I was going to give it to my sister, for her baby girl due next month, but it ended up having a lot more pink in it than I think she’ll like.  So, I’ll have to come up with something else.  Which, lets be honest, will be pretty easy.  I came home with a new little stack of fabric today. (Quilt details: 43″ square, made up of 9 patch blocks and large blocks measuring 7.25″.  Inner border is 3/4″ in brown, outer border is I think 3″… I don’t remember now.)

I really like making baby quilts because I can piece the whole thing together in one good afternoon and evening.  Bigger quilts seem to take forever, but I can totally rock out a baby quilt in one day.  (You know, because at this point in my life I don’t quilt them myself. )  It was just a fun and fast little project, but I really do like the whole process of picking out fabrics and then thinking up a pattern that will work.  Weeks ago, when our first Halloween fabric arrived at the quilt shop I designed and made a Halloween quilt and made up a bunch of kits.  And as soon as my mom saw it she commissioned another for her birthday (which is today, Happy Birthday Mom!).  Those kits sold out in two weeks so I was glad I didn’t wait to bring hers home.  I of course don’t have a picture of that one, so I’ll hopefully have hers done next week so she can enjoy it before Halloween and I’ll post pictures then.  Creamie had a very early bedtime tonight (YAY!) and I am hoping that her new antibiotics help her kick whatever it is she has been sick with for the past 2 weeks.  I’m off to make my favorite cookies, recipe tomorrow.

Yeah, that’s my story.  Not always, but today.  This nice little stack of fabric was supposed to be a really cute fabric bunting, like this 4th of July one, and the pink one I made for my pink week giveaway.  But, I did something stupid.

I picked the total wrong thing for the binding.  In my mind it looked a lot cuter.  In reality it looks like a big old mess.  And I realized it as soon as I finished the last stitch and pulled it out of my sewing machine.  Failure.  Crafty Failure.  So I threw it on my desk and ate a lot of cupcakes and today I feel much better about it.  But I am still going to unpick all 20 feet of stitches and redo the binding with navy blue or something not quite so stripey.

Oh, and that exciting thing I was going to tell you about… it happened.  It was lovely, and I didn’t take a single picture.  But Amy did.  And as soon as I can steal pictures from her I’ll post about it.

I got this stack of fabric last week, and it is destined for some more summer clothes for Creamie.  I am not exactly sure what yet, but I’m sure it will come to me.  Some more skirts and little peasant shirts are sure to be involved.  I used the Camera Plus app on my iphone, with the Diana toy camera effects layer.  I am starting to love my iphone camera apps, that’s for sure.

Last week I was a guest poster over at Amy is the Party for her summer blog party.  I shared a favorite summer time treat, Lime Pie Cakes  And not only did she have some awesome party tutorials and ideas (mini cupcake fondue, can I say more?), she is also having a giveaway for a free ad space if you are looking to advertise your business or blog.  I  think it’s a brilliant idea!  Go check out her ad giveaway here, or a giveaway for some of her adorable jewelry here.  And here is a list of all her wonderful summer party ideas!

Pink would have been cuter.  And it would have fit in  better with the whole Pink Week/National Pink Day.  But sometimes life doesn’t turn out perfectly.  Whatever. I got pink hair, and a white rough draft version of a robe.  I can’t complain because I still love the way this turned out.  And just because plan A doesn’t work out doesn’t mean plan B isn’t going to be awesome.  She wore it this afternoon at our Pinkalicious Party.  It is a million times better than giving her a towel in my opinion. I can tie it on her.

What I wasn’t expecting was for the 3T-4T size to be so large.  She wears 3 and 4 T shirts, so I thought it would be just right.  Ha.  I should have made the 9 month size in width and the 4T size in length.  Lesson learned.  My kid is skinnier and taller than I think she is.

I mean, a robe doesn’t need to fit tight or anything, but I can wrap it around her twice and have to knot the ties in the back so she doesn’t trip on them.  It was a good trial run.  And she asks to wear it to bed every single night.  Which is awesome.

