high school nostalgia

I just stumbled on some high school group photos and felt nostalgic. It was the year before my A-levels. We were asked what we wanted to do in life, I had no clear idea yet. I loved mathematics and english. I wrote lots of poems back then , I also did a lot of drawings (fashion ones daydreaming I could maybe become a fashion designer one day!). I only had one year left to decide what to study next, I went on doing an economics degree not because I loved it but because it seemed logical. It seems so long ago now. I am so happy that I now do what I love.

I’m the only darkie in my class:

Etsy seller interview on bbc essex radio

Just a quick note to let you know that one (or more) etsy sellers based in Essex will be interviewed tomorrow morning (monday 5th october) on the Dave Monk show on bbc essex radio. The producer contacted me and asked if I’d be interested to be interviewed but I replied to late so the guest slot went to someone else (she contacted me on friday morning and as I was out all day I only replied in the evening, but to late). The show is about local artisans in Essex being part of a worldwide marketplace and how that’s affected their businesses. So tune in if you can, the proposed slot is supposed to be at 10.10am but am not sure if it has changed, Monk’s show is usually from 9 to 12 in the morning; if you are not able to listen to it live I think that it is available to listen to again for a few days afterward on the bbc iplayer online.

Beside that I’m busy again with custom orders, it’s often the case around this time of the year and again I find it challenging to have a balance as custom orders take up a lot of my time leaving me hardly any time to sew new items that are needed if I want to stock up my shops for the christmas season. I may have to stop accepting custom orders in november and december if I want to make things easier for myself.

Ah, and I forgot to show you my inspiration wall, I finished it weeks ago and posted in on my flickr pages so you may have seen it already, it was also featured in several blogs (links on my flickr):

Sale in my etsy shop

Just a quick note to let you know that I’m doing a september promotion in my etsy shop, all pencil cases are on sale at $9 (instead of $14) , even the ones made with russian doll fabrics and liberty fabrics. The price is also valid for made to order ones with your choice of fabric (if you go to my flickr pages you can chose from over 100 pretty fabrics in the “fabrics for custom order folders”). As usual, you can buy directly from me if you don’t want to buy from etsy, and uk buyers and european buyers can also pay in pound or in euro instead of dollar. I’m aiming to sew 100 pencil cases, hoping that they will sell this month  but if not they can always be saved as stock for a possible upcoming fair or as christmas stock for my shops.

PS: all pencil cases are big enough to be used as cosmetic pouches as seen in the above picture.

Thank you Apartment Therapy

A huge thank you to Apartment Therapy who just featured my sewing room (the second time this year), you can read the article here.

In my ongoing search for inspiration to help me decorate my home, I found this house featured in a french magazine called “Maison Creative” (july/august 2009 issue). I love this house: white walls everywhere, lots of colourful accents with the furnitures/accessories and best of all fabulous fabrics used in every room as a decorative accent.

A new beginning

Lots of new beginnings this week (and funny enough I am also currently reading the “New Beginning” book by Esther Hicks which I am enjoying so much and highly recommend to those interested in the “law of attraction”).

I happened to find online someone I knew in France 20 years ago, isn’t the internet amazing! I’ve lost touch with lots of french friends since I moved to the UK and it’s wonderful to hear from some of them again.

I recently started selling some fabrics, as I had way to much that I can ever sew, and they cost me less if I buy them wholesale so I thought I would give it a try. I was super happy today to discover that I’ve reached my target and celebrated by investing in buying more, so I bought 50 yards of my best selling fabric (which is a russian doll one). Talking about buying, I recently contacted a uk wholesaler in order to place an order, and was shocked to have been rebuffed – as soon as they discovered that my shops are etsy and ebay shops; in comparison to that my japanese suppliers tell me each time I want to place an order that “they are looking forward to serve me and do business with me”, I’ve given up sourcing uk suppliers now and mainly source abroad, not only because I get better customer service abroad but I also get more competitive prices.

I’ve been contacted by a site that specialises in promoting handmade items, they want to feature my sewing room so I am now having to spruce things a bit, I’ll leave you with a photo of a corner of my sewing room below (can you see a glimpse of my tomato plants in the garden?). I still have to work on an inspiration wall board.

On the house front, still lots to do, no one room is finished yet. It’s frustrating sometimes and I wish I had either some help or the fund to pay for everything to be done by professionals. The garden is better though, I’m enjoying picking some fab tasting tomatoes everyday.

A personal message: petit message pour Christophe, si tu lis ceci je serais ravie d’avoir de tes nouvelles, j’ai trouve ton frere sur internet et lui ai donne mon email.

this is not a sewing blog, is it?

Nope, no much sewing around here, although I’m in the middle of 2 custom orders which need finishing asap. I am not sewing anything new but managed to open 2 more shops (dawanda and folksy) in which I will only list ready to ship items (which I don’t have much of at the moment so these shops may look quite empty till I have an urge to stock them). My fabric stash however seem to increase so I have started selling some of them.

After months of wanting a walking foot, I finally managed to grab one (along with a custom fit add-on quilting table) at a bargain price on ebay. Now, I can finally think of making a quilt for our sofa. I bought the following book to teach myself as I have never made a big quilt in my life.

I’m still in the process of settling in the house. No much progress inside but I managed to do plenty of planting in the front and back garden, I’m working with what was already there (gravel and patio in the back and lawn in the front). I planted a japanese cherry tree in the middle of the lawn (front garden) and surrounded it pansies, then various flower bulbs and more pansies, I’ve also planted the 3 sides border of the lawn with flower bulbs hoping to have them as cut flowers for the house in summer.

