On My Desk: Endless Tea and Hand Embroidery

I remember browsing vintage shops when I was young and being drawn to everything floral and anything with embroidered details. Bonus points if the two were combined. I would meander up and down aisles of overstuffed bookshelves, wander through racks of outdated dresses, and admire every little petal on the plethora of dainty porcelain teacups.

Flash forward 15 years and nothing much has changed: I was born and raised to live a secondhand lifestyle. I could spend hours slowly flipping through old books (a habit that may drive Mr. Kitty Cat Stevens to insanity) and purposefully breathing deeper than normal to take in their musty bouquet. I've bonded with little old ladies at the flea market over delicate hand stitched details that are decades old. 

Handmade mug by Julia Walther

Sometimes I don't realize how much of my work can be dissected into minutiae and traced back through my life. When I think about the current piece I'm working on— a floral inspired and female empowering hand embroidery for a midwifery office, something just clicks. It's like a huge "duh" moment and it just feels so right. Like I'm exactly where I need to be. Like my entire life has led to this.

OF COURSE I would be sitting on a vintage sofa, drinking endless cups of tea, and stitching a pair of ovaries. Is there even another choice?? There is so much I want to learn, and do, and make happen. I know that having goals is important. But right now, I feel so content just taking everything one tiny stitch at a time, somehow certain that I'll end up where I need to be.

Discovering bookmaking in college was definitely a blessing for me. My love of sewing paper together to create a 3d form only intensified my love of all stitching. I pursued embroidery because of bookmaking. And because of embroidery, I finally decided to learn to use a sewing machine (to alter my vintage dresses, of course).

I never expected all of my passions to become so deeply intertwined. Books, paper, poetry. Florals, needle and thread. If I can one day make a living by the pages I fold and the thread I stitch, then I'm not sure there's much more I could ask for (besides a tiny cottage on the beach and a few more cats).

So, that's the end goal, in a nutshell. And while I'm on the journey to it, I often find myself sipping a cup of tea, with my grandmother's handmade quilt on my lap and a cat asleep beside me, as I realize how happy I am to be living a quiet life— one stitch at a time.

Handbound Leather Longstitch Journal with Watercolor Details

I'm so excited to share my most recent handmade book with you today! It was a custom order for a Mother's Day gift and I dare say that it turned out even better than I imagined. This journal was created for my friend's mom, who is a painter. This piece was fun because I don't actually know my friend's mother and I pretty much had free reign.

After a short Q & A session with my friend, I had a vision and just went for it. I started with a rich light brown leather cover. Bonus points because the cover is completely upcycled from *drumroll please* . . . a secondhand leather skirt!

The strap is actually the old waistband of the skirt— CAN YOU TELL??

This binding is called "longstitch" and allows a beautiful contrast of thread on the spine. The spine has an additional strip of leather sewn on for aesthetics, stability, and if we're being honest— because I totally messed up the original holes I punched and needed to cover them up. WHOOPS. Happy accident though, no? I kind of love it.

The leather is so soft and buttery— the perfect texture. It's also very thin, so it was challenging to sew. There are some wrinkles and a bit of bulging on parts of the spine, which is not ideal to the perfectionist in me, but the artist part of me appreciates that you can tell it wasn't made by a machine. And secondhand leather— come on! I totally saved some poor unfortunate soul from wearing this mid-shin length leather travesty.

The inside contains 160 hand-torn pages that create a lovely deckled edge. I am a complete and total sucker for a book with feathered edges. The cover sheet and signature protectors are all made from paper that I watercolored myself. I am so proud of that watercolor, too! It is a "technique" that I "mastered" a few weeks ago when I created my first wedding guestbook (oops-- secret's out!!).

I can't wait to share that guestbook, but it's totally one of those annoying "top secret projects" that I can't talk about yet [GROAN]. But I will tell you that it was in collaboration with Stockroom Vintage— so you should expect lots of dreamy goodness. If you're sleuth enough, you can lurk my instagram and find a sneak peak of it.