Speaking of pinkalicious party, I am exhausted.  We went through more than 200 cupcakes, almost 400 Otterpops, 80 pounds of ice and 5 gallons of pink lemonade.  If I don’t fall asleep at the computer I’ll post a few sneak peaks before I go to bed.  Happy Pink Day (you know, in case you missed the other 10 times I’ve said that today.)

I think it’s a success.  It is now by far one of my favorite things I’ve ever made.  Ever.  I wish I’d thought of it three years ago when I was making baby quilts for Creamie.  The ruffles have a great texture, and I bet a baby would LOVE to play with them.  (I’ve got a non-ruffled boy version whirling around in my head that I’ll post as an addendum sometime this summer.  Sewers for boys, never fear!)

What I love most about this quilt, besides rows of pink ruffles, is the large white space around the edge.  My friend Melissa at Sew Shabby Quilting filled it in with beautiful flowers and swirls and I couldn’t have dreamed up something more beautiful!

Alright, let’s talk details.

• 1/8 yard x13 fabrics for ruffles
• 1 1/4 yards white
• 1 1/3 yards backing
• 1/3 yard binding fabric (This is for a straight cut, not bias binding)

You’ll need:thirteen 4″x42″ strips of fabric for the ruffles.  I was happy I had enough pink scraps to do this quilt almost completely from my stash.  I choose to do mine all different, but you could repeat a few fabrics if you’d like.  I thought of doing an ombre effect, but didn’t have enough of the dark pinks. (The ruffled quilt kits we have at the shop are blue/turquoise, greens, gray and yellow and are so so pretty!)  I would suggest choosing dense/small prints, or one’s with allover color.  I have one ruffle that was a large pink flower on white, middle of the bottom row below, and though I love the fabric I don’t love it as a ruffle because it mostly just looks white.  I should have switched that fabric for something else.

If you are buying fabric for this quilt 1/8 yard will do for each ruffle. (An 1/8 yard is 4.5 inches, and you’ll need to trim them down to 4″ wide.)  I pieced a few of my ruffles together in the middle because I didn’t have a long enough strip left.  And that’s OK too.  You’ll also need 1 1/4 yards of white.  I used Kona snow.  The white I had in my piles was too white, and the cream I had was too cream.  Kona snow is a great not bright white, not cream white option.  That’s it for the front!  You’ll need 1 1/3 yards for the backing fabric.  I pieced mine together from bits left over from this project and a big, but not big enough piece.

After you’ve cut your ruffles, let’s cut the white fabric to size.  You’ll  need one large 21″x21″ square, and two 11″x21″ strips.  Cut your remaining fabric into two 11″xwidth of fabric (42″ish) strips.

Sew one 11×21 inch piece to each side of your 21″ square and press the seams open on the back.  Then fold it in half and press a fold down the center in both directions.  This will help you get your ruffles sewn on straight later.  Let’s make ruffles!  They aren’t as hard as they look.  A long time ago a woman in my neighborhood who was teaching a sewing class for the young girls at church showed me an easy trick to turn long skinny things right side out.  I’m sure a few of you have heard of this before.  But at the time I thought “Wow.  Why is this not printed on billboards in front of every single sewing store!”

For this part you’ll need a roll of ribbon, or a long length of it.  I don’t cut mine off the roll, I just roll it back up when I am done.  So here’s my not so secret trick to make long skinny ruffles easy!

1. Take your 4″ strip of fabric and lay your ribbon across the top with about 1/2 inch hanging off one edge.
2. Fold your fabric right sides together and pin the ribbon in place.  Make sure the ribbon is laying down right next to the fold.  You don’t want to catch it in your seam.  Sew a 1/4 inch seam along the raw edges.
3. After you’ve sewn your ruffle, start pulling the ribbon tail.  It will start to scrunch up, and you’ll just need to use your fingers to help it flip inside out.
4. This is what it will look like when you are finished.  It only takes about 15 seconds to flip this whole long ruffle inside out.  Tada! Magic.
5. Carefully snip off the ribbon right at the seam on the outside (But don’t cut your fabric!) Then you can reach in and pull out the 1/2 inch tail from the inside.  Then you’ve only lost 1/2 inch of ribbon and 15 seconds of time for each ruffle.  Not bad at all!

