I’ve often thought of how much she knew, family stories and recipes and sewing tricks.  She was a exceedingly practical person and it makes me sad to think that over 90 years of that knowledge is no longer here.  And while this is just a part of life that we all have to accept, the care package my mom sent me this week bridged that gap a little bit.

Grandma was a passionate sewer.  Even though it was a necessity, it was also a pleasure to her. The last time I saw her, she told me that the neighbors were always wondering why her light was on all into the night (as she burned the midnight oil at her machine).   The package my mom sent was a treasure trove of old patterns for children’s clothes, quilt squares she sewed but never made into a quilt, quilt patterns and appliques, and lots of notes and drawings in her handwriting.   Some of these date back to the 1930’s.

Having these things makes me feel like a piece of her is still with me and like maybe I’m carrying on some of her passions in my own life.

It’s lined and has a pocket and really is the perfect size for an everyday bag.  The pockets aren’t really sized right, so it has become a bit of a dumping ground, but otherwise I love everything about it.

I even made one for Mindy as a Christmas gift, but I forgot to take a photo.

It might, therefore, appear that this is an all around happy story, but unfortunately, there is catch.  I found the oil cloth  a little tricky to sew with. Karl helped me by rigging a piece of tape under the presser foot for some traction on the slippy material, but I still needed to go buy some heavy duty thread.  It may well have been the thread, but now my sewing machine is off.  It feels impossible to take it to get a tune up here in New York.  I’ll do it eventually, but for now, I have just reverted to knitting for a while.

So, for my new friend, Andres, I decided to knit a baby blanket.  I loaded up on yarn and got to work.  I didn’t get it done in time for his late September birthday, but was happy enough to hand it over for Christmas.  He’s a pretty mellow guy and I think the muted colors work for him.

I’m not going to lie, the narrow stripe pattern was kind of a pain. It was just too many balls of yarn to be very portable and no matter what I did to prevent it, I had to spend the first 15 minutes I sat down to knit untangling everything.   There were a few times I was wondering if this project was going to suck the love of knitting or Andres out of me, but luckily, it did no such thing.

Can wait to visit Andres and his blanket in Seattle in a few weeks!

I had the playsuit pattern around for a while when I stumbled upon the Cogsmo fabric line, by Cosmo Cricket I found the perfect match for my nerdiest parent friends.

Jake is a computer programmer and a new dad, and I was certain that the turquoise circuit board fabric would be perfect for him, er, uh, Easley.  A little known fact about Mindy is her long term love of robots, so, the robot pattern  just screamed her, I mean, Felix’s name.

I love making baby clothes for grownups.

Lately, I’m on such a bender that it’s all I can think about. It may seem like I’m holding meaningful professional and personal conversations; but I’m not. I’m actually thinking about what I’m going to sew next. It’s a sickness.

And super cute and super simple patterns I’ve come across here are only feeding the flames:

Round One: The Spring Top.

This is a great pattern, easy and cute. However, the first one was not that flattering on me, so I gave it to my sister, Kate (the lovely model below).  I altered the pattern and made a much more flattering one for myself.

Round Two: The Baby Dress

Another nice, easy pattern, adjusted for larger children. I cannot take how cute these are. I mean, really. Cara was so adorable in hers I wanted to eat her up. And I cannot wait to see Sophie sport hers.

Round Three: The Mendocino Dress

Made two of these, but the second one, made of the most lovely echino double gauze is my favorite.

Round Four: Baby hat

Anyway, you might have been under the impression that I was writing a blog post. But I wasn’t. I was thinking about what I’m going to sew next.

So, when I was trying to decide if it was appropriate to put our friends to work for our wedding, I thought about how good it felt to be so hands on at Kate and Eric’s wedding. In the end, we were shameless about exploiting our ridiculously talented friends and family. Either our friends are amazing actors, or they were actually happy to help.  Honestly, no wedding gift could have meant more to me than the creative labors of our nearest and dearest.

Drum roll please:

Save the Dates:  My brother, Ethan, is an awesome illustrator. Since we were little kids, he’s had a style of drawing that I love. He creates these crazy, detailed drawings with all sorts of little objects interacting in surprising ways. Looking at them is like going on a scavenger hunt.  He drew a piece for our save the dates that pulled together all kinds of things that made him think of Karl and me. It was so well done, but also so sweet and funny. It is currently framed in our house and we keep discovering new elements. I seriously love my brother.  And if you ever need any illustration, he’s totally your man.

Invites: Debi is one of the most creative people I know. Sometimes I feel like everything she touches turns to gold. Check out her Etsy site here.  We planned the wedding pretty quickly, so the invites were one of the first things we did and really set the tone for the rest of the wedding. We talked about wanting something with a vintage feel, like old office supplies at a flea market.  And Debi, in all her genius, stumbled upon a true treasure: an old telegram.

This was the inspiration for our awesome invitations. They seemed so unique, but so appropriate for the vibe of our wedding.
Debi is brilliant and if you ever want a museum exhibit, a knitted creature, or some graphic design, call her. Seriously.  (images to come)  My mom also donated all the printing in her shop in Santa Barbara, which was so awesome.

Guestbook:  Tyler is an artist, and art teacher, and a great friend. He used to be a regular at our dinner table and now that he’s moved to Portland, we rarely get to see him. For our wedding, he created the most unique and beautiful guest book I have ever seen, really.  I was so impressed I almost didn’t want people to write in it!

