Milo

We lost a member of the family on Friday. My cat that I've had for 16 years got very sick and I had to make that terrible decision.

I walked into the dining room this morning, half expecting to see him asleep on the chair in the sun. I always left the shades up and the chair sideways just for him, because he loved sleeping there so much.

I hope wherever he is now, there's an automatically refilling bowl of cat treats, a faucet that's perpetually turned on to just a trickle so he can get a drink whenever he wants, and a soft chair with a patch of sunlight always waiting for him.

I'm glad he's not suffering anymore, but man oh man, I miss him.

Riley Blake pincushion tutorial

It's up on the Riley Blake Cutting Corners blog! Look for the downloadable PDF with pattern, photos and instructions (link is in bold, red type).

I hope you like it... and hope it makes sense, since much of the sewing, photo-taking and writing was done while fending off a very curious 2 year old, or at about 1 AM!

Big news in my little corner of the world!

I'm so happy to announce my design, Hero-saurus, was chosen by Timeless Treasures as the winner of their Be My Hero contest on Spoonflower!!! Which is awesome in and of itself... but most awesome of all is they're going to license it! It's dorky, but it's pretty much a dream come true.


For sure I thought mine would NOT win... there were some really amazingly good designs, like this one by CJL Designs/Julie Lynch, which was probably my favorite. It's such a great illustration, and the layout, interesting repeat and unique color palette make it even better.

I just KNEW mine wouldn't win.

Last Thursday while the younger two were having breakfast, I saw the email from Spoonflower. I expected it to read, "Congrats, you're in the top 10, but unfortunately we didn't choose you design as the winner..." but it didn't. I just couldn't make sense of it. It took about four reads for it to register.

Then I think I yelled. My two year old jumped. (Luckily he was buckled into his high chair so he didn't fall out.) My four year old didn't understand what was wrong with Mommy.

I decided to be an artist when I was four years old, I think. At first, things looked fairly promising: At age eight, I won 2nd place in a nutrition placemat contest where the prize was breakfast with a bunch of senior citizens (not super fun for a 8 year old). In high school my artwork won a bunch of prizes, some local and a few Scholastic Awards.

I even got a BFA in visual art, in painting and drawing, specifically.

In the years after college, I meandered around the worlds of children's book illustration, fine art, crafts, graphic design, and illustration, never really finding my niche. I entered many art and design contests, but only won one: an American Graphic Design Award. What the heck was I going to be when I grew up??

Then I found Spoonflower. A couple months into my adventure in fabric design, I was shocked to win the Pointillism Fabric of the Week contest. Then came Alphabet, Hawaiian Quilt (a tie with this lovely one by Jessica Greenwalt), Bowling, Sewing, and now, Be My Hero. Craziness.

I feel awed having won six FOTW contests... and quite honestly, I feel very lucky to have found fabric design in the first place. It's a great mashup of a lot of the stuff I love to do: draw, paint, make repeats, create silly little characters, use my odd sense of humor, tell a story, use bright colors, ask my children's opinions on my work, create something really cool that's useful at the same time. I think it might be a perfect fit.