A day of details

We tore the attic studio (upstairs, white room, what do I call it again?) apart this morning to set up a bed for a photo shoot. I just finished sewing a new flannel quilt, which I'll share next week to introduce the LouLou Flannels. The process of propping called for making some new pillow cases as well. I've been wanting to make some new pillow cases anyway just to play around with the borders in the Crossing Paths prints..... so fun. And layer on top of that detail the very enjoyable detail of already-made bias binding! Yes, you heard me, its finally here! When you consider the embarrassing amount of money I would be willing to spend to not make my own, I think these rolls come in quite reasonably. You don't even have to tip me.



Anyway, the shoot went really well, and fussing with the details to get everything just so from each angle, really takes a very, very long time, and still you could always tweak more...you know, just enough crumbles in the quilts to look comfortable, but just enough neatness to translate the quilt pattern....its all very finicky. Four hours of setting it all up and shooting. But highly pleasing for someone like me ... who's OCD tendencies and the desire to be in a good mood are at constant odds with one another. What was talking about? Details. We layered up two different quilts with the pillows for the photo shoot, and I really, really did not quite know or plan to have all the pieces bound with the exact same bias binding, its just happened that way. But I love how it looks.

And more details. My man left town today and is running a 50k tomorrow. I did not just accidentally type a zero behind that five. 5 0 k i l o m e t e r s. That's bout 30 miles. I am eating pretzels and hummus right , which I imagine is very different from running 30 miles. We are different like that. I run. But like 3 miles. And do you know what I love so very much about my running man? He is so genuinely proud of me and encouraging when I do little things like run 3 ten-minute miles. High five-ing me and everything. He is amazing. As much as we all like to tease him about his passion for running, we all are in awe of what he is able to do. Even if we discuss his glycogen levels more than I thought any two people could.

When I started this post, I didn't know what pillow cases and running 30 miles had to do with one another.... but I think Mr. 50k will make that clear to me sometime after the race tomorrow.

Run. Jeff. Run. I'll be preparing the finish line with lots of love.
xoxo, Anna

At the Grocery (or New Levels of Boredom in Blog Reading)

If I were a checkout clerk at a grocery store, I would be the annoying kind that strikes up a conversation about the combinations of things that people are buying. I know I would. I would try not too, of course, but clerk-me would not be able to resist. Because of this, I often wonder what our clerks and baggers think of some of our purchase lists.



Very often any amount of weirdness in our choices is buried in a pile of keeping this family eating, and also very often buried in a pile of tag-along helpers when we do our shopping. We might be one of the only families of 8 that chooses to shop in large herds. The local Publix is just a hop, skip and a horse away from us, and right next to some of the kids favorite food, so we are often all here. Mostly split up all over the store, one in the bathroom, Jeff or I fetching a few from the cookie counter, there is always someone using the blood pressure machine at the pharmacy without permission and typically Roman likes to push the cart.

But when we spare ourselves that mess, I'll rattle off a coupla things and send Jeff out later at night. One recent favorite small list combo went like this: Melatonin, Benadryl, Beer, Ben & Jerry's. We are very proud of that one. If I were the clerk I would guess that we were trying to get a baby elephant to go to sleep. Nope, no elephant. Just us. Last night's mini list was comprised of: Diapers, Small Whole Pumpkin, Peanut Butter, Beer. While I am not sure what clerk-me would infer from that, I might start to notice the common denominator.

I am sorry about this post. Please do something more important and worth your time now.

Oh, but my recent favorite impulse-buy/plea from Isabela while we were being checked out was "Mom can we please buy Bridesmaids, it looks so funny !?"
(!!!!!)
"Absolutley not Bela, that is not appropriate for you.... or me."
(Which I know for sure now that I've seen it. Twice.)
"No mama, this one says 'Unrated', so its fine."

Ahhh, shopping. xoAnna

Bow Tie Friday

Roman and I are here with several public service announcements:

Eating animal crackers is fun.

Wearing a bow tie is cool.

Roman prefers the animal crackers to the bow tie.

I prefer the bow tie to the animal crackers.

We each put up with one for the other.

You are allowed to play with your food if you are eating animal crackers.

Its Friday.

All of the above go well together in my brain, and maybe only there.

Crunchy, sweet love to you and your weekend, Anna & Roman

(Style sources: Bow Ties, Animal Crackers, Laminate Tablecloth, Office Chair)

If what I think is happening, IS hapening, it better not be.

