We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Blog Post

...even though I have no late-breaking news to bring you. 

Did you even miss me?  LOL - I thought not.  Someone has been lurking my previous blog posts, though - they must have seen something that they really liked because they have been visiting the same post, every single day.  So far, that post has logged 166 visits.

Maybe it's a blog bug.  Do those even exist?

Haven't been posting much lately for a few reasons:  

1. Been doing a lot of the same thing.  Figured you didn't want to have to suffer through reading about that.

2. Been doing work for clients and had second thoughts about posting the work on my blog.  I'm still all for giving them props for their designs and free advertising - I just got a little spooked reading about how many people are ripping off designs by blog-stalking and then claiming the designs as their own.  More than a few of my clients are young designers and I'd hate for someone to walk all over their dream - so I've opted not to post photos of prototypes/samples on my blog anymore to attempt to fend off said perps.  

3. It's been hot.  Hot, hot, hot.  And that tends to make me sick to my stomach.  Which doesn't leave me exactly focused on blogging about my creative skills.  I figure most of my readers are also hot, hot, hot (or for some of you lovelies in the "other" hemisphere - cold, cold, cold) and probably don't want to sit with a cuppa and browse my musings vague rambling.  Wish I could send you all a cool pack and a sympathy note.  I know I needed one this week.

4. I was in a creative slump for awhile so even though I managed to get work out for clients, I wasn't "in the zone" when it came to doing my own thing.  

That last line is making me bonkers.  I finally had some down time this past week, so I excitedly began cutting apart two soft-n-loverly tie-die print t-shirts that I'd purchased at the 99 Cent Store.  I know, I know - but the fabric was so soft I couldn't help myself.  Somewhere along the line, the 99 Cent Store people have been buying up name brands like you see at Kohls, The Gap, Old Navy, and other department stores - I just about fell on my rear in the store when I started going through the labels.  Long story short, I was trying to replicate something I'd seen on Anthropologie:

I figured between the two oversized t-shirts, that I'd have plenty of fabric to pull something like this off.

Not even going to justify that with photos of the disaster that ensued.  

My calculations were off, I hadn't accounted for the soft-n-loverly fabric to be so limp when it came to draping & weaving like the above shirt, and it hung on me like a sack of potatoes.  I was crushed - it's not often these days I have time to make something for myself.  I rushed through it, knowing I'd have work coming in any day, and it really disappointed me so much I thought I'd lost my sewing mojo. I haven't given up entirely, just need to come up with a Plan B. 

In the meantime, here are a couple of projects I just completed for a friend's daughter who is getting ready to do an exchange year in the Czech Republic:

I think this is the PERFECT bag to carry to Eastern Europe, don't you?
She chose the colors for her name to be embroidered on the bag -
wish I'd had more time with it, I would have loved to have knocked off
the design a little - not copy it directly, but it had some nice features.

She chose the colors to coordinate with the flowers on the bag.

This next bag was a special request from her mother (my friend) -
Alex had gone on a small trip using a bag to carry a blanket & pillow
on the plane, only it was just a few inches shy of being big enough to zip shut.
So her mom and I went to Joanns to choose sturdy fabric, since Alex is going to be using this bag
for day trips with her host family when she gets to Europe.  We wanted it to coordinate with
the other bag; not match it, but complement it.
I chose this embroidery design out of the Jacobean Flowers I've purchased from Embroidery Online, and changed
up the colors to match the flowers on the other bag.

And here, after two zipper assembly snafus, is the completed bag.
Do not ask me about the first zipper disaster.
Do.  Not.  Ask.
It was the heat that did it.  The heat, I say!

ECU of the completed Jacobean Flower -
I love me some Embroidery Library!
Their designs ALWAYS stitch out muy excellente!

Check out the color blocking - Alex loves green, but also loves
this deep blue (check out her prom dress), and my friend and I
thought she would also love to have the red & yellow from
the floral print worked into the bag as well.

The red inside lining, with a contrasting yellow inner pocket, just for a
fun pop of color when she opens the bag.
Hey, the zipper needed SOMETHING to coordinate with, right?
Note to self: make sure to write in the margins of the instructions
for making this type of bag -
SERGE INNER EDGES OF ZIPPER PLACKET.
That is all.

Embroidered on the other side, in letters to coordinate with
the other bag.  Trust me, when you're not in direct sunlight,
those first two letters do not look like exactly the same color.
Really.

It's interesting for me to imagine that my work is once again going half way around the world. Of course, that happens every time someone overseas looks up one of my blog posts, but still.....


Stay tuned for more projects, including one of the strangest alteration/repair requests I've gotten so far.  And I promise to upload photos of Plan B, if I can ever make it come to fruition.