I’m in the car shuttling kids from one place to another when I’m suddenly struck with an idea for a brilliant design. I can see it so clearly in my mind’s eye and I become totally consumed with developing it and making it come to life. Duck prototype on my desk today. The rest of…
How Getting Rid of Perfection Can Make You a Better Designer
Everything I know about soft toy design I learned in one of two ways: sewing toys designed by other people and experimenting with my own patterns. These are the two tickets to my growth as a designer. The more patterns I study, and the more times I try to incorporate a new technique into my…
5 Simple Ways to End Procrastination and Jumpstart Creativity
Do you ever find yourself procrastinating from doing the thing you love most? Let’s say you’ve been really busy recently with a big project for work and now it’s finally finished. All the time you were working on the project you were longing for free time to sit at in your studio space and just…
Having a Dedicated Work Space Makes All the Difference
Have you ever had an idea for a craft project stuck in your head? Something you know you have to make? I get ideas like this all the time. It can be frustrating to have an intense desire to make something and watch the day slip away leaving you with no time to sit down…
Things I Love About Sewing: It’s Open-Ended
Close your eyes and think back for a minute to Junior High and High School. Think about all those classes you took, all that homework you did, all that stressful cramming for math quizzes and biology tests. Now try to remember a project you did for school. Not just any project, but your favorite project….
Things I Love About Sewing: It Connects Me To History
This post is part of a series. Read them all here. Me in 1984. I spent six summers of my childhood at Camp Ramah in Palmer, Massachusetts. The first summer I was just turning 8 and was the youngest camper. Most of the kids in my bunk were from Massachusetts and the first question they…
Things I Love About Sewing: Collecting
This is post #4 in a series. See post #1 here , #2 here, and #3 here. Image of the American Series of figurines (1983-1985) from Red Rose Tea. I had every one of these as child. When I was seven my grandparents gave me a wooden printer's tray with a hook on the back…
Things I Love About Sewing: You Can Make Something Useful From Nothing at All
This post is part of a series. See the first "Things I Love About Sewing" post here, and the second one here. I'm a coupon clipper. I cannot throw away the Sunday paper before going through all the circulars and cutting out the coupons. And then I go through the recycling bins in our garage…
Things I Love About Sewing: You Don’t Have To Follow The Rules
This post is part of a series. See the first "Things I Love About Sewing" post here. I learned to use a sewing machine in 8th grade Home Economics at Herbert Hoover Junior High School in Potomac, Maryland. For my final project I sewed a pair of Bermuda shorts with seams so wonky I got…
Things I Love About Sewing: It Makes Me Slow Down
This post is the first in a series. I am almost always in a rush and I'm pretty sure I always have been. My third grade teacher, Ms. Tishler, wrote on my report card in 1983 that I needed to slow down and stop handing in such sloppy work. If I recall, at that time…