Chanel Headdresses

The Chanel Spring 2009 Haute Couture line continues to peak my interest after all of these months. At first I was blown away and inspired by the paper flower environments, then the fashion and now I'm back taking an extra close look at the paper headdresses. The really are gorgeous and oh so elegant. I would love to make a whole series of them.

Our Portland Story

I recently completed a page to be featured in the upcoming book Our Portland Story.
It is a collection of short stories, photographs and illustrations created and designed by Portlanders about Portland. I was lucky enough to be paired with a local artist named Kerri Jones. Her story is about the local fabric industry. You can check out her amazing mosaics made of fabric at remnantWorks.

I was inspired to design her page based on old pattern packages. It seemed fitting to represent generations of women who have influenced Kerri's work. In her story she describes what it was like as a child watching her grandmother sew.

Below are a few designs that I scanned from a friend of mine's vintage pattern collection.Below is the final page for Our Portland Story.

Boutique Knits

I went into Close Knit the other day and spotted Boutique Knits. It's a wonderful book by Laura Irwin, a Portlander who is a manager at Seaplane.Close Knit had samples of many of the projects from this book on display. These gloves are so cute. I really want to make these.However, the gloves shown below are what really struck me. They are gorgeous.I had to show this hood since I've been working on my hooded scarf this past week. I love the color and the thinckness of the whole peice. It looks so warm.Isn't this hat beautiful? I've always been a huge fan of that braded look in knitting.

There are so many other items that I was blown away by. If you get the chance, do check out this book. The hand bags are amazing. They are mostly felted with some details knited. You can see photos of them on her flickr site here.

You can also read an interview with Laura from Oregon Live here.

The Sign Language

I have to give another shout out to my friend Zach at Tank Theory. Mainly because he always asks me to model his T's and I always get free clothes out of it. What girl doesn't love that?! So go check out his new threads that are up on the Tank Theory website.Check out pictures from the last photo shoot, on his blog, here. Just click on the blog link.

Pattern on Pattern

During the past few weeks I have been looking for inspiration for a family cookbook that I'm working on. My maternal grandfather was originally from Sardinia and though my grandmother was born in New York City, her family also came from the island. Having been to Italy twice, I am very familiar with the beautiful floral textiles and wallpapers that adorn most homes there, as they did in my grandparent's house in the Bronx. I knew, in my search for ideas that I would have to incorporate old time Italian patterns. I came across these photo spreads from the December 2007  issue of Italian Vogue, shot by Steven Meisel. I am in love with these photos!!!