in love!

yes, i’m in love with billy. but i am also totally in love with this amazing portrait that my good friend miranda mueller did for billy and i for our wedding! it is absolutely awesome, and we can’t wait to get it framed!

what a multi-talented woman! we miss her since she’s moved up to oregon with her hubs, but we keep tabs on her via her blog Pocket Pause. careful, though…you’ll want to move to farm country, start making your own soap and felting homespun wool!

thanks, lady!!! <3

pictures on!

so, my family used to have a tradition where, when a baby was born, each member of the extended family that was willing and able would embroider a single square. it could be anything they wanted! winnie the pooh, rainbows, anything the desired. my grandmother would then collect the squares and quilt them into a baby blanket for the newborn baby. 

i named mine “pictures on.” i was a very literal child, and the blanket, well, it did, in fact, have pictures on it. i carried mine with me for YEARS, taking it wherever i would go. my mom and dad used to tell me who made each square, and i loved hearing about those people. 

i decided that this is a tradition that should be started up again. when my lovely friend rachael told us that she was pregnant (check out her recent and beautiful baby shower here!) it was the perfect opportunity to begin the tradition again! i couldn’t do it myself, though, so i immediately talked to christine. and it began!

first step? get the ladies together, gather up the fabric, and get everyone embroidering (and drinking wine!) the hardest part was having a ladies night and not inviting rachael…but i think it proved to be worth it. we all brought fabric to use in the quilt, so there is provenance even with the unembroidered squares. mary brought some fabric she got in africa, and i contributed some squares from my grandmother’s collection of fabric.

it was pretty fun, because none of us had done a tremendous amount of embroidering—-many none at all! but we got great patterns, some from sublime stitching, a fabulous austin-based resource for fun embroidery, and went to town.

that was the easy part…then came the quilting! if it weren’t for christine and her do-or-die you-tube video tutorial watching self, this quilt never would have happened. she cut the squares to size and arranged them all with a careful eye. she paid a lot of attention to color and balance and worked with the fabrics that we had all chosen. she did a great job composing the top of the quilt!

i then inherited the front piece, with squares all sewn together and a white border, the batting that goes in the middle, and a piece of green fabric for the backing that we decided we didn’t really like that much. i went to joanne’s and hancock in search of new fabric for the backing, but had very little luck finding a baby-friendly print that wasn’t disgustingly cute or pink! so i went to stitch lab, on south first, for the first time, in search of a cute, yet sophisticated fabric for the back of the quilt. they had everything amazing you would need. i really love that place, and will definitely be back. it’s a bit more expensive than one of the big fabric stores, but sooooooo worth it!.

then came the quilting. here’s where i panicked. i was so afraid, having never done this before, that i was going to mess up (a ruder word came to mind) everyone’s hard work with one bad seam! but i jumped in, and went for it. that’s my style—impatient and fearless! well, 10 seams in, it didn’t look that great…so i spent an hour painstakingly removing all of those seams. i would do it right, by god, if it was the last thing i did. it was worth it. i learned a lot that first go-round, and figured out a better order in which to sew the seams, and a better pinning technique.

so the only thing left to do was to bind the quilt! this is where you create the edge, sewing and folding fabric around from the back to the front, enclosing the batting, and “sealing” up the quilt. it makes it look finished and creates a border, and i had never done this in my life. but christine sent me a great you-tube tutorial, and off i went!

it turned out great! it’s not perfect, but this quilt represents a group of ladies coming together to hand-make a blanket for one of our great friends. and we’re all so proud of it!

i lost my pictures on when i was about ten years old, i think. we were on a road trip and had stayed at a hotel in atlanta (i think i’m remembering this correctly) and about an hour back on the road again, i realized that i left it at the hotel. we tried to call, but to no avail. it was heartbreaking. i loved that damn blanket. 

but each blanket has a life of its own, and its own stories. i hope rachael and brockett’s little one loves this quilt. it sure was fun making it!

a baby shower for rachael!

last weekend we had a baby shower for my delightfully pregnant (glowing) friend rachael! she’s a lovely lady and we wanted to honor her with a lovely shower!

(and apologies for the strange focal issues with my point & shoot, i think my very hip camera decided to become a tilt-shift camera without my permission…i’ll have to see if i can coax it back to normal focus operations…)

i have to give out some definite props to heidi for being one of the best hostesses i know. she’s all about the details! like vintage lace trim garlands, mason jars of water with lemons in a galvanized steel bucket with red and white paper straws…those kinds of details!

all the girls really came together to put on a beautiful evening of food and tiny gifties and an amazing quilt that we all put together (more on that later!) then, the gentlemen showed up on motorcycles, some of them barefoot (billy, i love you!), and we all sat around the pool and celebrated together. 

it was a lovely evening and it was another reminder of how lucky i am to be surrounded by fantastic and amazing people. this is definitely the village i would like to raise my child (when we have one! don’t read into this…)  

my friend dave is the business

david “hawk” hawkins, a.k.a. LA Dave, has been busting his butt out in LA, and has been putting together some pretty rad projects. evidenced here. the latest masterpiece is the new video for the band with whom he has been rocking: Bullet and Snowfox. their song “Supergirl” is actually really fucking catchy, and they put a shakeface montage in the video. i instantly love it.

check it out:

my dad is cute.

he just bought a bracelet from our etsy shop. on our best day of sales so far… to celebrate, i imagine! 

{love you, daddy!}

alright, people, i need your help!

i have a very serious question for my fellow blog/internet/design nerds! i am in search of the best bookmark organization tool. since i’ve found myself with a career in social media marketing, of sorts, it’s time for me to get my shit together! 

i have bookmarks to approximately 500 different sites, and would probably have more if organizing them wasn’t such a nightmare!!

so, i’ve heard about delicious, and i’ve played around with it a little bit. they now have a google chrome add-on, which looks pretty legit. but i wanted to take a poll and see if there are any programs or add-ons that my savvy friends can recommend! at least before i start re-organizing my internet life…

william and clayton are the business.

for the launch of this season of cinema east, taking place at the french legation every other sunday all summer, we decided at the last minute that there really ought to be a poster series. i mean, it’s a perfect excuse to design unique posters for independent movies! enter william knopp and clayton armstrong. with little time left to spare, they offered to collaborate on a poster series for the event, creating one poster for each movie. considering they intended on hand illustrating and then hand screen-printing each poster, i wasn’t sure if they were going to pull it off…

but they did! and the posters are fantastic! here’s the poster for the first film of the series, winnebago man:

last week they debut this poster, and the poster for the film screening that night, the happy poet. they are currently finishing up the third in the series for this sunday, when wuss will be playing in the park.  

i think it was especially cool last week when the producer of the happy poet, david harstein, got really excited about the posters. he brought over members of the cast, talked at length with william and clayton, and is puchasing a few of the posters himself!

they’re really very special—-each one is done in an edition of 35, they’re signed and numbered, and they’re available for $20 each! come to the films! buy some food from hope vendors! and get a poster! see you sunday?