("sinister swarm" print detail in progress)

Hoooa No. Man. Thanks for all the moth info. I think. Ick. No really, I'm glad to take a sampling of all the common denominators in those comments and figure out our plan of attack (defense?).

In other maybe not so unrelated-to-icky-moth news, I am here to talk more about boys. The boys I currently have in the house- 39, 13, 11 and 2 - keep me exposed to everything from heart-achingly wonderful to utterly disgusting. You can make your own assumptions about that limited information. I knew enough about boys when I was first pregnant with Roman to know better than to actually want another one. After all I was (and still am) married to one and I was (and still am) raising two others (errhhh- am I raising all of them....?) But I did really, really hope that he was a boy before I knew. I dreamed that he was. I felt like I had figured boys out and was finally over the fact that I can't put dresses on them. It was like a whole new appreciation of boy personhood was opened up to me. Boys are wonderful. Just as beautiful as girls in their own way, and warm your heart in an entirely different way. I am so lucky to have them. Smelliness and all.

Speaking of lucky, here is our winner of Sewing for Boys + some cuts of my new flannel:

8:09 PM Jamie said...I have had my eyes on this book from the time the ladies announced its impending arrival on their blog about a year ago. Add this to your amazing flannel fabrics and who wouldn't be in line for that?

Congratulations Jamie, and email us with your home address to claim your loot!

Shop news! We've just added the Loulouthi Needleworks and my new Rose Era linens. I am so pleased with how both collections turned out, and didn't expect that both of these cross stitch inspired groups would be launching at the same time. A happy accident.

back to the drawing board, smooch, AM

(ps. does anyone recognize this post title...name that movie? Its my favorite movie line of all time and sums up the life of a mother (especially of boys) like nothing else. Are you cussing with me?)

Like a Moth to a Cracker

A few months ago, as I began to assemble inspirations and sketches for my 2012 fabric collections, I decided that moths among other naturalistic thingermaggigins would play a feature role in the line.
Not much later we discovered we had a serious moth problem in our kitchen.
I don't mean a couple of moths flying around.
I mean that I open a brand new box of pasta that has never been opened and a few moths fly out.
I then almost hurl, throw away the pasta, grab my purse and holler that we're going out.
We cleaned out the pantry entirely.
Like, scrubbed.
They're back.
Moth balls?
I thought moths liked wool. Or flames.
Ours like carbs.
My feelings towards that moth art have changed.
I almost decided I couldn't handle making moth art.
But this collection is a little bit based on throwing yourself into the midst.
Of anything. And studying it.
So I decided it should not just be a beautiful print, but a shrine-like offering to the moths, depicting the most beautiful moths our planet has to offer.
Not the ugly gray ones in our pantry that like Cheerios.
And flour.
And crackers.
I am also in the midst of sampling various wools for some crewel projects.
Wool. All over the house. My moths don't care.
I love crewel.
Its like pudgey embroidery.
I might have news on the crewel wool front at some point.
That would be nice.
I never find moths near my wool sweaters. Never find moth holes.
Could my moths be stupid?
Like my nephew Eli would say: "It's weeyurhd."

over and out. AM

I heart Boys

What Shelly Figueroa and Karen LePage got so right with Sewing For Boys is the keen combination of simple but slightly rough around the edges that is so completely perfect when sewing for the young lads in your life. I think you know by now that I don't share anything here that I don't truly adore, and I get shown many, many books. I share only those that I would be purchasing myself anyway, and this one is definitely in that category. I have already set aside cut lengths of my new (soon to be released) Loulou Flannels to make the Goodnight, Sweetheart PJs, plus some bias binding for the adorable piping detail. A long way to go to put a rowdy boy to bed? Not at all. The patterns are so straight forward, doting just enough on the details that make it worth home sewing to begin with. Roman has just outgrown most of the patterns in Handmade Beginnings, so I am happy to have this sweet and inspiring resource as staples for him. Who wants a copy? You will love it, leave me a comment and I'll draw a name next week for a giveaway.....I'll even throw in the above flannels just for fun.

In other news, I was honored to be a featured FACE (a super smiley one) of Nashville on the StyleBlueprint online mag today. It is a very well curated site, and as a mere coincidence, my friend Ashley Hylbert was hired for my photos. She took the first headshots I ever quivered my bottom lip through about 10 years ago. What I love about Ashley is she's talented, she's really fast, and she'll suggest something that I think is goofy, I whine, she talks me into it anyway, I do it, she looks at the photo and says things like, "No, you look stupid", or "I don't like your face in that". The world needs more honesty like hers.

