Inspiration > amy a la mode

Happy Holidays!

Posted by Amy on December 23rd, 2011

I recently discovered there are some gorgeous handmade letterpress holiday cards out there. If I’d gotten my act together and sent out cards this year, I might have chosen some of these.

In the meantime, here they are for you to enjoy. Happy Holidays to you all, and I’ll see you in 2012!

My husband and I just took a very long weekend and spent three nights in Cambria, on California’s central coast. We rented a house all to ourselves, relaxed, went for long walks along the bluffs and beaches, did some Christmas shopping, ate some fabulous food, and did some antique shopping.

We managed to find four new additions to our vintage McCoy pottery collection. We had never seen three of these before (the ones on the right). We have a pot just like the bulb bowl on the left, but it’s taller. We had no idea this short version even existed!

It was really unbelievable that we found this many. A bit much on the pocketbook to buy them all in one weekend, but I just couldn’t bear to pass them up! We collect any pattern of McCoy, as long as it is this color (okay, we do have a few pieces in other colors, when the mood strikes!).

But I was so busy relaxing most of the weekend that I failed to take any photos of us or the beach or the town. Though I did find some beautiful quilts that I photographed and hope to show you soon!

A Quick Visit to Half Moon Bay

Posted by Amy on September 23rd, 2011

My mother-in-law told us that she wanted to see the ocean when she was here, so we took her to Half Moon Bay. It was really cold and windy so we didn’t hang out too long, but it’s always nice to dip your toes in (even if the signs tell you that you shouldn’t!).

Have a great weekend everyone!

Quilt Inspiration

Posted by Amy on August 3rd, 2011

So, I was wrong. This photo actually IS in my photostream at Flickr. It’s from an antique mall we went to down in Pacific Grove during my fantastic 40th birthday weekend.

And this is the mosaic I created from it with Adobe Illustrator. I showed this to you last week.

I’m happy to report that all the fabric has been cleaned up off the bed and desks and I’m nearly done piecing the bits together into rows. I’m just waiting on the mail – I ran out of one color and not a single shop in the area had it in stock, so I had to order it. I should definitely have the top completed before my parents come in a couple weeks. Now I need to start thinking about the quilting!

Here it is, just waiting for some light gray. Spaces that need to be filled are between the bits that are still labeled with masking tape. And then the halves of each row still need to be sewn together and the six rows sewn to each other (which will require lots of pins, which I am not looking forward to!)

Things have been and will continue to be a bit nuts around here. Because of that, I’m planning a bit of a blog hiatus for August, and maybe until the middle of September. I’ll still post when I have something I really want to show you, but you probably won’t see me around here as often. While I’m scarce, enjoy your summers!

Too Hot to Sew

Posted by Amy on July 4th, 2011

Since last you heard from me I have been either 1) working at the shop or 2) too hot to sew. This is when I really appreciate air conditioning. When I’m hot and sweating I just do not have any patience for things like screwed up tension on my machine.

I did manage to cut out two skirts last week, and I have started sewing the Lisette one — the one I did the muslin for last week. But that’s it. It has otherwise been too damn hot.

And the heat reminds me of the trips to India I made back in 2005, so I thought I’d leave you with a photo from that trip, having recently retrieved all my old photos from my backup drive and put them on my new souped-up hard drive.

This was from the third trip, when my husband went along and we took a vacation to Kerala after my business trip was done. We stayed at the Coconut Lagoon. The photo is from a motorized canoe trip on the backwaters of Lake Vembanad. So beautiful.