Hasta La Ideas

The dottie angel book has many extra little details that make it very special—and labour-intensive. The stitched scalloped-edge postcards adhered to each cover had to be stitched by machine. With a print run of 3000, that’s a lot of stitches! Over 3km of stitches, actually!

Thank you so much to my mom and to Paige for taking on this arduous task. Mom stitched her way through 2200 postcards, so chances are high that the book you order will be her stitches on the cover.

Above are some images of my mother’s workspace which is just off the family room. The sewing area is designed to fold up and fit behind a closet door, but I can only recall a handful of times when it has been completely stowed away. Which is a good thing because my Mom always has a project in the works.

She recently put up a flannel wall so that she can view her quilts in progress:

Below is a hand-hooked rug that she made. It is one of my favourites; I like the graphic design and use of black.

My Dad holds up a recently completed quilt (he’s got quite the wingspan!:

Finley admires some flowers:

Thank you again to my skilled, talented and hard-working mom.

Thank you to the wonderful helpers who stuffed envelopes of goodies on Thursday: Ana, Paola, Janice, James, Paige, Angela and Kendra. Thank you to all who have preordered so far!

Thus concludes “dottie angel week” on the blog, but I’ll be posting more previews of the interior page design, cover mockup and more in the next few weeks. I guess our “dottie angel week” was the same days as “shark week” so I will leave with this image of Tif’s shark… Mr. Shark that is, her heavy-duty iron! (Tif has the endearing trait of naming all her appliances.)

Mr. Shark, the ironPreorder the book here!

Once again, eBay was my source for getting vintage en masse. I spent quite a lot of time searching for the best lot that would make including bits of vintage doilies in the book possible… My score was a lot of around 70 doilies and tableclothes that have been cut up, by the wonderful Janice (see post below), into little bits that will be included in the glassine envelope of goodies (for preordered copies only, while supplies last.)

Thanks to the anonymous granny who made these doilies. I’m sorry that your family sold them on eBay, but now they are going to many appreciative and crafty hands around the world!

As you can see, we need an awful lot of thread cards! One in each book x print run = 3000! These photos are by Janice of the lovely blog Scissor Variations. Janice’s online shop, Papier Valise, is THE place for vintage ephemera for scrapbooking and collage-making.

Tif is amazing to work with. She would send me surprise images such as this arrangement of all her chapter stitches!