fabric stash

One of my studio-mates was getting rid of some beautiful vintage fabrics this weekend, and I managed to snag a few great pieces. These are some of my favorites:




Aren't they lovely?

the weekend in photos

a nice album cover


a book for a friend


and lots of coffee

and more cute customer appreciation photos!

This time of my Brother's kiddos, both outfitted in their coucou salut finest. I can't wait to see these two in person - hopefully soon!

the best kind of customer appreciation photo

Jason's niece sporting one of my monster onesies. And munching on a finger, apparently.

enter the draft snake

We live in a beautiful old Montreal apartment. It has hardwood floors, plaster walls, original (yet painted over, of course and sadly) wood trim and a beautiful back balcony. It also has beautiful old original doors, which are completely lacking in weather stripping. And while our new place is about a million times better in the way of insulation than our old one, that beautiful old front door is an extremely DRAFTY beautiful old front door. And drafts are not so beautiful in the midst of a Montreal winter.


For the past few months, we've been dealing with this by stuffing an old towel along the bottom of it, which although effective, is definitely not very appealing to the eye. I've been meaning to remedy this situation for ages, and finally got around to it yesterday.




I found this beautiful vintage linen fabric a few summers ago, at an epic garage sale held by some set designers who had worked on a 70's themed show. They were selling LOADS of beautiful vintage stuff from the 50's, 60's and 70's, for practically nothing. I think I scored this fabric for a few bucks, along with a few car loads of other amazing things.

Montreal, sometimes it pays to get up before noon, let this be a lesson to you.

The fabric is in generally beautiful condition, but the edge of it was a bit worn and faded. What a perfect excuse to finally make some of it into something.


I'm pretty happy with the final result, and by taking the 10 minutes to finally sew the damn thing, I achieved three things this weekend:

1) no annoying bunched up towel,
2) I finally got over my fear of cutting into that beautiful fabric,
3) it's stuffed with recycled fabric scraps, because we've had pantry moths and rodent visitors in the past, so I'm paranoid about leaving a rice buffet by the front door. Yay recycling.


Go me. I think I'll eventually recover one of our chairs with some of the rest of that fabric this summer, but we'll see.

What did you do this weekend?

Happy Birthday, Casey!

Jason became the proud uncle to this adorable chubs on Friday afternoon. I know I'm totally biased, but I think this may be one of the most adorable newborn baby photos I've ever seen. Look at those cheeks, people. LOOK AT THOSE CHEEKS.

In 2010, I also became an Aunt for a second time, gaining a lovely little nephew. His birth announcement kind of got lost in the busy season, but he's also adorable and doing fine. I'll get to meet both of these little kiddos this summer, and I'm so excited about that.

I absolutely cannot wait to get to know who all these little people become. It's so awesome.

it's all in the details

I kinda love getting late holiday presents. Jason's sister got me this pretty leather headband for Christmas, and it just arrived today. The headband is made by Manda and is really beautiful. I love it!

And not to detract from the headband, but how pretty is the tape on that envelope?

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to put a bit more work into the packaging of things I send from my shop. I'm ashamed to admit that a lot of time the shipping part of my production gets really rushed. It seems like such a big shame to spend so much time making things that you're proud of, just to hurriedly shove them in an envelope and mail them off.

Maybe this is the perfect excuse to finally buy some of that beautiful Japanese washi paper tape I've been drooling over.

vintage crate shelf

I've noticed a lot of posts lately on creative ways to use old vintage crates for storage, like this one on Poppytalk.

About two years ago, some neighbors were moving out an left a ton of neat stuff on the curb for whomever wanted it. Amongst the requisite cheap pots and mismatched china was some pretty great stuff, including an antique parking meter (10 cents for an hour!), an old wood theater seat (in a few pieces), and two shelves that had been constructed out of old crates.

We took all of the above named items, but the two crates are the only thing that we eventually moved to the new apartment.

At one point, they were shelves that held shoes, but that just didn't really work that well. We eventually decided that one of them might look pretty great in the kitchen, loaded with some of my favorite vintage pieces.

Enter my step-father, who somehow managed to actually get it on the wall (which is old and super thick plaster, and very VERY hard to screw anything into). I wish I could tell you how he did it, but all I know is that it's braced on the back with some 2x4's, and is amazingly solid up there.

I love how it looks, and am so happy that we were able to pull it off.

And check out my super cute mushroom terrarium on the middle shelf. It's from Holly Handmade, and was a Christmas gift from the boy. It's so sweet and beautifully made, and it looks super cute in our kitchen.

coucou salut + poppytalk + VECU magazine

What a lovely way to bring in the new year - my teal marquee pillows have been featured in the January issue of VECU.

The article is about the Poppytalk Handmade Market, which I'm a huge fan of. I have a table there until January 17th, and I've added a few new things to it, so check it out!

I've also been busy updating my esty site with some new onesies and other goodies, including the Ring My Bell Pouch. It was a big seller at my Christmas sales this year. And in case you were wondering, yes, you can ring your own bell.