rose hip

more princessy stuff...

 

 

...coming your way in today's post! As you can see, I finally got around to taking some photos of the Calico Princess pillowcase in the other colour stream which has the whimsical princesses dressed this time in gorgeous shades of pink, yellow, orange, brown, red and green, all on a lovely white background and trimmed with a blush pink yarn. Now, while I don't have a definite favourite between this pillowcase and the other one with the light blue background, I do have a bit of a soft spot for this one because I find that its colour scheme is reminiscent of those found in vintage sheets from the 60s and 70s; in fact, the dress the frog-kissing princess below is wearing (how sweet is she?!) really reminds me of an actual vintage sheet in my stash!...

 

 

So, are you ready to take a peek at some of the ways I played around with the white Calico Princess pillowcase on my daughter Nico's bed? Well, after taking this post's first photo which has a gold crochet-trimmed cushion, the princess doll cushion, the buttercup dreams... coverlet and the woolly patchwork blanket keeping the white Calico Princess pillowcase company, I thought I would leave out the doll cushion and go for a stacked look with a sweet floral ditsy pillowcase on the bottom,...

 

 

...add a floral crochet cushion with a yummy hazelnut brown background on top of the stack...

 

 

...and then let the princess doll cushion back into the party!...

 

 

Even though all that is gold befits a true princess, I decided to switch out the gold cushion for a sweet crochet-trimmed floral calico one to bring out the "calico" in the look and also leave out the crocheted topper for a bold floral cushion which I placed at the bottom to anchor the stack...

 

 

Next, I left the ditsy floral out of the pile and brought in the other floral crochet cushion which I think nicely sets off the bold and bright bottom pillowcase and also brings out the lovely blues in the woolly patchwork...

 

 

Hey, she's back!... The doll cushion has come out again to play and add a touch of sweetness to the look...

 

 

Now, for a simpler look: out come the crochet and doll cushion...

 

 

Still changing it around, the top calico cushion first got switched for some pea green polka dots to add to the playful look...

 

 

...and then for a very happy and bright pillowcase with a reddish trim!...

 

 

In case you may be wondering, all the pillowcases in this post will be listed very soon in my Etsy shop; in fact, a few of the white Calico Princess ones have already made their way there! I do hope you`ve enjoyed all my very princessy bed-dressing... Thanks for popping by!

 

 

off on a tangent...

 

 

...I know I should be doing a zillion other things, but I just can't help myself!... One good thing which came out of our kitchen sink leak is that when I moved out some of my fabric from my leaky work room and piled it up on the floor in the next room, I was inspired... Yes, another patchwork! More to come very soon, but now I must run and start cutting some pillowcases... Thanks for popping by!

 

 

 

the trouble with screens and sinks...

 

 

...I believe my computer screen which I've had for quite a long while now (surprisingly long since I think I got it when flat screens just started to make their appearance...) is dying a slow death; from time to time and increasingly so of late, it spazzes out on me and takes on an alarming pinkish red hue. Of course, when you spend a lot of your time on the computer sorting and editing photos, a well-behaved computer screen is a must and so, about two weeks ago, I went to my local big box computer supply store and picked up a new screen. I have to say that I spend almost no time deciding on one and purchasing it and perhaps I should have...

 

 

...because once I set it up at home, the colours seemed so different than on my old screen, and not at all in a good way! When I was in the store, I asked the sales clerk what should my new screen have in the price range I was looking at and she mentioned a new technology that supposedly render a picture with more depth. So, I decided to purchase a screen made by the same company as my old one (my old screen's longevity rather impresses me in this day of low life expectancy of electronic devices!) with this new image technology. But the resulting image quality so disappointed me at home as it seemed not as bright as my old screen's with too many shadows and whites which seemed too yellow for me. I suppose I could have tried to figure out how to calibrate the screen differently, but that thought did not particularly excite me... So instead, I stuffed my new screen back into the box and trotted off to the store...

 

 

Now this time around, I spent a good little while just staring at all the displayed computer screens which were showing the same images at the same time and I was quite amazed at what I saw... I couldn't believe how differently the same colours came out on the various screens! The whites were more yellow on some screens, the blues more green, the reds more brown, and so on...  (Have you noticed this?... I tend to be out of the techno-loop so I'm slow on picking up on things like this!) Oh my, for someone who spends so much time like I do tweaking the colours in photos which end up either in a blog post or an Etsy listing to get them just "right", that was somewhat of an uncomfortable realization! So, what screen was I to settle on?...