What else..... OH! Those crazytown super wonderful people over at Sew4Home are giving away a serious pile of my loot! (This suddenly sounds like a local furniture store liquidation sale, but) Seriously lots and lots of stuff, so go enter for a chance to win. I don't even care if you don't want it, save it for Christmas gifts.

Think that's it.

I had Asian chicken for lunch today and it made me really thirsty. So I keep drinking. And I keep going to the bathroom, which is all the way downstairs. Its cutting into my work time.

Okay. That's really it. I couldn't guess where it would go from here anyway.
xo,Anna

10 year difference

Two of our little ones were only glimmers then. Juliana nearly 10. Nicolas 3. Joseph 18 mos. I had 3-wk-old Isabela in a snugly and was headed out the back door for a walk on a gorgeous, sunny day. My sister rang and told me to turn on the television instead. It was only a minute after the first plane had struck. Each of us, of course, remembers where we were. What we were doing. I know for certain what none of us was doing. None of us was waiting for an attack, not expecting the grief and mourning that is still the part of so many of our lives today. I feel like I am finally able to admit, perhaps boldly, even though I did not personally suffer tragedy on 9-11, that we all suffered. I was traumatized. I never felt it fair to feel that or certainly not respectful to say so. I still feel so much grief and sadness when I think back to those raw emotions of watching the story play itself out, changing second by second. I was transfixed nearly 24 hours a day with a baby who barely even knew she was out of the womb let alone think it appropriate to ever sleep more than a few hours. So it was myself, Isabela, and the television all night long, so many nights. I would not let go of her. I needed her to need everything from me. And even though the contrast of what I was holding and what I was watching could not have been greater, I am grateful that I was constantly reminded of the Good because of her precious, new innocence. Like a pill I had to take every three hours as I nursed her, to convince myself that there was still enough good, when I think so many of us questioned it. Didn't we? Thank God for good. So much of it all around us. It wasn't long after the tragedy that we gave up cable tv for good.

**********

I piled a load of children into the car for an early pickup on Friday to get everyone + their Greek dancing costumes to the festival in time for their first performance. All of the children took turns explaining the bits of 9-11 history and the heart wrenching stories that were part of their classrooms all day long. And every one of us cried. We shared grief. In small stories, broken and paused with deep breaths and with little sobs. And though no one said so, we all said how much we love each other and how fortunate we are to have one another. We said so with sadness that doesn't belong to us- it is sadness that we are only borrowing from those who truly have suffered, surely they are glad to give up a bit. Acknowledging that hurt in others acknowledges at the same time a fear in each of us, the fear of losing what we love the most- each other.

Watching my children dance the same dances that I grew up performing, those same songs and dances that I know make my father's heart proud and maybe his eyes a little damp, I can't help but feel celebration. Even today. I am thankful for freedom. I am thankful for diversity. I am thankful for peace. I want more of all 3 everywhere.

I celebrate each of us today, and I remember those lost.

PEACE & LOVE,
Anna Maria

(all photos from the still ongoing Greek Festival here in Nashville)

After the Run

Do you know that your beautiful coat inspired my floor color? Nutty, creamy, beautiful, soft. I wuvvssu Weo. Thank you for running faster than me (aka kicking my butt) today.

This weekend I will be serving in the appetizer booth at the Greek Festival (she's going to kill me for that link), so come and say hello if you get a chance. The food is so good, and I have a whole gaggle of folk dancing children who will be performing too. One of these days I'll have to share all the costume making I've done for them for years. Which I should be getting back to now....

ps. you can see all of my bare white pre-moved-into studio and read about my inspirations in this quarter's issue of Studios Magazine. They are also going to follow up in the Winter issue with the moved-into studio feature. It was clean for like 2 hours. We took pictures. It hasn't been picked up again since. I am just glad there is printed evidence in their forthcoming issue.

sunny, cool days to you, Anna

That Sewing Doo-hicky

Here is where I explain some stuff.