ANYWAY. Secondhand leather. Watercolor. Hand-torn edges. This book is very "Kitty Cat Stevens." It's a huge amalgamation of pretty much everything I've learned about bookmaking. Like when you think about it, this book took me 6 years to make. I'll just let that sink in . . .

Lastly, I would be much remiss if I didn't mention a few more things. Although this is the first time I have done this particular longstitch sewing pattern, it is actually the second time I've made a leather longstitch journal. The first time was in a class taught by Katie Gonzalez, a local bookbinder and owner of Linen Laid & Felt bindery. She's also the one who taught me a slightly easier version of how I was tearing down paper, too.

I never posted pictures of the journal I made in Katie's workshop because it didn't feel 100% like mine, ya know? I mean,  it was essentially me learning how to make her signature book. But that's the thing I love about bookbinding— you can teach a room of 20 people the same binding and still get 20 different books at the end. So that class gave me the confidence to go ahead and experiment with leather and really take what I learned and make it my own.

That's why I love learning. I can already see how my work has progressed from book to book. Like if I hadn't made this embroidered book (which I still haven't shared the final pics of, OOPS) then I wouldn't have the knowledge to make the guestbook I mentioned above. And then I couldn't have made THIS book. (Insert circle of life metaphor because it's getting too late for me to think straight anymore). And maybe it's just me being cheesy. It just feels like so much in my life is aligning and like everything I've ever done has been leading up to this moment. (Okay, I'm getting sentimental— time to wrap this up!)

(Also, here's the obligatory cat lady picture. Hundreds of places to sit in our new house and she decides to plop down on my photo setup— classic Olive!)

Whew. I think that's everything I wanted to say. Well, besides a few "housekeeping" things. As I mentioned in my last post, I'm doing my first handmade market next month— eeeeep! Which means even though I'll be making lots of things, I will be allotting nearly all of my free time to finishing up May commissions and creating inventory, so things might get quieter around here BECAUSE PRIORITIES. So if you'd like to see me more than once a week, let's hangout on Instagram.

Although I won't be on the blog as often, I swear I am so fired up about everything to come! Once the market's done, I'll be focusing on my new website/shop. So if you're reading this through Google Friend Connect then I recommend going ahead and following on Bloglovin instead. That's all the blog talk I have. I have more books to share but I'm still trying to find a balance so I don't overwhelm y'all with ME ME ME books books books.

Okay that's all I have to say— I hope you are doing wonderful! When my friend saw his mom's book he said, "That's so beautiful I want to cry." So basically I hope your life is so good you want to cry. But not really because then you'd be crying . . . but you know, I really hope you are doing well. Y'all are great for reading all the silly things I say and I am beyond lucky to have your support. OKAY TOO MANY FEELINGS, BYE NOW.

Home is Where Your Cat Is (We moved!)

HALLELUJAH, Y'ALL— I HAVE A NEW HOUSE!

And what a whirlwind the last few weeks have been. After jumping through about a million hoops, we finally got the rental house we wanted. We packed up, I got a head cold, we moved all of our stuff, I gave my head cold to Nick, we cleaned up our old place, Nick got a terrible virus, and now we're settling in.

I tried really hard to get the moving part out of the way so I could get back to making things (and blogging about them!) as soon as possible, but it just seemed to drag out forever! And moving is so terrible that I didn't wanna bombard all of your wonderful lives with boxes and whiny details so I just stayed quiet (and busy! and sick!) for awhile.

I got so overwhelmed that I even took the amazing Sarah up on her offer to help us pack. Seriously though, it takes a different kind of human to volunteer to help somebody move. I could not have done it without her and a handful of others that graciously packed and carried all my books and shoes and mason jars and life up a terrible flight of outdoor stairs.

Throughout the madness, I also managed to apply to my first local handmade market! So now I have a handful of custom orders to wrap up and then *INVENTORY* begins. I am excited and nervous and overwhelmed and thankful and on the verge of ralphing when I think about it. I definitely have my work cut out for me, but I think it might just be the catalyst I needed to jump start my business. The market will sort of be the grand opening/launch of my business, so ya know— NO BIG DEAL.