Repeat for all thirteen ruffles, and then take your stack over to the ironing board.  press each ruffle with the seam down the center.  It doesn’t have to be perfect, but try to keep it in the middle to give yourself a guide for gathering them up later.  When they are all pressed take them back to the sewing machine and using mostly matching thread (I wish I’d changed thread for the darker pink ruffles) stitch a long gathering stitch down the middle of each ruffle.  (Set my stitch length to it’s longest setting, mine is a 5, and don’t back stitch at the beginning or end.)

Now it’s time to start pinning on the ruffles!  Find the center of each ruffle by folding it in half and marking it with a pin.  Then line up your first ruffle along the two center lines you pressed earlier.  Pin it in the center, and then very carefully pull your bobbin thread to make gathers.  Do one side at a time, the pin in the middle will help keep your gathers even from side to side.  I used about 8 pins on each side of the center to hold my ruffle in place, and as straight on that center line as possible.  Pull your thread gently, if it breaks you’ll need to pull it off and redo the gathering stitch.

Stitch that ruffle right down the center.  Make sure to leave the selvedge edges hanging off your white background square.  You don’t want those to show up in your quilt!  We’ll need to trim everything even when we are done with the ruffles anyway.  And tada!  You’re first ruffle is done.  Now add one to each side, using your first ruffle and your pressed center line as a guide to keep things straight and even.

You’ll want to butt those ruffles right up against each other.  Pack them in tight or they won’t all fit inside the square in the middle.  (And see, that darker pink ruffle at the top would have looked a lot better with dark pink thread instead of light pink.  Oops.)

Continue adding ruffles, one on each side  until you’ve gathered them all up and sewn them all down.

Every couple of row measure the distance between the side seam and your ruffle to make sure you are still straight.  My seam is under the blue line, and thankfully my rows were still straight.  If they aren’t, just adjust the way you pin on the next one to compensate for a little bit of slanting in one direction.

I just used my regular sewing foot to sew these down, but if you have a walking foot you could use that too.  I have a ruffler foot too, but since I needed these to be a very specific length I decided it was just as easy to gather them by hand.

And tada!  All those ruffles are sewn down.  Try to keep the edges of the last rows of ruffles inside the side seams.  This will keep your center square of ruffles a true square.  Now it’s time to trim down the edges and add our other white strips.

Measure the length of your center panel from edge to edge.  It should be somewhere around 42″.  Trim your remaining white strips to the exact length of your quilt x11 inches and pin them right sides together at both ends.  Lay everything out evenly across the ruffles and carefully trim off the selvedge ends.  Then carefully pin the raw ruffle edges into the seam allowance.  I used one pin on each side of each ruffle.  Which was more pinning than I usually do for anything, but I didn’t want any of those raw edges to escape the sewing machine.  You want them sewn in really well so they don’t pull out and fray.  Do the same thing on the other side and you are done with the top!

Tada!  Having those big wide borders makes for a really fast quilt. I didn’t have a piece I liked for the backing that was big enough, so I added a strip of scraps to add the length I needed.  I actually think I prefer scrappy backings better.  They are more interesting I think.  And maybe one day I’ll get around to putting a label on there somewhere…

Now do whatever it is you do to quilt the thing together.  Me?  Don’t enjoy that part at all.  And my friend Melissa is a LOT better at it than me!  So I took it to her.  And she did an amazing job.

