It’s time for our annual trip to the homeland…Beantown. I can’t wait. I look forward to a forced break to think and plan ahead for new designs, new ideas, new everything.
While I’m gone, the workroom is feverishly working on new samples! I’ll be scouting for some new material while I’m away too. I can’t wait to get creative!
Every few years or so, my Mom and I open up the hope chest in her home to look through the items and see if there’s anything I can “use”. Mom is so good about pressing and folding items carefully. It’s an organized little space. We carefully unfold and inspect the items, and 9 times out of 10 everything gets packed back up again because I can’t bear the thought of actually using (and potentially ruining) some of the beautiful items. Really though, what good is that? Every thing’s packed away for a day that never comes.
Well, this time I actually brought some of the items home with me. I’m still debating what to do with them. Most of the items were hand embroidered by my grandmother.
It got me interested in doing some embroidery work. It might be nice to actually unplug the sewing machine and get back to basics. Kick it old school.
I love this little bird. Most of these items are pillow cases.
I found a website that offers vintage embroidery patterns, Pattern Bee, and purchased some nursery patterns. I’m envisioning them on pillows or bumpers of our crib bedding. How cute would that be??
I’ll be sure to post some pics of what I come up with!
Have you seen any other cute uses for vintage patterns?
A few weeks ago, I posed the question “What do hundreds of fabric squares have to do with Bolivia?” Well, I can finally answer that question.
We’ll be sending 35 handmade blankets with a group from our church heading to Bolivia on June 25. The annual trip is in conjunction with Children’s Network International. The blankets will be given to the youngest of the boys at the Bolivia Life Center Orphanage in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The Life Center provides homeless boys from the streets of Bolivia shelter, food, clothing & education.
The blankets have patchwork faces, which to me, seem like a more homemade style. It’s something that a family member might make…and I’m hoping the boys will see it that way too. No two are alike.
The backs are all soft chenilles. I hope the boys love the way they feel.
After I assembled the faces of the quilts, I forwarded them along to our workroom. I love the fact that we have a woman-owned business that does our sewing. She and her team of women graciously donated the time to put the backs on all the quilts. A true team effort.
It was a real eyeopener to read some of these statistics. I’d love to go next year with our oldest on this trip.
{Tuesdays at Chatting at the Sky are all about taking note of, and being thankful for all the small things that sometimes go unnoticed. This weekend I took notice of all the beautiful flowers happening outside my door.}
We’ve had an unusually wet and rainy spring & early summer in North Carolina. Normally at this time of year, the grass is quickly starting to resemble hay, and flowers are struggling to remain healthy. A drought, and subsequent water bans the last few years made me question if any of my perennials would actually survive.
I was sure I killed this clematis. I was a little overzealous in my pruning earlier this spring. The rest of the clematis in the neighborhood have already bloomed. In think instead of killing it, I just delayed its maturity a bit. It’s already reached the top of the metal trellis.
These are the same type of daylily that we had growing up in Massachusetts. The stems are very tall–almost three feet. I scoured the nurseries down here for quite a while before finally finding these. Daylilies do really well here, and are quite popular. But it’s harder to find these larger ones. It’s mostly smaller varieties that I find.
This is an onion blossom. I absolutely love any type of onion/chive flowers. I have some garlic chives that bloom with a similar, but smaller, flower. This is my absolute favorite.
Some zucchini blossoms. I need to do a search for some recipes for stuffed blossoms. It seems a shame to wait until the veggie develops. I’m remembering when I’ve seen stuffed blossoms prepared on tv, that it usually involves some ricotta cheese. Yum…
Lots of herbs survive the winter here without any trouble. I have rosemary, oregano and sage that are a few years old in the garden. Even so, I plant a new parsley plant each year and let the previous year’s plant flower. Butterflies apparently love to lay their eggs in parsley. I can vouch for that, because the boys have brought the caterpillars into school so that the class can enjoy seeing it change to a butterfly.
These are just so cheerful. What’s blooming in your area?
