Design

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    Good as New

    ByHeather Bailey

    GardenDistrictChairT

    Getting back to project eye-candy, here's my finished chair. I went with St. Charles Bouquet in blue—which is perfect with my living room decor—and a distressed green finish to pay homage to the original condition of the chair. The contrast between the crisp new fabric and the lightly-weathered frame makes for a bold, yet elegant statement—in my smug and humble opinion.

    Upholstery470wThis is my Garden District™ fabric collection which came out right around when little bub came out to meet the world. I announced the collection to my newsletter subscribers but never managed to post any reveals here on the blog. Having a baby can be disorienting, to put it lightly.

    St. Charles Bouquet is a modification of Rose Bouquet from my Pop Garden™ quilting-weight collection. Those of you who have collected my designs will note that the focal bouquets of the print are much closer together and the scale of the design is much larger. The artwork was re-created and re-colored with home decor specifically in mind.

    The other prints in the Garden District™ collection are all new. Mockingbird is a print I put together at first for my Nicey Jane™ quilting-cotton collection, but it was swapped for Picnic Bouquet at the last moment, favoring the scale and mood of Mockingbird for home dec projects. Plus, Picnic Bouquet was too perfect for Nicey. It is one of my favorite prints in that collection.

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    I have received many pleas to release these home dec prints on quilting-weight cotton and laminated cotton as well. It would be helpful to know just which prints you're most interested in seeing in these other formats. They would need to be rescaled, paired with the perfect companion prints and recolored perhaps. There is a lot of thought that goes into balancing a cotton collection so the variety of prints can be mixed into the same quilt or craft project. It's complicated. But it can certainly be done.

    This collection was inspired by the urban gardens and vintage architecture of historic New Orleans. The prints are distinctly romantic with an urban influence. A portion of the collection is printed on a luscious cotton sateen, and others are printed on a sturdy cotton canvas. (In my opinion, a well-designed and inviting room offers a variety of textures.) The sateen prints are 55"/56" wide and the canvas prints are 58"/59" wide. Think bedding, curtains, pillows, purses, jackets, skirts, nursery decor, and more. At $17 to $19/yard, they are considerably more affordable than most designer decorating fabrics.

    That stack of chairs I just posted about… Garden District is the whole reason there IS a stack of chairs. My furniture-collecting habit reached new heights once this fabric collection was put into production.

    Finally, great color for the home! I got tired of searching for the perfect fabrics for my own home and decided to give up already and design them myself. I am genuinely, personally relieved.

  • Croak-ello, This is She

    ByHeather Bailey

    I lost my voice a few days ago. It's only gradually coming back to me. In my gusto to get things done today—it's the first quiet day I've had in a long stretch—I somehow forgot all about my condition.

    I set up a business call for the afternoon with one of my licensing partners and was only reminded of my voiceless state when I answered the call with an inaudible croak.

    Oops. They called looking for Heather Bailey and Neville Longbottom's pet toad answered the phone.

  • Zippity Buzz Buzz

    ByHeather Bailey

    While in Utah for the wedding, we stayed with Nadine & Tom, owners of the fabulous South Jordan quilt shop, Material Girls. Such a fun family! I pulled myself away twice to the shop and picked up fabrics for me, and this adorable beach cruiser embroidery pattern for my niece, Lily—Laura's girl.

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    Laura lived near us in AZ for a few years before moving out east. Lily spent a lot of time with Elijah and I back then—we MISS her!

    Nadine's store is as adorable as she is—well nearly. And they carry a number of items you can't get anywhere else—such as this bicycle stitchery. Fortunately, it is available online.

    There is so much going on around here. Today is the kids' last day of school; so, naturally, I'm attempting to get a summer's worth of work done today before the noise and chaos level rises. I'll share my secret if I succeed.

    I may have to split my time more evenly between my home studio and my office in order to concentrate—depends on the project. Am I the only one who experiences a mixture of excitement and dread on the last day of school? And why is it I feel exactly the same way about the first day of school?

