I thought it would be fun to do a little update from the studio. I’ve finished a bunch of projects recently and have some other things brewing so here goes!
It was so cold here in January that the snow was just powder. Josephine’s deconstructed snowman made me laugh.
It was extremely cold and snowy here in Boston for few weeks in January. I woke up one day and it was -6 degrees. The kids had two snow days in a row after being back to school for just two days after winter break. All those hours sitting by the fire gave me a chance to finish the English paper pieced quilt top I started back in August.
To design this quilt I enlarged a hexagon block from The New Hexagon by Katja Marek (affiliate link) and made it in a bunch of different colors. That was the fun part. Since mid-October I’ve been slowly sewing all the charcoal triangles between the blocks and along the border which was super boring, but is now finally done. Inspired by Sherri’s encouragement to try scrappy binding I’ve pieced together binding from scraps of all the solids in the quilt top. Fishing this project was delayed because my Janome was being serviced and cleaned, but it’s finally done.
I also sewed a costume with my middle daughter, Simon, who was Empress Theodora for a living wax museum event that the sixth grade did as the culmination of their study of ancient Rome. The dress is a simple purple satin tunic with a gold stripe along the bottom. We designed and made a collar and crown using this Byzantine mosaic of Theodora as inspiration and it was a lot of fun to collaborate with Simon on this project.
I made two mermaids from Shelley Down’s wonderful book, My Felt Doll (affiliate link) and now my older daughter, Roxanne, is making a doll from this book as well. These are perfect hand sewing projects and the designs are so sweet. I gave one mermaid to Josephine and the other to my niece, Sadie, for Valentine’s Day.
I’m excited to say that the pattern for the open-mouthed puppet I’ve been working on for a long time is nearly done! The puppets themselves are in California to be photographed by the wonderful women at Page+Pixel and the text is with Lindsie Bergevin, my talented graphic designer. You can get a sneak peek at the puppet on Veronica Stienburg’s Instagram. She tested the pattern for me and I love her yellow puppet.
My other January project is finally pulling together an ebook about blogging that I started many years ago. I wrote big chunks of it while on a train ride to New York sometime in 2013, then set it aside. Recently I’ve begun to think more about the importance of blogging as an artist/maker and as a business owner. While many people have been making the argument that blogging is dead, I actually think blogging is even more exciting and useful now than perhaps it’s ever been. So, all of those thoughts, plus expert tips and resources and checklists, are being channeled into this ebook.
Sometimes it feels like the days go by without anything tangible to show so it’s nice to list them all out here and see that I am indeed accomplishing things! Hoping we all get some more creative and productive (and fun!) studio time soon.
I love your studio updates, Abby and congratulations on the puppet pattern being almost ready to launch. It’s gorgeous – and open-ended play is always a fabulous thing. Plus, it’s always so exciting to get to that stage in pattern writing when we’re done but still able to make significant edits before we share our labor with the world. And ah – snow. We had two snow days in a row, too (we’re in Minnesota, so it’s really not unexpected) and we made the most of them with neighbor kids and a sushi party. But boy am I ready for spring and to just be warm again.
I’ve been wondering about the future of blogging, too. It feels like the quick-post alternative platforms (Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, for instance) have taken over the crafty blogosphere. Taking photos, editing them in a fancypants photoediting program and then writing commentary about them is time-consuming. And I’ve noticed that when I didn’t have that time (last year we remodeled the house so I essentially took a non-intentional half-year sabbatical from my creative work), I didn’t blog as much and consequently didn’t allow myself to dream about blog projects as much. I still enjoy tutorial-writing, though, and talking about the creative process, so I’m not planning to stop blogging anytime soon. I believe there is a niche for process-deconstruction or, at the very least, process-sharing, that the other platforms don’t share because they’re visual-centric. And as long as there are those of us who enjoy discussing the process, there will always be readers and writers of it.
Thank you for all that you write and cover and disseminate to the rest of us! Have a lovely week.
LiEr
What a fun mix of projects. Love your little mermaids. And cool about the blogging ebook….I agree with you of course!
Thanks, Debbie.
I think blogging is a great way of acting like a ‘diary’ of your artistic achievements. Like you say, it can be hard to see when you’re actually making progress – and in my experience blogging helps to make this more tangible.
Love your mermaids. They each are so different and seem to have their own personality…I think it’s something to do with their different hair styles and colour!! Its very exciting to have your puppet almost done. I popped over to Veronicas insta to see him and he looks fantastic. How very very exciting to be making something so different from your usual designs. I often also feel that the days go by and nothing tangible has been done so I’m thinking a studio update to list what I’m up to would be a great idea…and hopefully I will see that I’m getting lots done!!