The show opens to the public tomorrow and Saturday from 10-5. Dealers will have buttons of all styles and materials for sale, from colorful unmatched 25¢ poke buttons (my favorite!) to rare antique treasures. There are also lots of programs scheduled on both days, and of course the judged competition trays in the back to admire – it’s like a museum of vintage and antique buttons, arranged on cards in interesting themes and sub-collections.

Speaking of buttons, I was so excited to write a new feature about them for the Summer 2013 issue of Stitch magazine! It’s out now and it’s a fabulous issue.

I’ll be sharing more about Stitch and another fun embellishments project I’m working on soon, but really, REALLY wanted to get to cover the OSBS show before it opens tomorrow! Hope to see you over there.

If you go:

Oregon State Button Society 2013 Show – “The Romance of Buttons”
Keizer Renaissance Inn
5188 Wittenberg Lane NE, Keizer, Oregon
Open to the public 10-5 Friday, May 3 and Saturday, May 4
Admission $6 ($1 off with a flyer or by visiting the OSBS site!)

Petra and I were the hostesses on duty for our special exhibit section, and raced to rescue the quilts, thankfully with plenty of help from our friends close enough to be deputized. We got all the quilts down and safe, and ran for margaritas down the street to celebrate!

Back in Portland, after a super busy work week and an amazing PMQG park meeting, I packed up the car and the kids and headed out to meet my husband Andrew in Eastern Oregon for a beautiful three days away. We went to La Grande, Baker City, Union, Wallowa, Joseph, Wallowa Lake, and Elgin, visited a rodeo, a carnival, and a powwow, paddleboated, got ice cream cones, and even visited the covered wagons. Here’s just one picture, the view from the Oregon Trail interpretive center. On the way home we stayed in Hood River and watched barges and boats on the Columbia… the nicest way to end a trip that was a little too short.

Back in Portland again, I was so lucky to go to President Obama’s event the next day (along with Rachel) and hear him speak. I had a great spot on the right of the stage, and even got to shake his hand at the end – something to tell my grandchildren about!!

I made an attempt at fabric shopping with both kids (apparently that era is over for now) and went back to Cool Cottons solo to choose solids and prints for the wonderful Denyse Schmidt class I took at PNCA. I think I’ll make that a separate post, it surely deserves it, but for now I’ll just show what I started with – Kona grass green and lime, plus some favorite prints from Denyse and Lizzy House.

After the first day of class, I ran over to the Museum of Contemporary Craft to see the closing day of the magnificent Betty Feves show. Here is one of her pieces – Garden Wall.

I loved that her personal sketchbooks, glaze calculations, mineral maps (for digging her own clay), and books from her home and studio in Pendleton were included – a full and beautiful portrait of her work and life.

Back down to earth after a weekend of sewing and looking at beautiful things, I am deep in a totally different project. I have posted about my efforts to ban BPA and toxic chemicals plenty of times over here… you might have heard that the FDA finally chose to ban BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups a couple weeks ago. I don’t think that goes nearly far enough, and I started a petition on change.org asking them to ban it in all food packaging. The petition has over 170,000 signatures now, and it would be great if you’d like to sign it or share the link with friends! I am so hopeful that the FDA will take notice of our numbers and work for safer food for all of us.

Pearl and I were on the news yesterday talking about it, if you’d like to see that clip – thank you to KOIN 6 for the support! (It’s called “Portland mom hopes to ban BPA in all food packaging.”)

Now I am teaming up with Diane for a presentation we’re giving next week at the National Button Society annual convention – here’s a nice article in the Oregonian about it! If you come by the show Friday, August 10, she is teaching a Kanzashi class, we’re both speaking on button crafts (which should be super fun – with tons of photos) and then I’m teaching a button jewelry class. We would love to see you there!

From cocktails to crime scene carpets,

Shawn has created some pretty incredible projects for mystery, thriller, and noir lovers. They range from the super-simple (Invisible Ink)

to the cleverly complex (Case-the-Joint Craft Caddy).

A few other favorites of mine include the Pulp Fiction Pendant

and the Instant Disguise Drink Bling.