 

 

Well, I ended up buying a screen a week later because I found its image colours pleasing enough at the store and the sales clerk was nice enough to tell me that at it was going on sale with $100 knocked off the price!... Once set up at home, I still felt it fell a bit short of my expectations (sigh!) even though I liked it better than the first one I bought. However, I decided to stick with it because, for one, I did not feel like packing it up and going back to the store, and I also figured that I could work with it even though it reproduces colours a bit differently than my beloved old screen. (Snif!) Now, hopefully realizing that there is only so much I can do as far as the exact colours all of you who look at my blog and at my shop listings end up seeing on your screen will make me spend a bit less time editing my photos... Naw, probably not!

 

 

Now, as to pillowcase news... While the ditsy floral pillowcase with the light blue trim you see in this post is one I've just listed, I'm a bit behind schedule as far as listing new pillowcases in my Etsy shop due to a little plumbing problem in our house; we found out that the pipe draining our kitchen sink has been leaking and has caused water damage in the room below which, yes, is my work space! So, I've had to move some fabric out and I haven't been able to work down there all last week... But our plumber came by today and the leak is fixed (yay!), so I think I will be able to start cutting more pillowcases tomorrow. (Where would we be without plumbers?!) Anyhow, thank you so much for taking the time to visit and read my blog (even though I do blog about computer screens!) and I do hope the photos in this post look OK on all your different screens!

 

 

a little shop news...

 

 

...for all of you who have been wondering when I would start re-stocking my Etsy shop with some new pillowcase styles... Well, I finally am (Yay!) and new styles which I've put together for my "Calico Princess" bedding mishmash have started trickling into my shop and will be doing so for the next little while. (Mishmash is in italics because I'm trying to find an alternative word for "collection" as in "bedding collection" because I think it sounds too formal and serious for what it is, so if you have any ideas, please do tell!...)

 

 

Now, while I do think the pillowcases in this post all go well with the blue Calico Princess pillowcase (the one with the princess figures on it and the inspiration for all this bedding), I also think they work well with each other when there are no princesses in sight just like in the photo below... (In case you may be wondering, the bluish pillowcase below at the bottom of the pile will not make its appearance in my shop until next week.)

 

 

But if princesses are de rigueur, then on the top of a pile like the one below makes them hard to miss and,...

 

 

...if a more demure "princessy" look is desired, in the middle of a bunch like the one below might work nicely. ('Just a little note in case some of you may also be wondering: I will start filling my shop with cushions like the one below (top of the pile) in about two weeks.)

 

 

As I mentioned in my last post, finding a trim I liked for the Calico Princess pillowcase took a bit of trial and error, but once I tried the lattice and picot one I finally decided upon, I knew it had to be the one because it made me think of the crenellated edges of a castle tower! Because of its good fit with the princess theme, I thought I could use this trim on some of the other pillowcases I was putting together and, as you can see below, I did just that with the pink pillowcase with its sweet clusters of little roses...

 

 

The rosy pillowcase in the photos below has to be one of my favourites because I absolutely love its top fabric which is a vintage cotton, probably Chinese in its origins. When I first thought of using it for a pillowcase, I imagined it twinned with a different fabric, a solid one, for the pillowcase bottom; I tried it with a pink solid cotton I just so happened to have in my stash and it made me smile right away...

 

 

Now, I do believe that finding a colour shade of yarn that works well for the trim when the pillowcase's top and bottom fabrics are different is often harder than when one fabric is used for the whole pillowcase; I think the trick is in finding a shade that doesn't overly blend in with one of the two fabrics and contrasts both fabrics in an "even" sort of way, not always the easiest thing to do especially when your selection of colour shades is limited as it invariably is!...

 

 

With this pillowcase though, I had a fixed idea in my head as to what I wanted it to look like and, when I tried to replicate what was in my head with the supplies I had in hand, it all worked out the first time around... And that, let me tell you, definitely does not happen very often to me!

 

 

Well, that's all for my little pillowcase shop update for now... I will, however, be adding more new styles within the next few days which I will also blog about shortly. I hope you all have a lovely and cozy fall weekend (Happy Thanksgiving to all you fellow Canadians!) and thanks so much for popping by!

 

 

 

the inspiration...

 

 

...for my bedding collection is a yummy fabric aptly named "Fair Maidens" which I first spotted well over a year ago... I developed such a crush on this fabric because I immediately fell for its colours (there is another colour stream which I have yet to show you and which is absolutely delicious!) and the lovely way the "maidens" are illustrated with such perfect little details (just look at their hair styles!) that make them so very endearing; the design is playful and whimsical with the perfect touch of sweetness without making it all too sugary, don't you find?....

 

 

Now, while I do have a sweet little stash of children's prints which I mostly collected when my children were younger, I'm not drawn to them as much these days, in great part because my children are older now (I have three teenagers now... yikes!) and I feel like I'm out of that "kiddie" phase. Also, when I look at a lot of the children's prints nowadays, I may find them "cute" but not much more than that, and for me to add to my rather huge collection of fabric now, I either have to have a specific need for the fabric or the fabric really has to "turn my head"! And when I first saw "Fair Maidens", it did just that because I think it touched the "kid" in me with its playfulness, as well as the "grown-up", with its beautifully-illustrated pattern and perfect colour combinations.

