all could have bought much much more.

In lieu of buying everything I wanted to, I took lots of photos and posted them all here.

We have decided this should definitely be a yearly tradition. Next year we’re doing two days at Brimfield and driving a van! CAN’T. WAIT.