Wedding Dress

Had a couple of photos my guy took of the wedding dress and thought I should post them...

Blocks Begin to Come Together

Had a class this morning that I had scheduled with a mistress of sergers to learn how to work in netting and sheers more effectively. Most needed after working on the wedding dress and learned about washable stabilizer that's really amazing. Seems even old dogs can learn new tricks and I'm excited to make sleeves for fairy world in the upcoming weeks. Will post pictures when I start working on them, but for now, I started building blocks after spending a few hours fussy cutting all the fabrics for the Women of the Southwest quilt. It's a great start and I love the colors and how they are coming together. Such a thrill to start a new quilt.

Women of the Southwest Quilt Top Begins

Started fussy cutting images from the fabrics for the next quilt top and it's going to be a beautiful quilt. I will be posting images as I go. My mother would have loved this quilt top...

New Week, New Challenges

As Sunday comes to a close, I am reminded of the upcoming week as I look at the bed in my studio and it's covered in fabrics. I have a new quilt top to begin using the beautiful fabrics of the southwest theme and it makes me think of my amazing parents. They loved the desert. To them, it was home. When everyone saw dirt and dust and those awful cactus; where everything living there bites you in one way or the other, they saw beauty. The birds that could build a nest in the needles of a cactus, or the roadrunner that ate from my fathers hand. They loved the red cardinals that would seek water and food in their little oasis in the desert and laugh when the partridges would try and cross the road in front of their small trailer. My dad planted a small patch of grass just so he could water and watch the jack rabbits come out and play.
They themselves had very little, a small fifth wheel trailer and an old truck to pull it. Over the years they had collected more things than they would ever need but it made them so happy. My mother had a collection of cookie jars in the yard and bird feeders everywhere. They made her smile and she could find them at garage sales.. She called them her yard family. My father collected from the desert he loved to walk in. A piece of sorrel cactus wood from a fallen giant,that he would bring home and lovingly carve into a walking cane. Then he would sell it at the local open air market full of tourist just passing through and wondering why people lived there and it made him smile. He had a collection of arrowheads and broken bones of animals he'd found as well always talking about what he could make with them but never did.
They loved to watch the thunder and lightening storms that would roll across the sky with a flurry and drench the desert floor, often cause flash flooding. But, just days after, the entire desert would come to life with blooms on all the cactus and they were beautiful. At night they would sit out under the stars with no lights on and listen to the howls of the coyote or the screech of the owls and they came to understand the spirit of the desert they loved.
When they passed, I vowed I would scatter their ashes out into the desert they both loved with all their hearts. I mixed their ashes together for the journey to the desert as they had lived as one for so many years loving and caring for each other it seemed only right. I still remember the night we walked out into the desert near their special spot. The wind was blowing warm air all around and the stars were bright in the night sky. I laid a pair of their shoes and two old hats they had often worn together with a bottle of their favorite wine, Strawberry Hill. I put a handful of butterscotch candies in my Dad's shoes for he was never without them and released their ashes to the night. The winds swirled all around us lifting their ashes higher and higher up the small hill as the moon light reflected down upon us we watched the ashes floated ever upward and on into the desert and they became one with it. I love and miss you both always but I know that where ever your spirits are now, you are finding the magic that dwells there.

Morning After

Sounds like a party over here .... well in a way it is. I had a lovely winner for the little Sewphie and I am finished with the wedding dress and last night I cleaned up my studio again. That does seems to be a theme of mine doesn't it, but it felt wonderful to get everything back into order and lay out the fabric for the next project. I have been working on a Queen size quilt custom ordered and it's been such fun. She has been collecting fabric for it for a while. The amazing thing about this quilt is she wants it double sided. One side will be Madonna images and the other side goddess type women of the Southwest. It is amazing to come home to a box of fabric waiting for you. That's as good as it gets in my book. So I started the quilt and then had a family wedding that popped up in the middle of it and since it was my guys sisters wedding, I had to make her a quilt. So I rushed off to the fabric store and found colors I thought she and her new husband would appreciate and went to town. It was a simple nine patch pattern but I was working non stop until we left. Yes, you too can do quilt in a day if you don't mind a bit of madness in your life. We drove to Modesto one day, Wedding next, and drove home that night. My guy had work and had to be back. It wasn't until I was home that I realize that I hadn't even taken a picture of the quilt. What was I thinking!!!! I am hoping that she will take one and send it to me but alas a hole in my photo journal of quilts for now.
So, this morning really does feel like the morning after a long streak of madness and I can't wait to sit in my clean studio and watch the wonder of creation take over again. See the colors start to play again and feel the quiet hum of total contentment fill me as the hum of my machine fills the air. Ah, the morning after.

I have attached a few photos I took of the first side.

Winner of Giveaway

I am still learning all the tricks of the trade when it comes to blogging and I can't seem to figure out how to put a widget onto my page yet to but the random number picker so everyone can see so I will tell you that it chose number 46 which is Just Jingle so tomorrow off goes little Sewphie to a new world full of wonder and delight. Again, thanks to all who entered it was such great fun.
Mama Jean

Wedding Dress Blues

I love sewing, always have and hope always will but sometimes I have a problem telling people no when they ask me to help them with a project or other sewing related issues.  Let's back up a bit. I am in the middle of making a non traditional wedding dress for someone I know and it's been a very complicated project.  It started out a mess and I am trying to find the pieces that will make it work.  I don't have a pattern just a little drawing of what she hopes it will look like sort of.
I love making quilts. Quilts are those beautiful creations that play in my head until I find the colors and fabrics I want to use, or they are lying in a pile of fabrics on my table screaming at me to hurry up.  I have an old wardrobe full of this and that all waiting to be created and like all good seamstresses, I can always find a fat quarter here or there to add to the hope it's me next pile.
Sewing clothing for myself love it got to have more of it.  I only wear what I make and I only make what I love.  Sewing clothing for others hum, well, if it's something I have created and designed love it.  Enjoy seeing others love it too.  I have friends that I sew for all the time.. she loves skirts and bloomers and I make him all of his shirts and they are fun and just a part of what I make.
So, why is this one dress so much more complicated... bottom line I think, maybe this is a bit out of realm.  I don't make wedding dresses with all the satin and frills and shears and it's a bit intimidating.  I like cotton, I know what cotton likes to do.  I haven't make anything like this is a very long time a very long time and it was theater so you have a lot of wiggle room to not have to have it perfect but a wedding dress?  So many emotions are tied up in it.  So many expectations and dreams and it's suppose to be perfect and well, perfect just isn't in my box of skills. 
So, today as I start my day and know that I will be walking into my pretty pink studio all I will see is blue sparkling  sheer organza and satin and an invisible zipper waiting to disappear, and here comes the bride today, please make it perfect.   But, out of the corner of my eye I will linger on a quilt top that is almost finished and a box of fabric waiting, waiting for the magic to begin....