 

 

Needless to say, I bought a bunch of "Fair Maidens" in both of its colour streams, a bit impulsively, because I hadn't really figured out what I was going to use it all for yet... But, there are times when you just have to have the fabric just because you have such a crush on it, right?! (I can't even begin to remember how many times the shop clerk who is cutting my fabric asks me "So what will be using this fabric for?" and I find myself answering, rather sheepishly: "I really don't know yet, but I just like it!".)

 

 

Well, maybe the part of not knowing what I'd do with it all is not 100% true, because I did think of one possible use for the fabric when purchasing it... Whenever I consider buying a certain fabric, I always ask myself if I could use it to make crochet-edged pillowcases or cushions and, if the answer is "Yes", I'm definitely more liable to buy the fabric; so, when I asked myself this question with "Fair Maidens", I thought that, maybe, I could make my pillowcases out of it...

 

 

However, I was not quite sure whether a crochet-edged pillowcase would look OK with this fabric; its pattern is so intricately-detailed with so many different things going on in it, that adding a crochet edging to it all might just be too much and seem superfluous. (I had already tried doing just that with other fabrics patterned with little figures, such as babushkas, and didn't manage to make it look right because the crochet edge always looked like one detail too many...) But I decided to go for it and I sewed up a pillowcase on which I tried all sorts of crochet edgings; none of them seemed quite right until I tried the one you see in all the photos which, I think, suggests the crenellated edges of a castle tower, don't you think?! With this particular colour stream with the light blue background, I also found that, when I was trying out different yarn colours, a colour close to the blue background and to the subtle blue-green details in the pattern worked best for the edging instead of a bolder choice which made it all look too "busy"; I eventually settled on a minty blue colour which is so close to the background that it looks like the same colour in a lot of the photos! All in all, I have to say that it was all a bit of a challenge for me, but when I look at the finished pillowcase now, I'm happy I attempted it!

 

So, with this pillowcase in mind and the fact that my daughter, Nico, was begging me for some new bedding and really liked the "Fair Maidens" fabric, it came to me that I could design a bunch of different bedding items inspired by "Fair Maidens"; these would all go with the crochet-edged pillowcase made out of the fabric, not in a "matchy-matchy" kind of way, but in a looser "granny" kind of way, if you know what I mean... And not surprisingly, Nico, my crafty daughter who loves to draw, loves all things floral, loves to collect little things that make her smile and delights in all the little details like the dresses the "Fair Maidens" are wearing, also became a big part of my inspiration for all the bedding I ended up making; given that she's twelve now and definitely tottering between childhood and adolescence, I considered the day when she might no longer want a pillowcase with sweet maidens on her bed (snif! snif!), and so I tried to made sure that all the bedding pieces would work well with each other and without the "Fair Maidens" print as a focal point.

 

 

Of all the different pieces I made for this bedding, the one that is the most directly inspired by the "Fair Maidens" print is the cushion doll you can see above; because the maiden figures in the fabric were so charming, I thought it would be fun to make my version of one of them in a bigger format. So, I thought back to this little guy I made a while back...

 

 

...and I came up with this little girl...

 

 

...who was so much fun to make because, just like the little gnome above, she has a backside...

 

 

...which looks like this:

 

 

As you can see, her clothes are made of printed cottons, her crown of lace, her flowers and her hair of felted wool sweaters, and her ribbon at the back, of velvet. I have too say that it was fun to "dress" her because I had so many options from the fabrics in my stash and I ended up choosing fabrics that I thought would go well with both colour streams. As I was making her, it also dawned on me that I should call my little bedding collection "Calico Princess" because the dresses in the "Fair Maidens" fabric are drawn as if made of printed fabric, my cushion princess doll is dressed in printed cottons and, basically, I make use of all sorts of different printed cottons throughout the collection. Just to make sure I was using the word "calico" properly, I did check its definition and came up with this:

 

cal·i·co

ˈkaliˌkō/

noun

noun: calico; plural noun: calicoes; plural noun: calicos

1.

 

North American

printed cotton fabric.

"a calico dress"

 

Perfect, I thought... Calico Princess, it is!

 

 

In case you're wondering, I will start stocking my Etsy shop with some of the pillowcases seen in this post in the next few days; once I take more detail photos of the crochet-edged cushions which you can see here and there in this post (they are propping up the cushion doll), I will also start listing them in my shop. I'm definitely thinking of offering the cushion doll as a pattern, but I still have to work that out... There is definitely much more to come as far as my "Calico Princess" bedding goes since, for one, I still have to show you the other colour stream, so I hope you will pop by again... Thanks for visiting and I hope you've enjoyed this post!