I have always wanted to grow some fruit and vegetables and this year I am giving it a go. So far, these are what I’ve planted in the front garden, some in the ground, others in containers:

* fruit trees: cherry, nectarine, fig

* soft fruit bushes: 3 types of  berries

* strawberries

* vegetables: tomatoes (cherry, plum, hildares and marmande), bell peppers (green, yellow, red), french beans, jalapeno chilli, salad

* herbs: thyme, parsley, mint, basil, coriander

* flower plants: camelia, jasmine, geranium, petunia, pansies, impatients

* lots of flower bulbs/seeds (peony, dhalia, harlequin, freesia, gladioli, anemone, geranium, gloxinia, mirabilis, chinese lantern physalis,  sweet peas).

Links:

* picture of my gravel garden here

* my sewing room featured on shaby chic (a fab UK home deco/design blog) here

* my sewing room featured on apartment therapy here

New sewing room

I’m back. The house purchase took longer than I expected but we finally moved to the new (old) house last month. It’s a small 2 bed bungalow (well small compared to our old house but roomy compared to a typical bungalow). So my sewing area is also smaller and is a part of our living room, it has a french door which leads to the garden, but the garden is still a messy work in progress so no pretty view from my sewing corner yet.

This  time, I’m trying a layout with the table against the wall, but when the garden is prettier I may put the table in the middle as before so that I can enjoy looking at the garden while sewing.  I also want a separate cutting table so am open to ideas on how to incorporate one without making the space look to small and crampy.

If you are looking for more sewing room ideas, check out the ones in the links below (all from my favourites folder in flickr):

Pink sewing room by chaletgirl13

Cube storage in a sewing room from decorology

The new Studio magazine from Cloth Paper Scissor also has lots of ideas, but I have not seen it sold in UK yet (you can buy it via equilter.com who delivers to UK).

Happy times

I got my first press exposure this month in Quick & Crafty magazine (christmas issue, page 71)! I’m so delighted about that, especially because I love that magazine. I was contacted by one of their editors a few weeks ago, they were working on a special russian dolls feature and asked me if I wanted to be included. The whole issue is actually very good (with free templates and step by step projects to make russian dolls inspired items), and several etsy items/etsy sellers were featured. There was also a recent article in the Times Sunday magazine about buying from etsy, which is really great because etsy is still not that well known in UK.

The other happy news is that I just bought my first house, so things have been hectic recently. We are currently living in a temporary accommodation (staying with friends) for a few weeks till we can move in the new house, so I’m bound to continue being super busy till probably beginning of next year. I am looking forward to setting up my next sewing studio and am dreaming of building a conservatory to be used as my studio when I can afford it. These are the last pictures of my studio in the old house, the little house box/basket is something that I have coveted for a long time from Rice.dk but when I found out their price I’ve asked my dad to buy me some direct from Madagascar where Rice manufacture them.

Review of Seams to me book by Anna Maria Horner

I love Anna Maria Horner, her fabrics, her blog, her creativity and was very excited to hear that she wrote a new sewing book. Now, other fabric designers before her already published some very nice books so I had very high expectations for Anna Maria’s one (you know, wondering if she was going to offer some fresh new projects, and if I will learn something new from the book). I was delighted, I love it so much I had to write this review even though I have millions more urgent things to do right now. You can click on each picture to see a larger version of it.

What I liked:

* The spiral format of the book makes it easy to use

* There are 24 projects, most of them are fresh (not a rehash of projects already in other books or readily available online), there are 10 paper patterns (ready to be cut as they are printed on one side only). The projects are varied: for your sewing room, bags, home deco projects, women clothing, kids clothing, quilt, wall hanging art, baby toy, even one project for your pet etc

* The book is a visual feast, very enjoyable to browse through with lots of bright and cheerful colours

* The book is very comprehensive. You will learn how to set up your sewing space, what tools are really worth having, she offers useful tips that I have not seen in other similar books, there is even a lesson on colour combination based on saturation. I love this book because Anna Maria somehow, through what she is generously sharing in this book, has inspired me to be more creative in my sewing process. She is inspiring me to think/act/create as a designer/artist and not just a seamstress.

* I like the fact that she used other designers’ fabrics in addition to her own, so the book is not a marketing book for her fabric lines.

* The tutorials are very well explained, and for each project she add a litte “color notes” where she explains why she chose that print and colour (it’s like an insider tip on how designers select fabrics for their projects)

What I didn’t like:

* A very few projects are already familiar to me (like the cozy cube)

* I would have loved to see full pictures of her studio

To recap, it’s a very good book, worth having even if you already have all the other fabric designers books (Amy Butler etc).

Fancy sewing something from the book right now? Click here to to go to the publisher’s site where you can download (pdf format) the free tutorial for the doodad pillow project from the book.

New matryoshka russian dolls tote bag

Thanks for those sending me emails asking me when I’m going to update my blog. I have been busy since july with custom orders, went to Paris, needed time to recover from all the walking in Paris, still busy with sewing. I also have some exciting news that I don’t want to talk about yet but it means I’ll be even more busy.

I’ve open the new fabric/supply destash shop which you can find at www.frenchdesign.etsy.com I’m not really ready to dedicate time to it yet as I would like to focus more on stocking my main shop and making it ready for the christmas season.

Below is the newest tote bag I made using the super rare russian dolls fabric by Shamash and Sons, which I’ve listed in my etsy shop. And if you fancy seeing a picture of me, head over to my flickr pages.