Shimmer

Nola had a moment with a lizard today.

It’s all the way over to the right, perched on the edge of the deck. She’s eyeing it up, but she’s too fat and slow to ever catch it.

I finished a new market tote, which I’ve posted to The Boutique.

I usually work with bold, contrasting colors, and I wanted to try something more monochromatic and subtle (at least on the outside). 

I stacked three appliqued circles and finished each one off with a single stitch of shimmery gold thread.

I decided not to go subtle on the inside, mostly because I love how well red, black and white work together.

Check it out here.

My life in boxes

I feel rather uprooted right now.

We started packing for our move a couple of weeks ago. We’ve been doing a few boxes at a time so as not to overwhelm ourselves. And while that is, in theory, a fantastic and efficient idea, being surrounded by boxes is starting to make me a little anxious.

Being in the middle of a big move is not fun, and I feel like we’ve managed to stretch it out a lot longer than we had to. I’m glad we got an early start, and I know it will pay off in the long run. But in the meantime, I’m living among stacks of boxes and feeling very unsettled.

Thankfully, we get the keys to our new place this Saturday, and we can start moving stuff over a little at a time until our official move-in date the following Saturday. CAN. NOT. WAIT.

I’m working on a new market tote and hope to have photos of the whole bag tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s a peek!

I want my Barbie back

Well, apparently, I’m like a small child. A toddler, if you will.

What do I have to do to make myself want to sew again? Pack up all my sewing supplies into boxes and then stack several heavy boxes on top of them. I’m like a kid who ignores and doesn’t want to play with my Barbie until my sister picks it up and starts playing with it. Then, suddenly, I want to play with my Barbie BAD. And NOW. Like, RIGHT NOW.

The day after my fabric was packed up, I suddenly had the urge to start sewing again. Instead of denying myself, I dug out the fabric box, opened it, and rummaged through it to find the fabrics I needed. And then I sewed.

(By the way, I worked to Mandy Moore’s new album called Amanda Leigh, which I think is fabulous.)

My favorite part of this bag is the inside.

I mounted my label to a green patch of fabric in order to give it a little more prominence and make it part of the design.

Or maybe it was because I nicked a tiny little hole in the fabric with my seamripper after I had already sewn the pockets on and didn’t have enough of the pink polka-dot fabric to start over again, so I securely covered the tiny hole with a patch of fabric. Yeah…maybe that’s why. But sometimes small mistakes end up being a blessing, because I love how the label and patch look, and I never would have thought to do this unless I was forced to come up with a creative solution to a stupid little problem.

The two pockets are lined in the hot pink fabric and finished with a decorative strip of ric-rac.

For sale here in The Boutique. Check it out!

PS — Twenty days until we move into our new house!!!!

New market tote

Bonjour my blogging friends! Although I’ve already packed up much of my fabric for our impending move, I was in the mood to sew the other night, and I realized I already had a market tote in pieces, just waiting to be sewn together. So I finished it up and posted it in The Boutique.

It’s my standard market tote design, but I used a thick cotton fabric instead of corduroy, which I think is more suitable for summer.

The applique design on the front of the tote is chocolate brown and white polka dots. The whole bag is lined in a gorgeous red and cream toile, which is yummy enough to eat and makes me want to decorate my entire house in it.

Oh, and a pocket! An internal pocket! I used to struggle with pockets, but now that I’ve figured it all out, I’m going to start including at least one in every bag.

The new bag is for sale here. (Edit: Sold!)

Pica

I have no idea if Nola really has pica (a medical disorder characterized by an appetite for substances largely non-nutritive), but I like to say she does, because it explains her constant desire to gnaw on everything — plastic bags, paper, my finger. She’s a chewer, that one.

I recently found out she likes chewing on twigs. Here she is going in for a nice big bite.

She bites off a little piece, chews on it for a minute, and then spits it out. So very….strange.

Have any of you heard of kitty pica? What weird items do your cats chew on?