Back in KC

It's been over a year since my last post, but I'm back in Kansas City for the time being and wanted to leave you with a few photos to catch up. I spent last year in Bainbridge Island, WA studying permaculture and edible landscape design. It was a beautiful environment to live in. Hooray for Beautiful animals, food, and landscapes! (The last two photos are from my road trip back with my brother from Southern California)...now that I'm back in KC, I'm taking a drawing class at KCAI and I've got big goals for sewing projects. More to come...

Hostess With The Mostess

A couple of weeks ago, my friend and I made this all-in-one apron for an auction to benefit NAG, a group who brings artists and workshops to kids who live in a very rural part of Montana. The benefit dinner and auction of aprons made by artists was the perfect venue for my friend Michelle Lambson and I to collaborate. We first found the yellow dress at an "upscale" thrift store... (We were there to find a jacket to make into an apron... a kind of MichaelJacksonesque number), but this yellow dress screamed at us from the rack... and thus was the beginning of the "Hostess With The Mostess."
Our ideas started flying... I immediately thought of the fabulous gloves in the Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines book by Anne Shayne and Kay Gardner. Chelle found the fabulous Kate Spade bag... the perfect accessory for our Perfect Hostess. P.H. really started coming together when we found the exact yarns for the gloves (made longer and more elegant) and the pocket (which is the famous ballband warshcloth pattern from same said book.) We were stunned when all the parts and pieces made themselves manifest on our 8-hour shopping spree. I even had the exact dyes we needed in my dye stash for the apron!
Chelle did all of the fabulous hand-stitching of all of the trim (hours and hours of it). She also split the dress and made the straps for the back. It was a labor of love and we were both rather sad to pack P.H. and send her off to Montana. We were told she went to a wonderful home.
Good-bye Hostess With the Mostess! Have fun in Montana. We will miss you.
p.s. you might want to put on some panties before the auction. Just sayin'.