OUT Chapter 4: MADE

Story time with Dana of Made today!  Anything that Dana does makes me happy.  It could be her bright, beautiful pictures, the cheerful colors she always uses, or maybe that she just seems to celebrate life, but I'm always happier after reading her posts.  I'm not convinced that there's anything she can't do, from home renovations to writing books, she seems to do everything with ease and she shares with all of us!  So glad to have her here today.  Welcome, Dana!

Hello friends! It doesn't matter how busy life is when Katy comes an-emailing.....because I just can't say no to Once Upon a Thread. Yes Katy! It's a YES! I'm sure you feel the same. The books are marvelous, the interpretations are brilliantly fun, and the only hard part is narrowing down the book selection....because there are so many I'd love to tackle. My favorite children's books are those that draw me in artistically, through illustration. So this time I went with an all-time classic because Curious George pretty much sums up my favorite design style. It's a smorgasbord of simple colors and shapes popping on a white background. Lemon yellow, turquoise blue, checkers, dots, and stripes!....oh the stripes! (even the Christmas trees have them. Cute) I had to create something stripey something for my own little monkey. Of course it was hard to narrow down which Curious George story to draw from, since we read these books so frequently and each have our favorites. My favorite page is the hot air balloon race. Too many fun colors. We each take turns picking out OUR balloon. Can you guess mine? Owen and Lucy love the chocolate factory and like to point out all the faces on the machinery. Then we take turns choosing our favorite chocolate pieces as well. But I went with one that the kids seem to choose often since there's inspiration everywhere: The story starts out with George, sitting in the house, just begging to be curious (and hanging out by some pretty awesome curtains) He spies a garden from his window and decides he must know what it feels like to hold a bunny. So he roams through a field of flowers. He tries fishing. And goes head-first into the fishing. And eventually he runs into Bill, wearing stripes, and flying his stripey kite. So I made Lucy a kite dress. She loved it. ...and spent the next 10 minutes running and jumping around the house declaring to everyone: That made me happy. The dress is a simple A-line pattern I've been working on (and have in-queue to share, hopefully sooner than later!) I created the striped fabric first, sewing long 4-inch wide strips together...since good striped fabric is always harder to find that one would think. Please. Please designers. Give us more cabana striped fabric! I sewed the dress with a white lining, gave it little petal sleeves, and a red polka dot button in the back. I must say, she makes a pretty good kite. Thanks Katy for having me! 

See? You're happier now, aren't you?  What a fun dress!  Thank you, Dana! Your little kite is the cutest!