California Dreamin'

Last week, Susie Wolfe invited Gerry K and I to spend the week with her at her home in Southern California.  We had been planning this for awhile, and we all agreed that it was better than Christmas!! To add to my excitement, SoCal is where I was born and raised, so it was doubly delightful to see some of my old “haunts”.

As Gerry K related in her post we had ABSOLUTELY the best time. Susie was the most gracious hostess, providing us yummy soups for dinner, all the breakfast fixins, chauffeur service (LOL), and her lovely, generous self. Oh, and she had the cutest dog named Smoky, who kindly put up with us, too.

Susie and Smoky

Susie kept her pink Christmas tree up so that we could see it. She is making a pink, cream and mint green tree skirt (with silver accents) for her CQJournal Project for 2012, so the hunt for those colors were her Shopping Mission.

Gerry’s Shopping Mission was Anything Gold, and she was also on the lookout for velvet ribbons and any special treasure, of course.  :-)

Our first full day, Saturday, was spent in the Los Angeles Fabric District. In six hours, we barely scratched the surface of the shops and their offerings, yet were able to find fantastic deals on beautiful things. We spent some serious coin.  :-)

Susie and Gerry loved Berger Beads (as do many other people I know), but not being a major bead person myself, I found their dusty boxes and lackluster displays boring.  Blasphemy!  I know, I know. But I am the lace person. And fabrics. And linens. But I digress...

Gerry generously shared her pushcart with us, and we managed to fill it up every day with our purchases. (Imagine that!)

At the Rose Bowl Flea Market on Sunday, Susie knew all THE places we would love, and guided us there. The first stop was the linens lady. The pile on the tarp in front of me was $1 per piece.  Other prices were more (and some less). It was a blast digging through it.

But by far my favorite place was the Lace Lady, where we were all so busy that we didn’t get a picture. It was delightful to meet Dawn, and I am thrilled to have a wonderful new contact and supplier. And I am sure she was thrilled to exchange her lace for all the green stuff ($$) I left behind, LOL.

It was 80 degrees that day, and we stopped for some liquid refreshment. Here is Susie with some lovely gardens in the background.

And here the red flowers in the background accent Gerry’s red outfit.  We were all smiles!

On Monday Susie took us to M&L Fabrics.  Gerry showed some pictures of the main room on her blog. There were rows and rows of “regular” fabrics. But I wanted to show you one of the nearly dozen walls (or aisles) of fancy fabrics. A Crazy Quilter’s dream!

And the trim shop nearby yielded both Susie and Gerry lots of gold. And silver, too.

Again, it was another bright, clear, warm and sunny day in Southern California. I had forgotten how much I love (and miss) palm trees.

Tuesday was our day for the San Fernando Flea Market.  Again, Susie knew all the right vendors. This fabulous fabric and trim booth was one of our very favorites.  Between this shop, M&L fabrics, and all my lace acquisitions, I had to mail two large boxes of goodies home (in addition to stuffing my suitcase and carry-on).  You will eventually be seeing some of these lovely fabrics in my Etsy shop.

This booth (below) was a highlight. We dug through tables full of appliques.  Gerry mentioned on her blog that they were $1 each, but that is incorrect.  They were 50c each (2/$1).  When I was done there, my arms were overflowing, and I paid $15.00.  Talk about gold in California . . .

Below, Susie is wearing a hat that she found at this fantastic booth at the Rose Bowl.  The owner of the booth made mostly girls dresses, with little hats, purses and headbands to coordinate. But she also had some delightful women’s hats, and while I was buying spring outfits for my granddaughters, Susie was being practical and bought this darling hat!

We spent Wednesday visiting Thrift shops and scoring some great deals on half-price silk garments, other fancy fabrics and trims.  Susie also found a cute cup and saucer to make a pincushion in.  Here we are, below, butting up and sharing our thrifting finds.

The most hilarious find was this belt buckle that Susie found and bestowed upon Gerry:

It was such a great week, and the three of us had a marvelous time.  It meant so much to spend such a perfect week with dear friends.  I love you, Susie and Gerry!!