{Hey, it’s Giveaway Day at the Nester’s Place! You’ll find one of our blankets offered, as well as loads of other beautiful items! For free!}
We laugh sometimes at how opposite our kids tend to be. If you put a cupcake in front of both and come back in a few minutes, one cupcake will have its frosting almost surgically removed, while the cake portion remains intact. The other plate will simply have a pile of frosting, with only a few crumbs of cake remaining.
The differences extend way beyond food. While one is a music loving guitar player, the other loves to craft and create things. He’ll usually approach one of us with one of his ‘ideas’. Literally, the conversations starts with, “Mom (Dad), I have an idea…” These ideas usually involve plenty of packing tape, cardboard, rope and patience. Recently he created a full size, wearable Iron Man costume with all of those materials as well as a hockey mask. The end result was sort of bizarre, but strangely accurate. Sort of an Iron Man meets Jason from Friday the 13th. Most importantly, it kept him busy for quite a while.
I was roped in recently to help create a puppet. I had to do the cutting, but he helped by organizing the pieces and assembling.
His name has been changed a number of times, but most recently he is “King”.
I’m just waiting to hear that King needs a friend…
The Circus Toile bedding set is sold. We have one ready-to-ship set left that is discounted with an additional 10% off. It’s the Sage Central Park Toile which remains one of our most popular sets to date. The toile is unisex, so it’d be perfect to pass along to baby’s brothers or sisters! It’s combined with a sage stripe, and super soft vanilla minky dot chenille.
Any of our accessories can be made to match this set as well…lampshades, nightlights, valances, window panels, changing pad covers, and more!
Check out the site for more photos of this set!
and a detail photo of the set’s comforter:
This week is My Story in Photos: Vacation Edition on I ♥ Faces. We’re gearing up for another vacation soon, so the best I could do was last year’s photos from Martha’s Vineyard.
Martha’s Vineyard is such a fun and relaxing getaway. If the weather cooperates and you go before the 4th of July crowds, it might just be the perfect vacation spot. We happened to hit both things right last year.
Sweet hands, sweet dandelion.
A farm on the island, and wild turkeys roaming free.
Red Cliffs at end of island
Roses galore
Rows of mailboxes, no houses to be seen
Hand dyed yarns at the farmer's market
Lighthouse near Red Cliffs
Tallship in distance
Comparing hands
View from Jeep's rearview mirror. No one to be seen. Isolated beach.
And just because I'm a nerd -- freshly fried clamstrips, diet coke & tangy tartar sauce. Yum.
I love being able to work directly with customers to create their baby’s new room. It’s so fun to be part of the excitement that goes along with a new baby. I’ve worked with new moms, moms of multiples and recently, a mom expecting her fifth.
We’re going on our fifth year of creating beautiful bedding — I’m lucky enough to see former customers come back as their baby transitions to a twin or full sized bed.
Everything is custom made to order. To further personalize your baby’s bedding and make it his/her own, think about monogramming! We can monogram our bumpers, comforters, pillows and blankets.
Below are some examples of monograms available. Check out our site find something to monogram!
A 3-initial monogram on the bumper of our Horizon Blue & Brown Bedding Set
A 3-initial monogram on the bumper of our Andy’s Gang Pink/Green Bedding Set
A 3-initial on a custom bedding set. Yes, we can do custom bedding with your material or ours! Here’s another example.
And a single initial monogram on the bumper of our Central Park Toile Bedding Set.
See something you like? Or something you’re envisioning? Feel free to contact us to discuss!
What do hundreds of cut squares of fabric have to do with Bolivia? We’ll let you know soon….
We’re offering two ready-to-ship bedding sets on our site right now! They’re both discounted, with an additional 10% off that is offered site wide until the end of June.
The first set is a Circus Toile bedding set which includes two bonus accent pillows!
and a picture of the two accent pillows included with the set:
The second set is a unisex Sage Central Park Toilewith coordinating sage stripe & vanilla minky dot chenille. This fabric remains one of our most popular. This is a great deal for a custom made bedding set.
and a detail photo of the set’s comforter:
