I have had this blog post in my mind since the month of December began. I wanted to share some of the creative projects my family and I tackled over the holiday season. So I figured since I still have a few days left in January that it was not too late to post?

 I apologize for the inability to keep this blog current, and I really wish I had the time to keep this blog updated but I choose to designate my time to my family first. But none the less I still want this blog to be a place to share and inspire creativity, so I hope you all understand and that you are not currently burnt out on all things holiday.

So any-who here are some of the creative ways we spent celebrating the winter holiday season!

First ever attempt at homemade cinnamon rolls. We decided to make this a Christmas Eve tradition.

My daughters and I went out to the back field and cut some evergreen branches to celebrate the Winter Solstice.  I added some of my handcrafted fiber pom poms (which you can buy here.)

A sweet sculpted snowman for a birthday present for my daughters’ friend.

A Birthday Party!

My baby turned 1 on the 30th of December. We celebrated by having a small Mickey Mouse themed family birthday party! My oldest daughter LOVES birthday parties and she has become quite the party planner and hostess. We try and make as many homemade decorations as we can, so we had Dad print off some Mickey Mouse birthday themed coloring sheets for our main decor. And we made these really cute Oreo Mickey Mouse cupcakes!

My baby loves anything Italian to eat so we made baked ziti. And my mom brought homemade parmesan garlic rosemary bread and I added some fresh rosemary from my garden for garnish!

And last but not least our 2011 handmade Christmas card. Designed by my oldest daughter and carved/printed by me out of a rubber block (linoleum block printing). And embellished with googly eyes and a red bow by both of us.

From my family to yours we wish you Love and Joy for all of your Days!

I hope you had a creative end to your 2011 year.

Love,

Eve

Have a Blessed and Happy New Year of Life. May we all go forth and cultivate Love. Cheers!

Here is a little peak at how we spent part of our weekend.  One of my daughter’s best friends turned six years old on Saturday.  And they celebrated by building her (and her younger sister) a house up in the trees down by the creek on their property.

The mother of my daughter’s friend is also one of my best friends and I offered to help decorate the outdoor tables. I took some fall colored fabric from my huge stash and also collected some marigolds and zinnias for the flower arrangements.

I am eager to use my flowers as much as I can this week because I believe we will be having our first frost very soon! And that will be the end of my 20″x20″ zinnia and marigold garden that has been blessing my family with beautiful warm colors all summer long!

The amazing mother/wife/host of this party also made these cute Hershey kiss and mini vanilla wafer acorn treats and some real cool funky meringue mushrooms!

It was a ridiculously gorgeous day and Hannah had a blast running from playing in the treehouse to playing in the 80’s rv camper they have set up down by the creek!

My baby girl also had fun meeting a new friend!

We ate some delicious chili and check out the really cool pumpkin cake! It was a special request from the birthday girl. A red velvet cake shaped like a pumpkin that was made by her great grandmother!

I also managed to paint a handful of children’s faces.

It was  a great day…unfortunately followed by a Sunday of nursing my daughter Hannah and holding her hair back while she got sick all day long from a stomach virus!

I hope your weekend was full of beauty, friendship and great health!

Oh and here is The Treehouse! (I was impressed by the fact that this was built in less than a week before the party!)

A picture of the treehouse and the Super Woman/Mother/Wife that made all of this happen!

My husband and oldest daughter checking out the treehouse!

I am soooo lucky to get to be able to make things with my hands while staying at home everyday with my amazing daughters. And then if that was not blessed enough I get to take these things that I make and sell them here in downtown Leipers Fork.

And tomorrow when I make the drive southwest out to and in to the country I get to be accompanied by my good friend Heather Spriggs Thompson and my girls! The weather is going to be another awe-inspiring sunny and low 80 degree day for like the second week in a row! I feel like the bad weather in our lives gets so much attention and I wonder sometimes if we realize how many gorgeous days we do consistently have.

So I wanted to share my newest creations with you. I love salvaging and re using materials in my artwork and crafts. And here with these new paper books I am taking my experimental prints that did not quite make it into finished pieces and using them for book covers. I have completed four new blank paper books with over 30 pages of stonehenge paper for you to draw in, make lists in, write poetry in…whatever your mind desires!  So with out further introduction here are some photographs of my latest creations:

And I have also made two new batches of Fiber Flower Pom Poms in striking Red and pristine White!

My hands are warming up and they are busy again! These beautiful fabric flower ornaments will soon be available for the upcoming holidays on my Etsy shop: eve’s eden www.evepeachart.etsy.com and elsewhere!

These flowers are made in the same way you would make a Mexican Paper Tissue Flower craft except with a little more time and attention given to detail, like the fraying of the edges to give even more texture to this precious fiber flower.

