I hope you'll join me for a new in-person class I'm teaching on Saturday, April 6, 2019 at a private home in Hanover, MA. Collage Faces is a super fun one-day workshop. To begin, you will learn all about the basic structure of the face. Then through a series of easy exercises you will learn how to render a face in cut paper collage. We will cover the subtleties of shading, eyes, and all the details that make your collage face really pop! We'll discuss abstraction versus realism and I'll help you discover and embrace your own personal style of... Read more →

As you probably know, the biggest craft project I'm working on is a home renovation. And renovation doesn't really seem to cover what it is. It's kind of building a new house inside of the old house shell. Listen the podcast to hear more: If you do not see the podcast player above, please click on this link. You can listen to a podcast anywhere and at any time. It is a recording that is available to you whenever you'd like to listen. If you'd like to download it to your iTunes library, click here. You can also pause and... Read more →

If you're like me, you have more ideas than time to get them all done! Today I thought I'd share a few projects that are on creative to-do list: A student of mine kindly gifted me a "Sew Together" bag. It has three zipper pockets within a larger bag. (This is not a photo of my bag because I'm lazy. But this is what it looks like, but with different fabric.) image source The "Sew Together" bag is an internet phenomenon and now that I own one, I know why. It holds sooooo much and is super duper useful. At... Read more →

Recently I spent a weekend obsessively making myself shirts. I used the Bondi Top pattern from Sew to Grow. Each version features different adjustments: longer length, longer sleeve, pockets, and so on. I've really been enjoying wearing them around. This was the first one I made: I used a commercial fabric for the body and then used a fabric I printed for the sleeves. This is just the second garment I've ever made! (You may remember that I blogged about my first here.) For the second version, I wanted to make the shirt longer and 100% from my own fabric.... Read more →

I have always said that there are three hobbies I enjoy: buying art supplies organizing art supplies using art supplies (Sometimes I do a little too much of hobby #1.) As it turns out, renovating a house has some similar activities to engage in, particularly when it comes to the buying part. In some ways I suppose this isn't surprising. This house is simply the largest arts and crafts project I've ever done! Because I have an old Victorian house (built in 1890) I have been visiting lots of super fun salvage shops up and down the East Coast. I... Read more →

Remember that small quilt I made for my Quilt Guild Challenge? I wanted to try it again with a few variations, so I took some of the fabric I gelli printed earlier this year and added a bit more to it: I cut up the fabric and created this kind of crazy and cool quilt: For the back of the quilt I used a remnant of fabric my Mother gave me. When I was a little girl she made the kitchen curtains from this fabric (hand sewn because she didn't own a sewing machine). I love the sentimentality of including... Read more →

You know that I love to do hand embroidery. How pretty is that?! Guess where the pattern came from? It's one of the built-in designs in my ScanNCut DX! Check out the video tutorial for the project how-to step-by-step: In the video, I'm using a ScanNCut DX, but you could do this technique with any ScanNCut as long as you have a Universal Pen Holder. I hope you'll give this project a try. It makes creating beautiful hand embroidered pieces a snap! Thanks for stopping by! --- I will be on HSN tonight and tomorrow with the PTouch Embellish and... Read more →

I shared some pics from the Portland Museum of Art's Art in Bloom on Wednesday. And I could have sworn that I've shared pics of PMA's permanent collection, but when I looked through my archives, I didn't see a post. (FYI: You can use the search box on the blog to look for any posts you might be missing or thinking about.) If that's true, I'll have to go spelunking for the photos from my visit last year and get them posted to share with you! In the meantime, PMA is hosting a fantastic exhibit called "Relational Undercurrents." It's contemporary... Read more →