After I got it home I realized that it needed some quilting in the middle of the quilt too.  A 21″ square is a lot of space to not be stitched together!  So I added a few straight lines between each ruffle to help hold all the layers together.  If you send it somewhere to get quilted, you can ask your quilter to do this part for you.  I didn’t think of it until after I started binding it, so I added these few rows of quilting after it was completely finished.  I should have used my walking foot, but I really hate putting it on my machine, and I figured if it puckered or wrinkled then the ruffles would hide it anyway.  Just make sure you don’t catch a ruffle in your stitching.  You can either hold them out of the way with your fingers (my lazy girl solution), or you can pin them down so they don’t get caught in these rows of stitching.  Don’t those rows of ruffles just make you want to touch it!

I bound my quilt with a solid pink, not cut on the bias.  Here is a really good tutorial from Amy at Diary of a Quilter on bindings.  I should have read it before I bound all those quilts a few weeks ago.  She has some good info there and shares the secrets to making square mitered corners.

If you make a ruffle quilt, please let me know!  I’d love to see your version, even if it’s not pink.  You can add any projects you make from my blabberings on to the pinksuedeshoe flickr group.  It’s still a little lonely.  And boring.  It’s only got my stuff in it.  So if you have any projects you’ve made from my tutorials please add them!  My pictures could use a little company.

Up until yesterday afternoon my hair was untouched by any coloring products.  I was as all natural as they come.  But I’ve been thinking about going pink for a whole year now.  Last year I got a few pink stripes, but they were just extensions.  Nothing was done to my real hair.  And a few weeks later they slipped out and I was back to my regular self.  And I’ve missed them ever since.

So yesterday I went to visit my stylist cousin Jess and I came home with pink hair.  Shocking pink hair in fact. I wasn’t really planning on that part.

Neither of us were really.  And if I look a little deer in headlights… well I kind of was.  But a happy kind of deer in headlights.  So the thing about going pink when you’re already really blonde and have never done a thing to your hair other than wash it is that it holds a lot of color.  Apparently.

But a few trips through the non color safe shampoo cycle and it is a lot more pink, and not quite so red.  Because red?  Red just wouldn’t do for today.

It’s not even been 24 hours, but I sometimes forget that my hair is newly pinked.  She gave me a new haircut as well, and I keep running my fingers through it (everyone does that, right?) and I’ll catch a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye.  And it’s surprising.  A happy surprise.  My favorite reaction so far was my mom.  I went over to borrow some cupcake pans from her last night and after the standard “Oh my goodness!  It’s pink!” (I didn’t tell her I was going to dye it.)  She looked at me and said “You probably should have dyed your eyebrows too.”  Ha! I love her!

I decided a long time ago that if I ever was going to put color in my hair I wanted it to be something I would notice.  None of this “one shade lighter than my natural color” stuff.  And  I decided to do all over color as opposed to just chunks because I thought that might look less punk rocky.  I’m not a punk rocker dying my hair pink to make a statement.  I am the anti punk rocker actually.  Even though I usually wear jeans with holes in them.  I just kind of like pink, that’s all.

Now, I’m off to enjoy the rest of my morning playing pink games with Creamie and finishing up the last minute bits for my Pinkalicious Party this afternoon.  (I have my all day blog party today PLUS I’m hosting a pink cupcake/popsicle/pink lemonade party for 150ish people at a park this afternoon.  I ended up a little busier than expected today…) Happy Pink Day to you all.  Next up is the secret behind those rows of cryptic ruffles I posted last week.  Eeek! I am so excited!

Oh, and Creamie is big into purses.  She has at least half a dozen and takes one with her everywhere we go.  She comes by it honestly.  I take one with me everywhere I go too.  Go figure.