Hugs,

Boho Bag is Done

I am going to call this my Henry Ford Boho Bag.  Henry developed the assembly line, and that’s all I could think of as I was making this first prototype; how can I break this down into manageable steps, assembly-line style?  The boutique I am making these for begins in 22 days.  But who’s counting?

This is how it finished out.  Basically, black and gold/tan with some off-white laces. The big vintage button with rhinestones that I wanted to feature on the center came apart (stone from setting) as I was applying it. It can be glued (thank goodness for E6000) and used later, but it missed the boat for this first experimental purse. And these pictures tell me that the button needs some black lace around it to soften the transition to the almost-white lace.

Inside lining is patterned satin. The portion under the flap is intentionally VERY simple. All trims were machine sewn with invisible thread.

The outer trim of the bag is three layers, although the lace part doesn’t show much on the front. The fringe trim and beaded trim are edged with a small hand-dyed venice lace trim.

On the back, the larger lace trim shows.  All trims were added AFTER the purse was assembled.  I sewed the purse with wrong (lined) sides together because everything was so thick that I knew that turning edges to the inside would not be pretty. Therefore, the raw edges are between the front and back trims, which was a decent solution for this purse, but something that needs to be addressed in future assemblies.

The vintage black velvet strips cover raw edges and meet at the back center, where they are tied and left to dangle.

Lessons I Learned  /Changes I Will Make:

1.  The piecing onto a fusible background is great.  I match up edges as well as possible, but gaps are covered by lace/gimp/trim that are stitched on later by machine.  
2.  The fabric used for the back of the purse is mid-weight home decorator fabric and does not need to be stabilized, just lined.  I will save a layer there.
3.  I need to use a bit sturdier lining to avoid such a contrast in fabric weights between the outside and the lining.  Tone down the weights on the outside, beef up the lining weights.  I need to be able to stitch right sides together and turn (“birth”) the purse through an opening.  (I hope this makes sense to you experienced seamstresses).
4.   Add trims to the outer bag edges AFTER purse is constructed.  There are too many layers to try to keep straight if you baste them to the inside before stitching and turning.  God Bless Invisible Thread.  I believe adding one layer of trim around the flap will be fine if added before stitching/turning.
5.   Deal with purse handles BEFORE stitching and turning, not after.  I need to get creative, like dear Gerry (see her awesome bag here).
6.  GET WILD.  This purse is too tame.  I’m thinking too much like a Utahn instead of a Californian. I just realized I have lived more of my life here in Utah than I did in California.  Your condolences are noted..... LOL  :-)  Seriously, I need to use bigger and bolder laces, trims, and colors.   Maybe I should just go smoke some marijuana and see what happens.  JUST KIDDING!  (just wanted to see if you were still reading, LOL).


I have started the second and third purses and will have some results to show before the weekend.  At least that’s the plan.


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FLEA MARKET

My stitching time has recently been curtailed because we had a yard (tag) sale a couple weekends ago and then a booth at a flea market this past weekend.  Whew!  I love it - our quantity of Junque is much lighter and our wallets a bit heavier.  We were really busy, even with our makeshift display.

I got rid of sold  all my lower-end laces and many of my lower-end vintage linens.  So now I can focus on listing the nicer things to sell online.  And the fabric.  I sold a lot of fabric, which is great because fabrics are generally heavy and a hard sell (postage-wise) on Etsy or Ebay.

See that bright blue, red, yellow fabric next to Raggedy Ann (below)?  It’s less than a half yard and I never really “saw” it until I hung it there.  I kept looking at it, drawn to it.... and after a couple hours had to take it down and hide it away so it wouldn’t sell.  And I only did that with 3 or 4 things, LOL.  :-)   I sold most of the vintage clothes I had, too.   Bruce sold lots of his old radio and electronic parts and old cameras.  It was a great, fun day, but hot and very physically taxing.  We may do this one more time in October.  If we lose our sanity again.

And then yesterday (Tuesday) we had DGD London all day - until her dad got home from work at 8pm.  These pictures are from last week.  She discovered that my sideboard (where linens are stored) had a great hiding compartment.

Hehe ....  Hi Dammy!  (her way of saying “Grammy”).

Let’s just use this vintage hand-crocheted tablecloth for a stepping stone ...

And so, I am back to the madness.........  thanks for stopping by!!

Hugs,