Happy Birthday to me

While we were out of town, my long-awaited birthday gift arrived from Spoonflower. I told Mr. Lemon that I wanted fabric for my birthday so I picked it out and ordered it. It's much easier that way. These are from Heather Ross' new collection for Spoonflower called Macaroni Love Story. I decided to go with the organic cotton sateen. I have some of her cotton voile, some of the linen, and some regular quilting weight cotton, and of course this, so why not keep mixing it up? The sateen is very soft but feels hearty.

I love this design. When I go to pick out fabrics for a project, however, they are rarely like this. So I went with a test swatch of the two colorways that I was having trouble deciding between. I like having just a little bit -- enough for a pocket or some trim. As you can see for the aqua, I adjusted the scale from 300 to 375 dpi. It's not very noticeable but I just wanted to experiment. It made the people a little bit smaller.

These three are my little impulse buys. The Snow White is by Heidi Kenney of My Paper Crane, the yellow school buses are, of course, by Anda, and the awesome gnomes are by Paper Sparrow. I only remembered after I ordered the Snow White that I changed up the colors for the cross-stitch I am working on; it's not going to match. I'll have to figure something else out.

Thank you awesome computer for saving this entire post when Blogger didn't. Oh, and soon Andrea from Paper Sparrow will be doing an interview. Yay!

Project: I finally spent my Christmas money

So now that it's March, I finally got around to spending my Christmas money -- and in one fell swoop at that. I went nuts on Spoonflower and bought these rad Heather Ross gnome and mushroom prints that I have been drooling over for ages but could never find. Best of all, I got this fantastic alligator (crocodile) repeat from Anda of boosterseat.

I don't know what I'm going to do with the gnomes but I got a yard of each and a yard of the mushrooms. The mushroom color matches both gnomes so it will be a nice border or trim or cuff or collar and I should have some left over no matter what.

I'm going to make a super cute romper with the alligators. I'm using a vintage pattern that I borrowed from my mother in law who made a few for my husband's sisters when they were Zadie's age. I don't know why but Zadie is crazy for alligators and crocodiles. Do you know how to tell the difference? The crocs have a severe underbite while the gators have an overbite. Chomp! (I once saw a gator fly out of a small pond and eat a sunbathing turtle. I am not lying. I have a witness and I will never forget that sound).

Check out Anda's gallery at the bottom of her spoonflower page. Zadie is nuts for school buses (and thanks to my local BOE closing the historic school we can see from our house [and the number one reason why we moved to our otherwise third-choice neighborhood], she'll be lucky enough to ride one every day grrrrr....).

4 yards of fabric plus shipping was about $79 but I can do whatever I want with my Christmas money and a new living room rug is so boring.