Shawn will also show you how to hide a file in a cake, mix an absinthe cocktail, add a secret smuggling compartment to a vintage handbag, and stitch up your own voodoo doll. She is incredibly awesome, and I am so excited that we are teaming up for a book party at my favorite-favorite neighborhood bookstore, Murder By The Book, in a couple of weeks!

MBTB will be hosting an event for both of us on April 29 at 4:00 for snacks, drinks, craft projects to make (think invisible ink, ransom notes, and comics magnets) and a book signing. Along with Criminal Crafts, they’ll have copies of World of Geekcraft, Modern Log Cabin Quilting, and Button It Up on hand!

I will bring my most mysterious book projects along (like the Coraline mystery sewing box and Linda Permann‘s crocheted Tribbles) for folks to check out, and word on the street is that MBTB will be getting their very own Shawn-made Crime Scene Carpet to decorate the store. Speaking of decorating…

I was amazed to see a brand-new addition to my favorite part of the shop a few months back… Crafty Crimes! Jean set aside all the light-hearted crafty mysteries into a new mini-section and let me bring in lots of vintage craft supplies to decorate the shelf. It was so much fun and I LOVE stopping by and finding something new – I think crafty mysteries are very relaxing to read, and most of them have a free pattern or project included, which is a nice extra. For anyone else who’s interested, here are a few of my favorite series I’ve read. Monica Ferris is a prolific author whose amateur detective heroine, Betsy, owns a needlepoint shop in Minnesota called Crewel World.

Maggie Sefton’s detective heroine, Kelly, is part of a knitting circle who meet up at their Colorado yarn shop, The House of Lambspun.

Sally Goldenbaum’s Seaside Knitters series is set in a tiny town on Cape Ann, Massachusetts, centering on a yarn shop as well. (Are you starting to see a pattern here??) I really love reading this one, I love her characters especially.

My absolute favorite crafty mysteries series is Cricket McRae’s, which is beautifully done. It follows a multi-crafting (like me, she does all kinds of stuff) heroine named Sophie Mae, who lives in Washington State (PNW pride!). There are five books and counting in this series – highly recommended. I also really enjoyed Buttonholed, by Kylie Logan… a mystery about vintage and antique buttons, what’s not to like there?!

You can swing by Murder By The Book to pick up Criminal Crafts or any of these crafty mysteries (or they do mail-order by email – books@mbtb.com – or over the phone at 503-232-9995)! I love MBTB – well worth a stop when you’re in Southeast Portland… or in my opinion, a destination worth planning a trip to Portland around.

If you go:

Criminal Crafts + World of Geekcraft + beyond Book Party
Sunday, April 29 at 4pm
Murder By The Book, 3210 SE Hawthorne Blvd. in Portland
Drinks, snacks, craft projects and book signing
Free!

PS – On another crafty note, I’m teaching my wool cross pillow class on Saturday, April 14 at the Pendleton Woolen Mill Store (another SE Portland treasure!). The class is from 10:30-1 and $40 covers all the materials you’ll need to make a cross pillow in class, plus fabric to bring home for your next one. PMQG members always get $5 off classes… hope to see you over there too!

I wrote up a simple tutorial, but you can also check out these great ones from Bonnin Designs and Beautiful Journey (update: and Wise Craft’s gorgeous salt shakers). I also made these plastic drink-cup “terrarium” versions last year, if you have those around instead of jars… they’re really fun to make too.

You’ll need:

-Mason jars with lids – I used a wide-mouth pint for my pink one and a half-pint for my red and purple one. Pearl’s (below) is a wide-mouth half-pint.
-Quilt batting remnant
-Scissors
-Glitter (mine was Crafty Chica’s line)
-Hot glue gun
-Bottlebrush trees or any other decorative bits for your snowglobe scene (my trees are from Magpie Ethel, spun-cotton mushrooms are vintage, glitter reindeer is from Crafty Wonderland, squirrel is from the Decorette Shop – Pearl’s animals are all from a bag of assorted plastic toys that was a gift)
-Ribbon, buttons, + embellishments for the jar lid

1. Trace a circle of quilt batting using the jar lid liner and cut it out. Sprinkle glitter on it and plan your little snow scene (remember, you’ll need to leave a little space on each edge for the jar sides). Hot-glue the glittered batting into the jar lid.