So here are the details, roughly moving down in each row, left to right: Pink Fossil wallet, from my sister in law a few years ago.  I Love this thing, and even though it doesn’t hold all my credit cards/gas cards/grocerystore cards/library cards/mexican restaurant punch cards/frozen yogurt coupon blah blah blah, I still don’t want to replace it.  Crayons collected from various kids meals at different restaurants, 3 of the 4 in here are yellow.  Why do they give kids yellow crayons!  Pink striped mint tin from Victoria’s Secret, at least 10 years old.  I keep hayfever medicine and tylenol in here. My favorite pen, which is not pink ,and has some random apartments for rent add on the side, but I love how it writes.  iphone with pink shock resistant case.  Full of games to keep Creamie busy in the car so she doesn’t take an unexpected nap and completely ruin my evening by staying awake until 1 in the morning.  Neutrogena Hand Cream.  At the top again: Hand sanitizer and a package of vintage pink ric rac I found at the thrift store for fifty cents a few days ago.  Pink fingernail file, a 1/4 yard of solid pink fabric for a project I’ll post on Thursday, plus I found my favorite earrings and necklace  in the inside zip pocket of this purse.  They’ve been missing for, um, a while.  Pink measuring tape and pink thread I picked up for a different project and a pair of fingernail clippers.  Next column: a hair elastic for me and two for Creamie.  Nothing more annoying than having her lose one of her ponytail elastics and have that random post ponytail hair on one side of her head for the rest of the day. Sunglasses, thrifted, and Scott’s very old Razor phone which Creamie pretend to talk to grandma on in the car.  Or Cinderella, or Captain Hook.  She has a lot of friends.  A cute notebook for keeping lists and ideas, and to let Creamie color in when she gets bored.  Keys and little leather zip pouch for all the rest of the cards that don’t fit in my wallet and any cash/coins I happen to have on me.  Which is not much and not often.  I am not a cash carrying kind of person.  Last column is two pacakges of fruit snacks (those and the hand sanitizer are the only reason I can stop at as many thrift stores as I do.) Emergency diaper and wipes, a half eaten package of smarties, bubbles and kiddie sunscreen.   And that’s the contents of my summertime pink purse.  I’m sure by the end of the week there will be a random assortment of mail, receipts and empty fruit snack wrappers.  There usually is.

I love the big outside pockets on this purse.  I am forever losing my phone and keys somewhere near the bottom and it drives me crazy.  In my opinon all purses should have one zippered pocket inside (that’s where I keep the little tin of medicine, with the zipper safety pinned shut so she can’t get to them for a few more years at least) and two bigger pockets for keys/chapstick/phone.  I don’t care if they are outside or inside, but it is amazing to me the lack of pocket room on most purses.  Appalling.

While I was dumping out my purse and making the official transfer from autumn purse to summer purse, Creamie decided that she wanted to play too.  So here is her purse.  Not all this stuff fit in her little purse, she just kept adding things to the pile.  So, she has a bottle for her baby doll, a creepy plastic dog/cat/something toy, a large commemorative/insurance agency advertement coin (her “big money”) an empty package of fruit snacks she destroyed with her little scissors, pink bracelet, a plastic doughnut, the sparkly headband from last year’s Halloween costume, a set of measuring spoons, a neon green spider ring and a pile of coins.  She always has coins in her pockets.  And if you ask her what they are for she tells you it’s to ride the duck.  In the Walmart lobby there is a mechanical big bird toy that she would do anything for.  In her mind it is the best 90 seconds of her life.  And in my mind it is the biggest waste of fifty cents in the world.  But she is constantly hoarding money to ride the duck.  It’s hilarious.

She was so excited to show me her things.  It was adorable.  Seriously, have you ever seen anyone so excited about a plastic spider ring?

She decided to empty out one more of her several bags for me to take pictures of.  I just found this little toddler backpack a few weeks ago and she thinks it is the greatest thing ever.  And today it was holding a mama and baby rubber duck, a tiny green cup from her little kitchen, a jingle bell necklace from Christmas, our old camera, my old pink razor phone, her little green plastic phone and a pair of shoes.  One day I’ll have to empty out all of them and take pictures.  Yesterday she made a train down the hallway of all her stuff.  And there were at least 6 purses/bags/paper sacks all full to overflowing, all lined up and going to the zoo.  According to her.  I seriously can’t make this stuff up.

