R.A.I.N.

Brian and his brother, Chris, have been training for the past 4 months for a big bike race called RAIN (it stands for Ride Across INdiana). Hence the name, the race goes aross Indiana from Terre Haute to Richmond on Route 40 - a total of 160 miles!! That's insane. I can't imagine riding a bike for even half that long. Anyway, the race was today and they both killed it!! It started at 7am, and they crossed the finish line a little before 5pm. Under 10 hours! We made it to the finish line just in time to watch them cross it. And check out the awesome sign Barb is holding - Amy made it to cheer them on...love it!

A little flare!

One of my friends at work, Briana, commissioned a purse and requested that it have some type of flap closure. I decided to experiment first before I made hers, and this is what I ended up with! I love it - and I dressed up the flap with a little flare. I created the little flower/rosette guy by loosely folding and shaping a long strip of the fabric and then stitching it in place. Fun! This is more vintage fabric from my mom - it wasn't my favorite at first, but the more I've looked at it, the more I love it! My mom said she could picture my dad's mom standing in her kitchen in a shift dress made out of material like this back in the day. Oh, and I didn't take a picture of the lining, but it's a green and blue and tan and white stripey linen that really pops. I think this style would also work really well as a messenger bag with a longer shoulder strap - so I will work on that next for you Kerry! :)

Raffle Purse

Business Furniture is having an event tonight to re-cap what went on at NeoCon (a big week long convention/trade show in Chicago for designers and manufacturers of everything interior design related) since a lot designers couldn't make the trip this year. They are having a raffle with lots of prizes, and one will be a Meg James purse! I put together a little tag with the blog site on the back.

Another Vintage Pouch

I thought I'd post this little guy because my craftsmanship greatly improved from first pouch to second pouch! That's usually how it goes - which is why I usually keep the first of something that I make because it's never as good as the rest! This one will be part of the Midland collection. I made a lot of progress on the collection this weekend, until I broke the needle on my sewing machine this afternoon. Ooooops.

I got love for the pouch!

While sorting through a bunch of my old fabric, I came across a plastic bag full of scraps that I remember receiving from my mom around the time I moved out of the house. Upon further investigation, I found that the bag contained some of my first EVER sewing projects - we're talking like 'I'm 8 years old and my mom is teaching me how to use her sewing machine' type projects. I found a small stack of squares that were each made of several long skinny rectangles of mis-matched vintage fabrics pieced together. After laughing at how great some of the old prints are, I realized that they would make perfect little pouches sewed together with some lining and a zipper! Here are a couple photos of one - and yes, those are pink bunny rabbits. Very happy pink bunny rabbits. There will be more of these down at Midland in a couple weeks!