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    Sunshine & Ice Cream

    ByHeather Bailey

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    It's been a long time since we've attempted a 12-hour road trip with an infant. It all comes back to me so clearly now.

    We just returned from a week in Utah where we celebrated our niece, Ellie's, marriage to Mr. Jon Cox. Isaac urged me to fly up separately with the baby, then meet up with him and the older kids once there. But I insisted we go The Togetherness Route and all take the car.

    Little bub did rather well. Of course, this is because we drove all night for each leg of the trip. Now it's time for a vacation from our vacation. Isaac and I need sleep.

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    Isaac comes from a giant, collected family which claims 10 kids. Those 10 kids have kids of their own, ranging from 2-months-old to 30-something. It's entirely too rare that we get to visit with a large sampling of this boisterous group. This is a family which will actually DANCE at a wedding. Dance-dance, not sway.

    Ellie was radiant in a 60's-inspired silvered dress which made a gentle bell, just skirting the floor. (Such a neat girl—I really need to tell you more about her and the charity work she is doing!) As Ellie is Charlotte's true doppleganger in the family, my own life fast-forwarded for a few minutes here and there as I caught glimpses of Charlotte as a woman on her own wedding day.

    Charlotte looked like sunshine and ice cream, wearing her new Easter dress to the wedding; Ellie paid her a mighty compliment, saying, "Charlotte is so adorable; she's my top competition today."

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    The reception was held at the Salt Lake Hardware Building—crazy cool place. I didn't have the camera out much, as my arms were full of baby. At nearly 9-months old, holding him is like wrestling a thorny bludger. His will is developing more quickly than his motor skills. Scratchy nails are his best negotiating tool. I haven't processed the photos yet, but if there are any of note, I'll post them.

    BaileyEaster_05At the reception, Elijah learned DJ skills from his cousin Izzy's husband, Johnny. Elijah has since been reading up on sound boards and other equipment in the B&H Photo catalog. (Izzy is one of Ellie's two vibrant younger sisters—the one whose wedding we attended two Christmasses back.) Izzy has a blog now at A Dose of Lovely—that's another post to add to the queue.

    From these photos, you can see that I never got around to posting about Granny's Easter dresses. I pulled up the photos—in a timely manner, I add—but every image was so breathtakingly delicious that I couldn't decide which ones to use.

    So I postponed.

    Here at last are Charlotte, Haley, and Chloe, my mom's three granddaughters, enjoying the Arizona sunshine outside my sister's home on Easter Day. Granny coordinated these three in my Hello Roses fabric, accenting each dress with a unique twist of lemon. These dresses—and the little girls wearing them—make my heart pit-a-pat.

    Charlotte's slouching white socks and mary janes give me a distinct thrill that's surely grounded in the slouching church socks of my own childhood.

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    It was a truly wonderful trip. As I wrapped up a new fabric collection the day before we left, the timing was perfect to enjoy a brief escape with my kiddos before immersing myself in the next big project.

  • Same Not Sane

    ByHeather Bailey

    Leafy layers of tracing paper with final modifications blanket my studio. When this design is finished, I will have one more print to go.

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    I lay in bed this morning with my eyes closed for half an hour letting impressions of that final print soak into the backs of my eyelids. These images are elusive and transforming. Remember that Michael Jackson video where one person morphed into the next, over and over—Black or White? Like that.

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    The trick is to jot these ideas down without indulging in them just yet. I'm saving the last print for dessert.

    One petal reads "Yes," the other says "Same"—don't mistake it for "Sane." I'm not there yet, but getting very close.

  • H.B. on HB

    ByHeather Bailey

    LeadPointer

    You asked about the pencil shown in this post?

    This handy tool is called a drafting lead holder or clutch pencil. It contains a thicker core of lead (2mm) than a mechanical pencil (0.05mm to 0.09mm) and must be sharpened with a specialized device called a lead pointer.