The standard evolution of photo taking at my house.  There is less than 10 seconds between the far left and the far right photo. Totally fine to total meltdown.  Yeah, she’s definitely two.  She’ll get over it.  Anyway, National Pink Day in on Thursday, and I can’t wait to finally share everything I’ve been working on!  You might not be as excited as I am, but you could totally pretend.  And if weeklong pink parties just aren’t your thing, head over to Amy is the Party.  She is having a blog party all week to celebrate summer.  Yesterday I did a guest post for one of my favorite summer treats.

Lime Pie Cakes. Yep, they are as good as they look!  Go here for the recipe. Oh, and don’t forget to enter my giveaway for Pink Week!

You can not imagine the things she stuffs in those pockets.  We stopped at our favorite soup and sandwich spot for lunch and when we got in the car I realized that she had 9 little packages of crackers, a mini cup of tortilla strips and a chocolate covered strawberry, which she had thoughtfully wrapped in a napkin first all stuffed into her pocket.  Along with the stray red pom pom, a spongebob party blower thing, two hairclips, a plastic pig and a toy train.  I should have known something was up this morning when I put her dress on and she said “I need to find some stuff for my pockets.”  She wasn’t kidding.

Sick of pictures, these two took off with a package of fruitsnacks, which is the bribe of choice around these parts.  Seriously, they are so cute!

Creamie insisted that this giant spotlight was a TV and she was pretty frustrated that the remote was lost.  VERY frustrated!

Little A has the prettiest blue eyes ever.  Just like her mama’s.  Creamie’s eyes used to be this same blue, (check this picture of her when she was 3 months old) but they have since changed.

She is most definitely going to be a green eyed girl.  Just like her mama.  And that makes me happy.

I have big plans to have a great weekend.  I hope yours is wonderful too!

The pattern for these dresses is based on this pattern from Dana at MADE.  (I added the sleeves.)

This my friends is a raindrop chandelier, or a paper rainstorm or something.  I got the idea to make this from a pile of leftover scraps from an art journal page I made last spring.

You can see the awesome pile of leftover raindrops up in the corner, right?  I guess I kind of went overboard on cutting them out.  Anyway, they sat in a pile for a long time until I got the idea to sew them together and tie them onto a ring.  And it hung up above my desk like that for a year.  And then a few months ago I got the idea to add a larger ring of rain and a smaller one and turn it into a much beefier, rainier chandelier.

I used some chrome spraypaint one one side of my papers to add a little shimmer, and to cover up whatever was on the backside.  Some of my paper scraps were double sided, and if the flip side didn’t fit into my color scheme I sprayed them chrome.  After I sprayed all my paper I started cutting out raindrops.  I think I spent one evening watching a movie and cut out about 300, maybe 400 raindrops ranging in size from .5 inches tall to about 1.5 inches.  It didn’t take as long as you might think.  I was surprised at how quickly my little pile of raindrops became a large pile of raindrops.

But the hardest and most time consuming part of the whole project was not the cutting out of a gillion tiny little raindrops.  Assembling the three rings for the chandelier base was MUCH more frustrating.  I bought thee sizes of rings at the craft store and then spray painted them chrome, they were originally gold.  And then  I think I tried about 8 different ways before I figured out how to hook them together and keep all three flat and level and evenly spaced between each other.  It was totally annoying. And it’s probably a good thing I already had all my raindrops cut and sewed together into raindrop chains.   Because if I had started with the ring base I probably would have given up on this project and thrown the whole thing in the trash long before any raindrops saw the light of day.  But now I have it figured out and next time I won’t be nearly so frustrated.  (I have another chandelier project in mind and when I get that one made I’ll take pictures and share my many trials and errors, and the long last successful route.)

But I love the end result.  And I love that I still had clouds pinned to my fake dining room curtain from a baby shower a few weeks ago. (This is the same thrifted sheet turned curtain backdrop I used for Creamie’s birthday party.)  The clouds were the perfect backdrop for my little paper rainstorm.  Here in Utah we had a ridiculously rainy spring.  And while most people think that rainy days (or snowy days for that matter) are “bad” weather, I think they are absolutely beautiful.  And those are the kinds of days that I want to stay inside and bake bread and make something.  I love those “bad” weather days!

