I don’t have a problem with the occasional, lovingly placed tchotchke to enhance one’s decor.

Wait. Maybe I do. This should not be considered an enhancement under any circumstances, anywhere. I don’t care if they paid you to take it and it has a Tiffany logo encrusted on the bottom.

But it’s the rooms decked out for a drop-in House Beautiful magazine shoot that really get me. Somehow someone has replaced the need for that lived-in look with the ready-to-entertain-the-Queen-look. I’ve seen home “tablescapes” nearly this elaborate in blogland. In my house, the dishes would just get knocked over by the cats and dust would slowly change that spring green to a muddy-mildew shade.

Decorating for decorating’s sake is so predictable! I mean no one should have 100 pillows on their bed, right? To me it’s especially ironic to have to maneuver around a pile of authentic flour sack/Belgian linen/reproduction nineteenth century pillows that will only end up on the floor. Who has time for that? I just want to curl up with Letterman and snooze. The sooner the better.

Of course Pottery Barn wants you to buy a pillow in every size and color. Have you ever noticed the piles of artfully arranged, grossly overpriced, faux, sea debris they try to stick you with season after season? Pillows are decorating loss leaders, people! Just like cheap milk.

PB’s 100% faux {that’s French for fake} sea debris. 

In the decor blog world, when the word “vignette” became synonymous with something that had to be “changed out” with every season or fifth day on the calendar, I got worried that those who might actually have to use their income to pay their mortgage would have to resort to sticks in a vase, to-be-returned library books and Aunt Esther’s ashes or be left behind. Ummmm.

And for those of us who depend on the direction of others to get us through the day, thankfully there’s what I call bossy decor, or BD. BD steps in when we aren’t quite sure which way to turn. For instance, it’s so helpful to tell your friends and family a little about what they are expected to actually do in each room.

Not sure that it’s legal, but this sign requires passers-by to empty their pockets to assist with the monthly mortgage payment.

Apparently one must wait here for transport to, likely, the next stop on the home tour.

Placing this gem in the son’s apartment would guarantee you would never have to worry about your son getting married. Ever.

In conclusion, while I can understand the need to be camera-ready day-in and day-out should the unannounced prospective home buyer or Architectural Digest photographer swing by, I can’t live like that. I like my place best when it’s sporting that lived-in, dump everything on the counter until I need to cook again, wind-swept look.

Oh, and if you get a chance to cook this weekend, be sure and try this pancake recipe! It’s the best I’ve found….yum!

I so dug that puffy shirt, but the vest? C’mon. Loved it! Made one in every color. Yep. Crochet was cool to me in the late 60′s. I was a Martha Stewart in training. But something else about this picture caused quite a fuss amongst my family today. See any resemblance?

I had really never noticed it before but this is my 27-year-old daughter. Accounting for the age difference of about 12 years between the photos, she really does look like me, at least me at 15.  But does she follow in my thread clippings-filled crafty footsteps, you ask? If softball, kickball, hiking, snowboarding, adventurous living, camping and aerial acrobatics count, I’d say she’s got crafty cornered — and I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Happy Mother’s Day to moms everywhere who can totally relate to this cartoon that conjures up some memories for me!

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And a special Happy Mother’s Day to my daughter-in-law, Krista, who this year is celebrating for the very first time!

It only took  a couple of hours to pick up a t-shirt, rifle through my fabric stash for some coordinates and sew up something blog {and granddaughter, Lucy} -worthy. I think I made it happen, people! Check it out!

Your standard-issue TarJay t-shirt in a very au courant color with a little ruffle pizzaz added. Nice, but nowhere near as nice as it could be when combined with some crafty magic. Voila! I bring you, as it’s referred to in the book……….the Flirty Shirt!

 …….Wait? ……….What? ………..It’s not a shirt you say? Very observant, grasshopper. It is NOT a shirt. Why? Because that ruffle got in the way of chopping off the bottom at precisely the 1 1/2″ mark below the armpit, where it should have been chopped if it were to be a shirt. {When I shopped for the t-shirt, I hadn’t read ahead in the book, therefore missed the part about the 1 1/2″ chopping off point.} “No worries,” I said. “I’ll made it into a dress!” And so I did!

The dress required two fat quarters and 1/2 yard of 44″ cotton fabric. Along with the $5 t-shirt, I have under $12 invested. A quick, easy and custom project perfect for little Lucy’s first spring!

Please join these other fun bloggers for their turn on the tour. Some are offering book give-a ways so go check them out!  Sew Pretty T-Shirt Dresses would make a great addition to your sewing library!

The contest takes place on Pinterest and one of the winners will be picked based on the number of repins. If you see one of my designs you like and you’re on Pinterest, please repin (vote for) it! Below I’ve added direct links so you can get to the image and pin directly. The top three choices, made by the judges, will not involve repins but selections that the judges feel are the best designs submitted. As far as I can tell, you can vote for as many designs as you’d like.

1) Zinnias

2) Daffodils

3) Blue/red flowers

4) Wisteria in a vase

5) Pearl Hexies

6) Knotty Columns

7) Pink Pencils!

8) Flower Free-For-All

9) Wellies

10) Gingham and Dots

My favorite of my newest designs? I do like this one a lot. Mainly because I’m truly not an artist and can’t draw a straight line to save my life, but Adobe Illustrator makes me feel like I almost am!

I do like the colors in this one a lot. The fun thing about Illustrator is you can recolor your image almost instantly.

Totally changes the look, right? Took me maybe five seconds.

These are fun. Pink pencils!

The sample board above makes it a little tough to see them up close and personal so here’s a better look, before I decided to flip two of the pencils around:

I really enjoyed designing this one. It forced me to draw upon my memory bank for the names of flowers. When I came up empty after a dozen or so, I resorted to the dictionary! And I LOVE playing with fonts!