2. Hot-glue each decoration in place onto the “snow.”

3. Holding the jar-lid scene relatively still, twist the jar onto the lid, arranging it so that any label or lettering is to the back (or wherever you want it to be). Choose ribbon and buttons if you want to decorate the lid.

4. Hot-glue the ribbon around the jar lid, trimming it so it overlaps neatly, and then glue down a little arrangement of buttons at the front. Add little gold leaves or any other embellishments at each side if you like.

Pearl made an all-animal version once I finished mine. I have to be honest – this isn’t a super fun project to do with a 3.5-year-old, so I wouldn’t recommend it in tandem with younger kids (it’s no felt ornaments, that’s for sure). The hot glue and glass are obviously not kid-friendly so I had to keep all the good parts way out of reach and I was pretty stressed out until the last thing was glued, but she did have a lot of fun choosing and placing the animals, shaking glitter, and picking out buttons. I especially like the big one she added to the top.

Here are is the little one on the mantel…

…and the bigger one on the other side. (Yes, I really like deer.)

I hung the stockings way higher this year, since Everett is after anything within his startlingly impressive arm reach, so here they are over the mantel (instead of under it like last year). Which reminds me, thank you so much to Crafternews for featuring my stockings in a round-up of favorite handmade gifts from Potter Craft authors – I really love Linda‘s.

So, that’s my annual little last-minute holiday decoration project, in the grand tradition of winter wonderland terrariums (12/22/10), stockings for Everett and my mom (12/24/10), tiny gift bags, carnelian earrings, + owl ornaments (12/17/09), and the original set of 3 stockings for me, Andrew + Pearl (12/18/08). Happy Solstice + Happy Hanukkah, everyone!

I did get to pick up my name badge (a perk of membership, along with great discounts at local and online stores) so I’ll just show that for now. It was such a fun evening and thanks to an ingenious icebreaker held on a giant map of Portland drawn in electrical tape, I even met some neighborhood quilters! We’re talking about getting together in between the official meetings for fabric shopping or sewing, too. Anyway, the next meeting is March 17 at PNCA, and I am bringing snacks.

I didn’t get any photos at Boomshakalaka, which was also awesome, for some of the same reasons (Everett sleeping soundly on my shoulder in his Rasheed Wallace jersey, plus an amazing, thick crowd). You can check out Pat’s photos over here, though, and they are great. I am looking forward to going back during the day and hanging out with everything – this is my favorite piece.

Finally, something I do have photos of: I got the PNCA Summer of Making catalog this week, and I am so thrilled that I am teaching a class again this summer, Log Cabin Quilting! It will be a two-day workshop with tons of hands-on designing, piecing and quilting time, so students can focus on what they want to make most. I’ll bring in antique, vintage and new log cabin quilts for inspiration, too. I think this will be an awesome class – I have loved teaching and taking classes at PNCA.

And I can’t believe my class is listed next to the one taught by my hero, Denyse Schmidt! I am already signed up for her Walking the Line: Working with Improvisation and Structure in Patchwork workshop and I just can’t wait.

I’m also looking forward to this spring and summer! My quilt book comes out a month from today which I can hardly believe. I was especially excited to fill in my July in my new datebook. Hooray for four different quilting events in the same month, and nothing boring yet! Thanks to the Portland Modern Quilt Guild, I am one of a dozen of us showing our quilts in a special exhibition of modern quilts at the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show. Then I am teaching the next weekend, going to the regular monthly meeting the next week, and finishing the month with the improvisational patchwork class. Sounds good to me!

Also, I love my new datebook, which I got on our trip to Uwajimaya on Friday. I always feel way more organized with a paper calendar I can write everything in, especially a cute one with a bear + button cover. (Plus all the datebooks and calendars there are 30-40% off now.)

Okay! Last thing in the round-up is that we’ve made it to eight weeks of whale chalkboard menu planning – 40 successfully planned + cooked dinners (as of this Friday, anyway). To celebrate, I made a little photo collage.