This little rainstorm is currently hanging up in the corner above my desk.  And everytime a little bit of breeze comes through, or the heater turns on and moves the air around a bit, or I open the door it starts to spin and twirl and shimmer.  It is absolutely beautiful.  Much prettier than I ever could have imagined.  Besides, now I can tell people that I have a dancing rainstorm over my desk.  And how awesome is that? Not bad from a reject pile of blue paper scraps, and a little spray paint.  Not bad at all.

I will never have enough beds in my house to use them all as they were originally intended.  And I am not about to make Scott sleep in a floral bed.  The man puts up with enough of my crazy vintage hoarding/mess making/sewing projects all over the house as it is.  He can sleep in a gender neutral bed.  But I think I’ve decided to cut them into quilt kits and sell them that way.  I might do fat quarters too, but I haven’t decided yet.  Quilt kits seems like it would be a lot more fun for me.  At any rate, I’ve had some great thrifting luck recently and have added quite a stack to my already very large stash.  And look, there are blue and green one’s in there!  Those have been my hardest ones to find, except for the lone lavendar gingham on the bottom of the stack in the pic above.

This is my newest recently purchased stack, washed and folded.  When I buy sheets I always wash them on the Sanitize setting of my big front loading washer, which is a three hour soak and tumble in boiling hot water and good soap.  I figure after that all vestiges of their previous lives have been effectively stamped out and they are officially mine.  And clean.  Clean is important.  Their exact vintage is not as important to me.  I buy the sheets that I like that are in good shape.  Unless they are pink, then I’m buying them even if they are thread bare. Ahem, I should set higher standards for pink things.  (Who am I kidding, that’s not going to happen.)   The blue and green florals on the right side (3rd and 4th from the bottom) I am quite sure wouldn’t qualify as  vintage, I think they are maybe 5 years old. But they are pretty, and I liked them and that’s all I really care about.  I used one of the green floral pillowcases to make this shirt for Creamie last week.

So, lets get technical for a minute.  There is no real time constraints for the term “vintage”.   I remember reading in a fashion magazine in 2007 that the model in question was wearing “vintage chanel, circa 2004.” And I remembered it because I thought it was ridiculous.  Vintage just means not new.  And it has been slapped on items dating back for like 70 years.  And somewhere in the 70 to 80 year old range they start meshing into antiques…. or something.  But, on etsy, the largest purveyor of fine and not so fine vintage goods, for something to qualify as “vintage” the item in question needs to be 20 years old. That’s what they say, so it must be true.  It’s on the internet.  So, if the item was manufactured/made/worn/used/etc. before 1991 it now qualifies as a vintage item and can be sold on etsy with that label.  Technically.  So how do you know how old something is?  You guess.  That being said, I am 100% sure that this pink Pottery Barn bamboo lattice sheet is NOT vintage.  And I am also 100% sure that this yellow striped sheet is.  I literally squealed when I spotted it on the shelf.  It was a brand new in the package sheet.  And it had a date on the label, 1987.

I also look at any labels sewn on the actual sheet to see if I can figure out their era. Depending on what kind of fabric the label is made out of  I can sometimes guess at it’s age. I also will look to see if a serger was used and what kind of stitch it made.  Or how they sewed in the elastic on fitted sheets.   But those labels that say Target on them?  It’s a dead giveaway it’s not vintage, but sometimes cute enough to buy anyway.  Totally unrelated: I don’t know why  I love these two blues ones so much.  They are a near perfectly complimentary match in color and pattern.  The blue tulip on the top I really want to make myself a dress out of.  I just love it.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I really need to figure out something to do with this stack.  It completely fills up the space underneath my desk.  I pulled them all out today so I could add my newest finds to the collection.  And I decided that I might have enough to start doing something about the massive amount of washed and folded cotton bedding I have collected.  You know, soon.  Soonish.  A little later.