A Janome sewing machine has been on my sewing table for more than 13 years. I don't mean one or another Janome sewing machine, I mean the same one. Until recently. I was approached by the company almost a year ago about the prospect of working together, and was immediately excited and encouraged that selling me on their machines would be no work at all. I was already in love. But they almost laughed when I told them I was still sewing on a Memory Craft 5700. Regardless of having the opportunity to sew with many machines (they just sort of show up here) nothing could ever make me stop sewing on that machine. Honest to goodness. I would always go back to it, ignoring whatever gadgets were suppose to be the latest and greatest. And I think that does say something, it says that my machine has filled a need for me that I didn't need to or want to replace.... it never gave me a reason to look around for anything else, so we have a history.

Admittedly, I get asked frequently what I sew with, as though I might be an authority- I am not- just some experience. Many people are passionate about their machine brand- finding what you are comfortable on is so important- and different for everyone. I've never felt it a really big deal, to tout one over another, brag, insist, push, convert. The thing I have learned about sewing machines, is that really, who cares? I am always way more interested in what I am making than what is pushing the thread up and down, or making the bobbin whirl..... its just never present in my mind. On the few occasions that I've had the chance to sew with the Rainbow Around the Block team, in all the hours and hours of sewing together, not one of us talked about our machine or machine brand. We talked about our quilts, our fabrics, our projects and our families.

But back to stuff. After the past year of slowly developing the new relationship, I feel convinced that the folks who design, invent and make Janome machines know this. They know you have a choice, and most of us care more about perfecting our piecing, or dashing our darts than the name on our machines. I think that's part of what is working so well for them. They don't rest on or push the name as much as they just make quality products. So no wonder, I guess, that I was compelled to work with them, and I'm happy (jumping up and down) to say that I'll have the opportunity to try out several models, review them, and give old faithful a rest (not that she needs it) every now and then. And you might see someone familiar in their mag ads. Sorry about that.

So who cares?

Well you don't have to. But here is what it will mean for anyone who does care. I am partnering with Janome quarterly to create new free sewing projects, videos (oh dear) highlighting some steps from those projects, and going on some road trips to dealers around the country to share the love. I am thrilled that they were open to working together in whatever way I came up with. And I came up with it because I want my work to be helpful, and inspiring for everyne who supports what I do. And that's you, of course. I have already met so many wonderful and brilliant folks within the company. My quick weekend trip to Orlando was to give my first official hello at their biannual convention. I loved learning more about the history of the company, meeting Janome dealers from every point on the globe and getting to be among the first to see gorgeous new models.

But really all I ever wanted to was to have anything to do with anyone who designs the Hello Kitty sewing machines. Amen.

So here's my Janome + Me page, where we'll be adding more of my updates regarding that world. So I'll just shut up now.

smoochie.AM

Reading, Writing & Arithmetic

I only recently reacquainted myself with the feeling of what its like to have only my work before me. No interruptions. No distractions. Just work. Enjoyable as most of my work is, I have always been one to work best under pressure or to be most prolific when incredibly (unreasonably) busy- not as though I've had the chance at anything else, really. This week has been strange. New. A little uncomfortable. Today's brightest light was the sunlight twinkling in Roman's eyes as he giggled out a proud smile after successfully yanking his shoe over his bulbous little heel. Over his new school socks (because no other pairs are actually pairs at all, just two socks). Today's deepest, darkest, tiniest, and perhaps irrational fear is that maybe for some years now I have forgotten how to just be single, whole, complete and only me. Or worse, that maybe, that's not as interesting as it use to be. It was a surprising amount of comfort when I stacked some things up for a ticket-for-one weekend trip. It was. Having to remember how I would like to occupy just myself. I wasn't sure I remembered...
~Jeff told me after reading Half Broke Horses that he knew I would relate to the toughness of the heroine. And Glass Castle might be the best book I've ever read. So.
~One of the children has snatched the bookmark out of The Rhythm of Home, but I realized that I am fine with the prospect of reading dear Amanda's (or Steve's!) words more than once- such practical and specific direction to nurturing your family with more than simple affection.
~And COLOR ~ a book that actually offers a history of color, really a novel about color "and reveals how paints came to be invented, discovered, traded and used". It is so unbelievably fascinating, I will never think of that gianormous topic the same way.
~And topping my stack is a handful of cross stitch works in progress on every shade of my new Aida cloths. I have been designing and writing new patterns for lots of handwork....which will appear in several forms....all requiring simple, correct arithmetic of design. Which is a completely different way of composing arrangements of color and form altogether. No harder. No easier. Just not the same. I adore it.
My stack of me.
have a good long weekend, see you on the other side of it xo, AM
Oh, and Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. Such a favorite.