We have had one failure, according to the photos it was Thursday, February 10 – I made grilled tuna just as the chalkboard said to, but it ended up being so fishy and gnarly we couldn’t really eat it and ordered pizza instead. But I think it still counts as an officially planned and cooked dinner, although a disappointing one! All the whales are in a set over here. I had been trying a new recipe each week, but that fell by the wayside early on. I am definitely up for trying new recipes, just can’t seem to do it every single week. But I’m looking forward to planting the garden and having more awesome stuff to cook with this summer… I’ll try the weekly thing again then.

The show has work from 30 artists and designers (or 29 designers and artists and one crafty duo, more like) and it opens on Friday, February 18th at 6pm at Land Gallery! Clifton posted this awesome sneak peek at some of the other pieces, and I can’t wait to see it all in full glory.

Andrew came up with the concept – a Blazer blazer – and I spent all 22 games in January and February planning, stitching, gluing, embroidering, and embellishing a dark red blazer that looked straight out of Meier & Frank the year the Blazers won their NBA title, 1977. I like to think the original owner was wearing it at the victory parade on Broadway. By the time I was done, it felt like a cross between a real Blazers uniform, a Pearly Kings and Queens suit, and a Shriners/Elks/Lions extravaganza. (By the way, any unevenness, glue streaks, asymmetry, or other homemade-ness are 100% thanks to some good freaking games the last two months! Six-game winning streak, anyone?!)

I started with a ton of vintage buttons (of course).

That part was fun.

Black and silver rick-rack and quite a bit of wool felt were my next go-tos.

The 20 honors Blazers legend and assistant coach Maurice Lucas, who passed away last year.

I also made tiny embroidered replicas of all 12 retired jerseys. Loved that part too.

Since this is a heartfelt fan love letter in blazer form, we thought we’d sign it. Both of the kids have Blazers jerseys (Everett has #30 Rasheed Wallace and Pearl has #7 Brandon Roy) but neither of us do… so now we have our very own hyphenated-name jerseyesque craftstravaganza for the rec room instead.

The last big push was sewing buttons, buttons and more buttons on the front. This is when it really started to feel like itself! I stitched a Blazers flag over the original striped lining as a little finale, and I’d probably still be adding more stuff if there wasn’t a deadline.

Hope to see you at the opening – I think it will be awesome! A huge thank-you to Clifton for including us in the mix.

ps: if you come to the show and want to try the Blazer blazer on, you are more than welcome to. Boomshakalaka!

This is a very sweet project that is super-customizable, depending on your craft stash… I used miniature trees and animals from the Decorette Shop and Bake It Pretty for my little scenes, along with leftover quilt batting for snow, Martha glitter in gold for fanciness, and vintage rick-rack from the Kitten to edge each one. I’ll detail my ornament hacks later on, after some photos.

Along with our favorite reindeer and squirrels (the first photo, and the first ornament I made – to make the button + ribbon rosette, you can check this post out), I knew we needed a couple of fancy ballerinas on the tree.

This hula couple ornament is a gift for someone special.

After making four hanging ornaments, I decided to switch things up a little bit and make some winter wonderland mantel terrariums instead. I love how these turned out… the spinning ornament style is cool, and they’re adorable on the tree, but I really love these little stationery worlds.

We needed some more reindeer, of course, and then we had to have some super cute bunnies. Pearl dug those the most.

And a friendly gnome visiting with a little pack of squirrels,

and some spun-cotton mushrooms with an evergreen tree for the last one.

I really love how these teeny winter scenes look on the mantel with all our other little treasures. Pearl’s favorite is the Snoopy Christmas plate, so that is the king of the decorations, but I got to set out my gossamer thread trees from last year, along with a herd of vintage reindeer, two angel candlesticks, two gnomes, two champagne-cork mushrooms and a vintage Santa on a sled.

Updated living room picture! Still need to sew a stocking for Everett (I settled on a fall tree theme!) and one for my mom. And still hoping to make a tree skirt. I might see if there’s a round vintage tablecloth I can cannibalize instead of starting from scratch.