 Flowers: Jackie is one of those jack-of-all trades kind of ladies, to the point that it is actually humbling to be around her. Every time you talk to her you’re like, “wha?? she’s also a ship captain???” So, anyway, luckily for us among this girl’s endless supply of skills is flower arranging.  She took me down to the wholesale flower market a bunch of times and taught me all about flowers: what’s in season, what looks good together, how to get a good price, etc. Flowers are, it turns out, finicky friends – the need all sorts of loving to look just right on their big day. So there was Jackie, tirelessly pampering the flowers in our living room, setting me up with spray bottles and flower food, instructions, buckets; later she made the most beautiful bouquet and awesome table arrangments. I couldn’t have been happier with the flowers, they were so beautiful.  Also, I learned a ton, and didn’t end up in scary wedding industry land, spending a fortune and getting bullied.

Photos: Shane may be the nicest person I ever met. He literally saves kittens, that nice. On top of that, he’s also a sick cinematographer and photographer.  Of everyone I know, he may be the one who loves what he does most.  He’s constantly on the run working on amazing projects. So, the fact that he shot our wedding was unbelievable. He was so generous, offering to shoot all day, so understated, so patient. Of all of our rad helpers, he was the only one who’s contribution may have interfered with his enjoyment of our wedding. However, he did manage to write a sweet country song at the bar. You should ask him about it.   So I hope that means he had fun.

Cake:  Mindy, in all her awesome baking glory actually managed to bake us a three tiered wedding cake. First off all, that seems like a engineering feat beyond measure, second of all, oh.my.god was it delicious. It was ginger with ginger cream cheese frosting (I don’t like chocolate and am a huge pain to bake for).  We wrapped up the third tier to eat on our first wedding anniversary (which is seriously incentive to stave off divorce for at least a year). But every day I come home expecting to find Karl peering out of the freezer with a guilty look on his face and ginger cream cheese frosting across his cheeks. That’s how yummy is was.

Lots of other friends pitched in, making phone calls, play lists, giving toasts, carrying things around. It was such a good feeling.

Thanks one and all.

love.

At the same time, we knew we wanted a wedding that was simple, handmade, and local. Except for my shoes and Karl’s suit, everything in our wedding was either made by us, our friends, or at least people we met. It was a pretty cool way to bring the whole thing together.  All the little touches made our wedding really special and intimate to us.

Here are some highlights of the projects we made ourselves (and by ourselves I mean by me, really, sorry Karl):

Clutches

I saw this awesome tutorial for fabric flowers and decided to make clutches for me and for my maid of honor, Jody.

Ring Pillow:

My father gave me an amazing treasure: lace from my great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother’s wedding dresses. I was overwhelmed by how lucky we are to have these kinds of heirlooms in our family and really wanted to find a way to incorporate them into our wedding. My great-great-grandmother’s wedding dress was black and the lace we had was very tassley. I could not figure out how to use it; however, my great grandmother’s lace was beautiful and I was inspired to make it into a ring pillow.  It was so cool to see out handmade rings tied on to the pillow during the ceremony.

Seating Cards

I was really hoping to bring cool textiles into the wedding, but was pretty sure I didn’t have time to sew anything elaborate.  It occurred to me that I could use fabric to make little goodie bags telling people where to sit. I have a number of friends who are very loyal consumers of their favorite types of candy and so I tried my best to match people up with their favorite candies.  A trip to Economy Candy was really helpful for this, making it easy to find even the most obscure types of candy (if you’ve never been here, this place is a treasure! go!).   I have big plans for the fabric, which I collected after the party. Stay tuned, maybe I’ll report on it some day, in a million years, when I have time to get to it.

I’ll update with our programs and favors soon.

This was a mostly stash based quilt. I’ve had the yellow bird fabric for a really long time, and aside from a few ipod cases, I really haven’t bee sure what to do with it. I was struggling with how to bring it all together and had laid it out on my turquoise table to think about it. The table color make the whole thing pop. Delivered the whole thing to the Herricks in Boston before Vivian was even born (very impressed with myself!).
Second, Isabella’s quilt:

Isabella was the first baby in a while that I knew was going to be a girl, and while I wasn’t really trying to get all pink and girly, it just sort of happened. I was really excited about using the pink and orange sea horse fabric from Heather Ross’ Mendocino line and a lot of the other stuff came from my stash.  Also, please note, ugly carpet in photo is decidedly not mine. Finished the quilt in a Hilton in Portland, just in time to deliver it to the Moran Chigos residence for Izzy.

Felix was kind enough to be the hat model for the first hat.

But rest assured, that’s not really the case. Instead, I’ve delighted in all these baby items for one big reason: They are SO much smaller than grown up stuff. Consequently, so much faster and cheaper to make than something for adults. And, as an added bonus, the sort of bloblike cuteness of a baby means you don’t have to go crazy worrying about making things fit. It’s just so much easier to lavish attention on little ones.

These little baby slippers are a case in point. Sort of. They were not exactly quicker, since it took me a long time to make up a pattern that actually worked. I spied an adorable pair of slippers in baby Sophie’s room. I went on a mission to figure out how to make them myself. The first pair would have been tight on a small doll, and then second one was a bit like Cinderella’s slipper when Felix agreed to be my foot model last weekend.  These haven’t been tested on an actual baby foot or anything, but man are they cute. I just want to eat them.  And, they were the perfect use for  scraps, including the remnants from a hemmed pair of Karl’s pants, part of a sweater Karl shrunk, and pieces left over from old sewing projects.

At the rate of babies turning up this year, it’s pretty lucky I’ve hatched upon a quick gift, since I can’t keep up with quilts!