Just kidding. It's obviously a huge deal. But we can talk about it later. My mind is going a million miles a minute and I still can't wrap my head around the fact that I will be selling my work to people so I'm focusing on other things (aka I'm just a little in denial).

So that's what I've been up to! Today we "officially" don't live in the old place anymore. I'm looking forward to waking up without being sore from carrying boxes of books up and down stairs all day. I'm looking forward to having a bike lane all the way to work. I'm looking forward to a new studio, a safer neighborhood, my best friend coming to visit, making new and exciting books, and getting back to blogging more regularly (whatever that means now that so much has changed for me!).

We only have a bit more to unpack and then I think we'll get into a routine so that things feel more normal. All these pictures are a few of my current favorite details from the new place. Olive is adjusting pretty well— she gets a little freaked out by sudden noises and movements, but I think she likes the extra space here. I have a pink + periwinkle bathroom, lots of pictures to hang, a charming dining room, beautiful natural light, and lots of books to unpack!

Right now, I'm completely worn out but totally optimistic. There's so much change and newness around me and I'm trying to channel it as inspiration instead of letting it overwhelm me. I hope spring is treating you well and that you have lots of things to celebrate— I'd love to hear about them all :)

A Sparkly Custom Journal for the Glitter Lover's Soul

Hello, everyone— and thank you for your wonderful comments and emails regarding my big 'ole life changes. Since the last post wasn't all glitter and sunshine, I thought today it would be fun to share something that is literally only glitter and sparkles— my most recent handmade book! For those curious, this is called a "buttonhole binding" and yes, it was extremely fun to make :-)

This custom glitter journal was a birthday present for my close friend, Haley. She's a really amazing person and feels very much like a sister to me. She is extremely talented and tons of fun to be around. She has amazing handwriting, makes really wonderful watercolor drawings, and is almost always writing a list of some sort. She had a Whoopi GOLDberg themed birthday party and is also obsessed with mermaids, so I used those facts as jumping off points to create the perfect surprise journal for her.

I found this awesome heavyweight sparkly paper that is perfect for creating softcover books. It's thick enough to protect but light enough to keep the book from weighing your purse or bag down. I had a vision of a glittery gold book with a detailed exposed spine, but I wasn't sure what other color I wanted (or what would "work" with the almost over the top gold). But then I found this dreamy teal paper with it's own, more subtle sparkle and just ran with the whole thing.

I had actually picked out some awesome jewel purple thread with sparkly accents to bind the book, but somewhere between the thread aisle and my house it completely disappeared. I didn't have time to go back to the store, so I just thought, "If you were making this for you, what color would you choose?" and then obviously decided to bind it with some peachy pink instead.

Since I know Haley likes to use watercolor, write with fun pens and markers, and make collages, I went with a nice and thick multimedia paper. It's not quite as heavy as watercolor paper, but it's hefty enough to really span a lot of different mediums. And as a fellow list-maker, I had my heart set on something high-quality because it's a huge bummer dealing with ghosting while you write. The paper is also hand-torn to size, which gives the book that dreamy deckled edge that I love so much. . . Anyway, I'm going to move along now because I could drone on about paper for far too long!

The last small detail I added was the heart button that helps keep the whole thing closed. Haley actually bought that little button while she lived in Africa, and she gave it to me months ago after deciding she didn't know what to make with it. I could just tell that it was special to her though, so as soon as I found out her birthday was coming up, I knew whatever I created had to incorporate it. I think I made the right call because there may have been a few happy tears shed over while receiving this book.

So there you have it— the goldest, most glitteriest book I have ever made. I hate to sound obnoxious by swooning over my own work, but honestly, I am in serious love with how this book turned out! It's something I never would have created for myself but now that it exists I kind of want one in every color, ya know? This glitter is just so much fun— I couldn't stop smiling the entire time I was making this book.

Ps. Here's a super secret I'm gonna let you in on: Haley and I have decided to collaborate on a zine together! I've always wanted to write one, and this random idea finally popped into my head that would be perfect, so we are gonna go with it and see where it takes us— I'm super excited! I've also finally convinced her to start a blog (coming soon) so can she share all the awesome lists she makes, so hopefully y'all will be able to meet her soon!