Another budget-friendly Christmas present. Grandma loves to decorate the dinner table for the holidays so I thought I would freshen up her place cards for this year! We thought we would keep them neutral from any Christmas theme so she can use them year-round.

To kick them up a notch and make them really special, I used an alphabet stamp kit to write out everyone's name and brushed them with an embossing powder, to give them a finished look.

We all stay at Susu's house, which is surrounded by Sassafras trees, so it was easy to choose their leaves as decoration. We weren't sure if a glue stick would keep them from falling off so stitching them down with the machine was helpful in knowing that they would stay and also add a nice decorative element. I love when resourcefulness and neccessity can also be beautiful!

New quilt finished!



This quilt was so fun to make and the long-arm quilting machine is a blast! Think about doodling and then think about being able to doodle using a needle and thread like a pencil. An awesome tool for anyone who loves to draw.

This was my very first quilt, made Fall 2007 at SCAD in the Art Quilt class. After all these years and all the quilts I've made since, I still love this one so much! There are definitely technical errors in the sewing but I still enjoy the design and the fabric choices.

After finishing the class and coming home, my mom quickly announced that 'these were her colors!' and 'did I make it for her?'. I think it's genius how she put it on her all-white guest bed and has made use of it despite its size.

The Little Mermaid fabric came from bedsheets from the thrift store and the figures are raw-edge applique. The back is made up of the sheet as well.

This month, I started working once a week at this amazing, crafty, unique store in Durham called The Scrap Exchange. It's a non-profit that collects industrial waste from around NC -(think unneeded science equipment from Duke or surplus packaging from Burt's Bees)- and resells it for practically nothing, all for the sake of keeping this stuff out of the landfills and accessible for anyone to use in any creative way the choose. It really is the best place to shop for fabric in Durham!

Anyways, it's a good thing I'm only there once a week because I can never leave without finding some sort of totally random thing that I just can't live without! This week it was:

~ 2 doll heads on a stick
~ a Brunswick Stew magnet
~ a shimmery candle

How could I just pass these things up??

This piece was for an illustration competition Selvedge magazine hosted, whereupon the artist was to document a place with textile history in the format of a travel journal. I was inspired at my family reunion, to sketch this christening gown my cousin was baptized in, after it was discovered in a mason jar at her great-grandmother's house, smelling eerily of buttermilk. It was rolled up with a note, describing its history, and 4 other jars, containing various garments with apparent historical significance to Lorraine. I just love the fact that she chose to preserve not fruit, but clothes, in jars!

I'm not really sure I fully realized the prompt but it was fun to dabble in a sketching project, and actually get it finished in time to hand in. I haven't heard anything back from them in a couple of months so I think it's safe to assume I didn't win and can now post it here!

I love this fiber-licious picture! This quilt was sold in Los Angeles to a woman, who was gifting it at a friend's baby shower. I hope there's a baby under it somewhere, snuggling under it, and enjoying it as much as I did making it!

Mr. Raccoon-Fox pretending to be a sunset. Happy birthday, Megan! Hope you like him!

A new pillow, finished in time for the Craft Fair on Saturday. It's made from a modge podge of various felt pieces, given to me so generously from a fellow neighbor crafter. It's based off the Lucky Strike logo, honoring Durham's tobacco roots. Durhamites can't get enough Durham paraphernalia!

This was the first time I have ever sewn faux fur. It won't say it's necessarily easy but it certainly can hide a lot! I love how you can't see the zipper.

I've been dying to start a new project out of Donna Wilson's book, The Knitted Odd-Bod Bunch, and today I finally settled on the Rill Raccoon-Fox pattern. Of course, I can't just copy the thing, I have to come up with some complicated way to make it my own. I decided on making a rainbow gradient run throughout the entire body -- this gets me out of having to have a certain amount of any one color! This picture is of the tail.

I put my work down to go eat dinner and, when I got back, I found Mortoise had gotten herself caught around my ball of yarn and it had followed her around the whole room, no joke! She is such a character. I wish I could've gotten a picture of the entire room.

Donna Wilson (right), with some of her knitted creatures.

Her blog here -----> Leaves and Twigs

I'm really loving how these flags turned out. Than helped me screen-print the yellow and blue, and then we cut a stamp for the stars.

I had enough leftover red linen -(from my senior collection in '08)- to make 6 prints.

From a series of conceptual ideas involving garments made out of pantyhose.
Fall '07

A new venture into some original fashion design. I love designing knitwear! There's something so primitive and straight-forward about the whole process. You're literally making the fabric as you're constructing the garment, so there's so many wonderful possibilities. This skirt started formulating in my head after I discovered a stash of funky, hairy, ribbon yarn at work that I had to do something with. There wasn't enough of it for a whole skirt so the striping was based out of necessity as much as an aesthetic choice. I knew navy and black was a good combo when I saw this Proenza Schouler collection...

Proenza Schouler Fall '10

It's funny how the collective subconscious can work.

A funky mash-up woodcut I found in my portfolio case. I pulled out a bunch of old fashion illustrations and sketches I'm hoping to sell in the craft fair, in order to make room for new stuff. This piece was actually part of a larger work that I completed in the summer of '07. The right-hand side was ripped off and sold as a smaller piece -- tearing it in half made the composition for the 2 smaller prints way more successful than both as a whole. I can't decide if I want to sell this one or not, yet.

Kiki Mariko Rug pattern from the Mason-Dixon girls' second book (Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines)

Dimensions pre-felting = 37 1/2" long by 25" around

Betcha never saw a tubular rug before! Ok, I'm not finished but I had to document my work before I got the hot water and suds out and get this knitwork felted! Once felted, it will shrink in ways that I can't really predict, and will become so tangled that I'll be able to de-tubularize (ie-cut down the middle) and this rug will be a whole lot more rug-like.

I finished it en route from LA to NC but still haven't gotten around to the felting part yet. I want to do it by hand to control the shrinking as much as possible but that's more work than throwing it in the washing machine!

A couple of new ALMOST finished pin cushions, ready to sell. They just need a little cinching, like the green and blue one. This patter is so fun to make and allows you to play with so many different color and patter variations.

Log cabin pillow, inspired by the Mason-Dixon ladies and, always, Sasha Ross. The first in total completion, ready to sell at the craft fair. I made one just like this for myself, a while back, and I just love the way it looks and it's so fun to put together with any amount of yarn laying around.

It's lumpy and colorful and FINISHED.

I'm knitting like a crazed beast! gearing up for the Troika Craft Fair held in Durham in November -- it also coincides with the music festival they host every year so it's going to be a whole weekend-full of things to do. I'm a big fan of craft fairs but never actually been in one before so this will be a new experience for me -- hopefully positive and with a little money going into my pockets!

No rest for the crafty!

Check out this cool signage from the Homelands exhibit at the Gene Autry Museum! I thought it was so genius -- the whole show was excellent, must've had a great art director. I'm getting a lot of cool ideas for my own projects using this idea.

Just made a huge move from Los Angeles back to North Carolina -- a 7-day journey with my best friend, a tortoise, and, of course, my California cactus garden...

I've been neglecting this site (and avoiding the computer, in general) for a while during this whole life-uprooting process, but, now that I have some time, I would like to make a few changes...

This is going to become my "professional" site --(I'm using that term very loosely) -- where I want to post all my current textile work and projects in the making.

I've started another site, too, that's going to be a fun, whatever-I-want, inspiration blog, posting all the pictures that catch my eye on the internet.

Find it here ----> ANN's Inspiration Blog