So, the original winter wonderland ornament tutorial is right here, but I made a few changes to mine. I used a hot glue gun to set my little miniatures’ feet in place under the batting snow (instead of tacky glue). I also added a vintage rick-rack trim set in place with tacky glue all the way around the bottom of the cup, and a dab of hot glue to secure the ends, instead of using decorative scissors to edge the cardstock circles (I couldn’t find mine, to tell you the truth, but I like the rick-rack better!). I used a flattened recycled cardboard gift box for my circles instead of the pretty silver cardstock in the original, and a thinner batting left over from quilting projects that I could kind of make landscape-y, instead of the thicker fluffier stuff.

So, two thumbs up for sure. I rarely get the chance to make eight of anything for fun, and this was really nice to do. It’s supposed to be for kids to do with you, and I’m sure older kids would have a blast. I’d say that judging from my afternoon, 2.5 is not old enough to really participate, but definitely the right age to admire the finished ones with a lot of enthusiasm. Maybe next year it will be more of a collaboration between us, I have a dozen more drink cups saved for the next round.

Last little holiday project idea: I added some button-and-holly-leaf embellishments to my Christmas cookie boxes this year! The super-simple how-to is over here on my Button It Up blog if you want to try this one, too – it would be perfect for fancying up a gift box, bag, or canister.

Okay, hopefully I’ll have a new felt stocking, preferably two, to show this week too! I hope your holiday crafting has been fun, if you’re as last-minute as I am…

There will be fantastic tote bags full of handmade delights to the first 200 shoppers, both mornings! Hundreds of vendors are selling their crafts, and I will have a few things there too. I’ll have signed copies of Button It Up and some appliqued bibs I made at booth #34, and I’ll be at the table from 11 to 2 on Sunday — please come say hi if you are shopping then.

Crafty Wonderland!
May 1 + 2 from 11-5, both days
Oregon Convention Center, 777 NE MLK Blvd., Hall D
Free admission, free craft activities, and all ages! Yay!

Vickie’s new book is really something — an inspiring and encouraging collection of interviews with professional crafters, answering questions about how they got started with their handmade businesses or endeavors and what challenges have come up, and sharing personal and professional advice as well. I am very honored to be included.

The interviews are by turns funny, sweet, super-informational, and engaging. I particularly loved hearing so many details about how my personal craft hero, Denyse Schmidt, got involved in designing quilts and fabric. Reading it cover to cover, I was especially drawn to the interviews with Carol Duvall, Kathy Cano Murillo, Faythe Levine, Jennifer Perkins, Garth Johnson, Amanda Soule, Amy Butler, Cathie Filian, Natalie Zee Drieu, and Margot Potter. And the features spotlighting crafters around the world are awesome, too — it’s so cool to see what people are up to creatively!

During my own conversation with Vickie, she asked all about how Portland Super Crafty started, how I balanced (at the time) brand-new motherhood with creative and deadline work, and why craft activism is so important to me… and she gave me the chance to share my all-time favorite story about the tiny, amazing, and utterly lovely craft world we live in. J.J. from Kansas City, now Portland, if you happen to be reading this, it’s about the custom denim maternity a-line skirt you ordered from susanstars in 2002 or thereabouts, and how it magically somehow found its way right back to me when I was eight weeks pregnant with Pearl!

So please swing by the Craft Corps blog for a chance to win my book today (and a giveaway from Vickie herself tomorrow), and check out the book for tons of crafty inspiration. And a handmade maternity skirt story you just couldn’t make up if you tried.

I’m at that strange stage of vintage-pattern sewing where you’re joining a lot of facings in not a lot of open space and hoping it all smoothly fits together (and fits her, period.) Fingers crossed!

I just wrote this up for Geek Crafts today, but boy I’m thrilled about Bonnie Burton’s new Star Wars Crafts Book, which is coming out later this year! Check out all the sneak peeks and cool details over here.

And thanks to Rachel’s latest post in the excellent Archive-Along series she’s posting with Diane, I made a google profile page today with links to my crafts, photos, writing, and upcoming classes all in one handy, streamlined place. Here’s a look at it:

Since I have been soooo slow about updating my various websites, this is such a nice (not to mention free and easy) way to collect a lot of things I’m excited about in one place. Rachel has lots of tips and suggestions for building yours right over here if you’re interested, too!

p.s. If you’re in Portland, there are two extremely cool art openings going on tomorrow night (Friday, April 2). I’ll be posting more about them tomorrow morning and hope to see you at both of them!