    Pencil lead is manufactured in a range from soft to hard, with “B” representing a soft lead and “H” representing a hard lead. B stands for “Black” and H stands for “Hardness.” As such, a soft lead produces a darker, thicker line and a hard lead produces a lighter, thinner line. The full spectrum is represented below in an image from Dave’s Mechanical Pencils. The more B’s a lead has, the softer it is, the more H’s it has, the harder it is.

    DraftingLeadholder

    Your typical school pencil or mechanical pencil uses an HB lead, which is dead in the middle between soft and hard. (A “#2 pencil” is the same as an HB pencil.) However, for my artwork, I prefer a harder lead which is less dusty and won’t smear as readily. A harder lead keeps its point longer as well. However, with a hard lead, artwork isn’t as black on the page as with a softer lead. For me, this is an easy trade-off. I use a softer-leaded pencil to lead up the back side of tracing paper in prep for transferring a design, but for all other pencilly purposes, I prefer a hard lead.

    PencilLeadHardnessSizeI’m a huge fan of mechanical pencils as well and I use them plenty, especially when I’m on the go. Most stores carry the standard HB leads for mechanical pencils. However, it takes some planning to procure those ultra-thin leads in a harder variety. You can find them online or at nicer art supply stores. When I’m at the studio or at home, however, I tend to use a lead holder. It’s not great for travel because the lead pointer gets filled with graphite dust and can make a real mess if you tip it over. You can track down a lead holder online or at your local art supply store. My nearby Michael’s carries a Staedtler brand lead holder, as well as HB lead cores. Hobby Lobby, however, has a variety of lead cores.

    Perhaps this helps some of you out? I thought lead ratings were relatively common knowledge till I saw the light bulb go off behind Isaac’s eyes when I explained these terms to him a couple of weeks back. I guess I’m in my own little world. Me and my pencils.

  • Sketchy

    ByHeather Bailey

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    I'm in the thick of designing new prints. The one I'm working on right now will probably take me all week—at minimum. This pushes me awfully close to my target date, but the print is gorgeous, so I'm taking the gamble.

    The other designs are close. I can see the light. As long as I work through the dark, right?

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    In other news, we survived Spring Break. I look forward to having the kids around. But wow, this week, I'm more ready than ever for them to head back to school. A snippet of quiet, a splinter, a shard, a crumb, would be oh so lovely. Tomorrow is the day.

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    A Box of Happy

    ByHeather Bailey

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    Here's an investment with guaranteed returns.

    For $1.00, make a child's day with a box of colorful chalk. Leave the box on her bed with a love note. And that child's charming artwork will bring you far more than $1.00 of happiness. Take photos and your returns will double in the years to come when you both reflect on those sunny days of childhood.

    ChalkFamily4_470wWe haven't been able to fit in a family portait in years. At this point, I'm counting on Charlotte's artwork to catalog our family make-up. In fact, I dream of assembling a coffee table book of her artwork to help me endure an empty nest. I thought of naming the book 'I Love You, Mama' as this is the tag line on most of her drawings. My latest thought, however, is to name the book 'A Spoonful of Charlotte' as this mighty book is bound to help the medicine go down—the fleeting of time, a deterioration in health, vision issues—whatever is in store for me should I be fortunate enough to make it to a beautiful old age.

    I'm planning out my happiness.

    In fact, I've been giving a lot of thought to mindful happiness the last few years. I've been assembling my children's traditional keepsakes (artwork, report cards, photos, etc.) into files for their easy retrieval as adults. When I started, it struck me to include more meaningful things as well—bits of wisdom when they come to me, a love note for my far-off descendants—and my take on happiness and how to foster it. The more I move on it, the more convinced I am that everyone should leave such a guidebook for their kiddos. What to do, what NOT to do. I mean, isn't happiness the thing?