These ornaments can be strung together to create fun whimsical garlands for your fireplace or hung outdoors perhaps at a wedding…oh or maybe held in the hands of a little flower girl!!

You could also hang these lil guys in windows, on doors and on your holiday trees!

You can even tie back your hair with them! Use them as photo props…there are lots of possiblities!

The best part to me is that I salvaged vintage fabric to create these lovely flowers. Fabric that would have been discarded and thrown into our landfills.

One of my very best friends is organizing a lovely chartered quilt tour through southern Tennessee.  On March 17th, 2011 this tour starts off in the city of Manchester and travels throughout the counties of Coffee, Bedford, Moore, Lincoln, and Giles.  The all day tour makes stops at several historic places, quaint shops and interesting museums that feature Quilt Blocks.

As a contemporary crafter and fiber artist I have a deep fondness and respect for traditional techniques and history in textiles.  I am daydreaming of attending this tour on a lovely St. Patrick’s day, but with a nursing newborn I am not sure if it is in the stars for me.

If you would like to find out more information about attending yourself click on the link below and then click again on the same link to read more and get a detailed itinerary of the tour.

quilt-tour.pdf

The truth is…

I almost always mess up on whatever it is I am working on.

And I use my seam ripper A LOT!

But…

I learn so much from my mistakes! 

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.  ~Elbert Hubbard, The Note Book, 1927

The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.  ~Edward Phelps

Making mistakes simply means you are learning faster.  ~Weston H. Agor

Yawn….Stretch.

Oh! Hello All!

I am back after a long winter’s nap. Well…not really. Part of me wishes that was the case, but I took an extra long break from posting on my blog because I was wrapping up my second grandest creation of my time. I finished incubating my second daughter and delivered her in late December.

So now as I make room for her in our home I am clearing out clutter,  donating maternity clothes and re-assessing my wardrobe.  Which has left me with old clothes that NO one wants to wear.  And I can’t ever bring myself to throw any type of textile away in the trash.  So I am feeling the creative itch again and have come up with a little project.

Baby Elephant Stuffies made from a vintage elephant print tank top.

Oh it feels good to make something with my hands again!

As soon as the sun comes out and I can take some good images of these cuties they will be available here on my etsy shop Eve’s Eden.

The workshop was held just northwest of downtown Nashville at Sulphur Creek Farms located at 5188 Old Hickory Blvd. in Nashville.  Here the Bellos sisters grow their dye plots of marigold, Japanese indigo and other plants.

Sarah and Ali taught us so much about harvesting indigo plants and processing those plants in order to dye with. The second part of the workshop was lead by two students from Philadelphia, Elissa Myers and Kiki  Brown. Together they are exploring and studying the many uses of the Kudzu vine and the fiber harvested from it.  Elissa has also founded a new naturally-dyed clothing line out of Philly called BLUEREDYELLOW. 

So here are some photos of the different processes and hands-on experiments we learned about.

The image above is of one of the large tubs of Japanese indigo plants harvested at the farm, which had been soaking and fermenting in warm water for a few days. You can see the blue green pigment of the water coming out already.  This large vat is being prepared in order to store indigo pigment.

After removing the indigo plants, lime is added to the liquid producing a chemical change in the color of the water from blue green to red brown.  Next oxygen is added by disturbing the water.  After this the indigo pigment then settles to the bottom.  The next step, after letting the water sit, is to extract the top layer of liquid in order to retrieve the indigo dye that has settled to the bottom. 

Indigo pigment!

After preparing the large vats for storage.   We then learned how to prepare a fresh vat to dye with.  This process involved adding soda ash to the dye bath so that fabric will accept the pigment. And then we took oxygen out of the liquid instead of putting oxygen in.  Finally we experimented dying white cotton linen, thread, and other materials.

Fresh dye vat with various linen pieces soaking in it shown above.

Various dye experiments shown above.

Below are two images of my experiment.  I decided to create and Indigo Skyscape. Using thin wooden star shapes to create a resist, I clamped them to the front and back of the linen using thread.  Then I used a wax resist technique and created small wax droplets over the linen creating smaller stars. I also experimenting dipping the linen in partially to create a gradient effect of darker to lighter indigo color. Here is the finished look!

After having so much fun dying we learned how to boil, soak and extract the thread-like fibers from the Kudzu vine.

Of course if you live in TN we all know what the above image is, KUDZU VINES!

Images above are bare boiled vine and soaking vine.

And images below are of us extracting the inner thread-like fibers of the Kudzu vine.

Thread-like fibers extracted from the Kudzu vine that you can now sew or weave with!

Well I hope you have enjoyed learning a little about these two processes.  I had a wonderful weekend full of great women, great energy, and great knowledge!  We had gloriously beautiful weather and it was a much needed weekend filled with creativity and nature that was a long overdue experience I needed to live!

Thanks for stopping by and reading.

Love,

Eve