If you click on this one and look closely, you’ll see it’s a basic gingham pattern with a dot pattern overlay. Easy!

I absolutely LOVE playing with Adobe Illustrator and if you’ve ever had the desire to dip your toe in the water, let me know and I’ll give you some great resources to get started! Thanks for reading and voting!

You can view the other entries here:

Direct links to my patterns:

1) Zinnias

2) Daffodils

3) Blue/red flowers

4) Wisteria in a vase

5) Pearl Hexies

6) Knotty Columns

7) Pink Pencils!

8) Flower Free-For-All

9) Wellies

10) Gingham and Dots

Have you been following the escapades (or lack thereof) of poor, misunderstood Grumpy Cat? Cracks me up every time!

Do you like gingham-style like I like gingham-style? No silly dancing involved and three sizes of checks with tons of colors! Riley Blake DesignsHave you been following along {or participating in} Lori Holt’s Bee in My Bonnet Row Along? She’s almost finished and I have to say this is the most adorable quilt ever! I’m still entertaining the thought of joining up. In the meantime the creativity of all those quilters who are rowing along is amazing!

Couldn’t have said it better myself. I wish this for everyone!

And finally, I’ve seen a lot of uses for a laundry basket that are equally as important as collecting dirty laundry, but this one beats them all! I tried it with nine month-old Lucy over the weekend and it was amazing! Everything stayed put, including her!

Have a great week, everyone.

**Unfortunately, all images do not have the proper attributions on Pinterest. If you happen to know of any I missed, please let me know and I’ll add it. Thank you.

Lots of polka dots, stripes, bright pink, lime green, randomly place triangles, a touch of turquoise and checks.

Wrinkly pink bows and all!

Have a great weekend everyone.

As usual, the lighting is bad today for a good photo but I think you get the gist. I’ve used navy, lime green, and turquoise dots accented with fuchsia bows. The binding will be a black and white stripe. Any ideas about who or what my design inspiration might be? Hint:  I have approximately 20 handbags in my closet with a certain label inside. I also have notepads, a couple of iPhone covers, crystal goblets, an iPad case, small leather goods and reading glasses with the logo. She’s definitely not afraid of color. I use the term “she” but she used to be a she, now she’s part of a publicly traded conglomerate.

I should have this quilt finished up this week, but in the meantime browse this Pinterest board to see where she gets her inspiration.

And wouldn’t this make an adorable quilt?

Or maybe this?

I quickly wrapped it up this morning because I heard we were supposed to have sunshine and we do! A cold, but sunny, perfect picture taking day!

I added hand quilting with some beautiful pearl cotton.

And rick-rack to my machine sewn binding. I love it!

I used leftovers to piece the binding.

Isn’t the checkered backing fun?

There’s a bit of history that goes along with this quilt. One morning, maybe a month ago, I was cruising along on the interwebs, minding my own business, and I spotted the website, Connecting Threads. I had heard of the site but never visited before. I started looking at their fabrics and was immediately intrigued because the website was beautiful, easy to maneuver, had lots of great color and wasn’t too overwhelming. Nice. But wait! What’s this? The price PER YARD of quilting cotton was $5.96? And sale prices as low as $2.96? Really? “What’s the catch?” I thought. The fabrics were adorable and unique. I clicked on a collection that caught my eye, Hello Sunshine, and thought it was just about the cutest thing ever. The story behind this fabric collection is that it is the result of a contest Connecting Threads conducted for the designer of their next collection. I read the story about the winner, Virginia Odien, and was so excited for her! Even though the contest had taken place months ago, I fired off a quick email of congratulations and immediately ordered a few yards. Okay, who am I kidding? At those prices, I ordered several yards.

Virginia couldn’t have been nicer as I asked a lot of questions, mostly because she works in Adobe Illustrator (she’s self-taught!) to design her fabrics and that’s what I had been working in as well and hadn’t had much of a chance to “talk” to other fabric designers. We’ve had a great time getting to know each other and talk shop. She has an amazing body of work and does quite well on Spoonflower, where you can purchase the hundreds of fabrics she’s designed, many of which are Spoonflower contest winners.

So, as I assembled this quilt, I thought a lot about the fabric designer who created the drawings that culminated in a collection that resulted in a contest that made the fabric available for me to purchase and stitch together into a quilt. A couple of creative gals simply doing what they love.

Linking up to Finish it Fridays!

They’re macarons! Not macaroons {coconut cookies} but genuine French Macarons ……… but of course.

I’m happy to report of the three groups preparing macarons in the class, ours were the only ones that turned out. You can see that the green batch has peaks. There should be no peaks.

Ours proudly stood up on their little “feet” and held the buttercream and chocolate ganache fillings perfectly.

They were easy to make and even easier to consume. Maybe one of these days I should whip up another batch?

Oui?

My second quilt of the new year.

Another quick one to piece (large nine-patch) but I decided to FMQ and that’s where the hours can pile up. This is my second complete FMQ quilt but the first I’m showing off. We won’t talk about the real first.

I decided to do a random squiggly pattern.

This time around I was much more relaxed. I realized I had pulled the fabric toward me on the first and I was essentially fighting it all the way. With this one, I pushed the fabric away and had much more success.

I also learned to put the pedal to the metal and speed up the machine. It worked so much better!

Then I did a scalloped border using my walking foot and a built-in scallop stitch.

I think I will probably always bind my quilts using the faux piping technique. It goes so fast and that contrast adds so much.

So how’s the weather where you are? If you’re basking in the sun today tell me all about it!

Only 56 days until spring!