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    So far, I have a handful of essays. Gosh, 'essays' sounds so—so what? Collegy? So far, I have a handful of studies. What's the word here? Though some stories are typed up, not everything is written out yet. I scribble down notes and test out my theories regularly. Some experiments are spiritual, some are physical, some are silly. Really, these are all excuses to be mindful about happiness because I believe mindfulness can make for powerful results.

    Code name: Hello Happiness.

    I made a list the other night of some of my sillier experiments with happiness and I realized that I should be including you guys in this. For instance, why have I not posted about my Cleaning Crown? Or video-taped a Family Dance-Break for you to laugh at? Though I did post about taking a Clogging Class with my friend, Sarah, and learning to Make Yogurt, I did not revealed my intent nor my impressions. 

    The colored chalk was a simple plan to make the lessons I teach at my church a smidgeon more fun for the ladies. I wish I had thought to get an extra $1.00 box for Charlotte and leave it on her bed with a love note. That idea didn't crystallize till after we divied up my teaching supply and enjoyed a few minutes of scribbling on the driveway together.

    I'll have to surprise Charlotte with a new box of chalk in a couple of weeks when these others are worn to nubs.



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    Let the Feast Begin

    ByHeather Bailey

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    Wow, is it Thanksgiving week already!? I thought life was moving by quickly as it was, but add a new baby to the mix and whoo-ee! Hold onto your hat.

    HB_Holiday_04w2I’m going to offer to take my sister’s family photo for her Christmas cards. She has been helping me a ton with Charlotte this fall, having her over for playdates and making sure she’s not missing out on any fun while I’m tied up at home with the baby. Today, she and my sister-in-law took Charlotte to the zoo so I could finish up some work in time to have a break for Thanksgiving Day. Julia has two boys, one of which is six, Charlotte’s age. And Rachel has one boy who is also six. One tribe of monkeys goggling at another. I imagine the kids are having a blast.

    I probably should work on my own cards too, huh? If for no reason but to capture a snapshot of our funny little family as it currently stands: mom, dad, lanky teenage boy, toothless 1st-grade girl, and a newborn bobble-headed baby.

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    It’s funny, I don’t ever get too stressed about getting holiday cards out on time, but now that Julia’s cards are on my mind, I’m hearing a soft tick, tick, tick behind my right ear. Time to get to it.

    HB_Holiday_02final…which train of thought reminds me I better announce my new Holiday stationery things — cuz it’s high time. If you’re looking for bright, stylish photo cards or party invitations that haven’t been gooped up with long, sappy greetings, I have the solution. Check out my holiday collection. There are also great paper plates, napkins and cups. We only have about 6-12 of each item in stock, so go get ’em. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to replenish before Christmas hits, but I’ll find out and let you know.

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    And the winner of the Little Bits Quilting Bee book is Shannon from Mastering the Art of Being Me. Thank you, Random Number Generator, for your impartial input. Shannon, email me your address & such : )

  • Little Bits Giveaway

    ByHeather Bailey

    LittleBitsQuiltingBeeKathreen from Whip Up has a new book out. Little Bits Quilting Bee is all about using small bits of fabric, such as charm squares, jelly rolls, layer cakes and fat quarters to create a bunch of fun, modern quilts, from wall hangings to bed quilts. (Quilters have great terms for identifying every kind of fabric scrap.)

    All sorts of aesthetics are represented in Kathreen's designs. Some quilts are sewn from solid fabrics only. Another features reproduction prints from the 1930s. There are japanese novelty prints, woodsy prints, modern florals and geometrics (my alley). My favorites of Kathreen's designs involve circles. She has a play quilt that looks like a scrappy, colorful sun and another that reminds me of the Spirograph I received for my 6th birthday, with interlacing swooshes and circles. The photography is fresh and clean– and there's a pattern pack included! That's the best.

    In celebration of Kathreen's fabulous new quilting book, Chronicle Books is providing me with a copy to give away. Send Kathreen your well wishes in the comments below and I'll employ the RNG to help me pick a winner.

    Follow the Little Bits Quilting Bee blog tour over at Chronicle's lovely blog.