Palais Designs

Fall Line at Fresh Baked Goods

nobody@vox.com(Palais) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:22:10 -0800

Here are four examples of my fall line, which is available at Fresh Baked Goods in Kensington Market (Toronto). Each piece is unique: the fabric leaves that I've appliqued on each shirt are different, as are the buttons.

These short sleeved shirts come in two great fall colours--chocolate brown and deep raspberry. They look great with a scarf or chunky neclace and sit quite nicely under a cardigan or blazer. Come check them (and my other summer sale items) out!

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Because of Camp...

nobody@vox.com(Palais) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:12:24 -0800

Topaz's Shirt

Zoic's Shirt

I used a combination of silk screening and embroidery for these t-shirts that I made as retirement gifts for my past camp directors, Topaz and Zoic. The phrase I used on the shirts is one that I used in a video that was made of staff and alumni finishing off the sentence, " Because of camp..."

Topaz and Zoic have been a huge factor in my life and in making me the person that I am today. The amazing thing about them is that even though I no longer work with them, they continue to inspire me all the time. I wish them all the best in the next phase of their lives!

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My First Quilt

nobody@vox.com(Palais) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:04:00 -0800

Olivia's Quilt

One of my dear camp friends had a baby at the end of August. I started this little quilt for her baby while she was still pregnant and managed to finish it 3 weeks after the baby was born. Not too bad, for me!

I've never made a quilt before, so this was a pretty big undertaking. I used a pattern from the book, Doodle Stitching. I think the hardest part was figuring out where to stop my little hand embroidered details; I could have kept stitching birds and lines and dots and hearts until the whole thing was covered. It was a really fun project and makes me even more excited to keep working on my camp quilt!

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Stamp It

nobody@vox.com(Palais) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:53:29 -0800

Bird Stamp Gift Tags

While on mini-vacation this past June, my sweet guy purchased a stamp set for me that I fell head over heels for in a little shop in Montreal. The set has a number of birds laced with some appropriate plants/leaves/shrubbery. Last month I put the stamps to good use by making this set of gift tags.

I recently inherited a large, old margarine container of good quality card from my mom. These little business card-sized pieces of card were pre-cut and just waiting to be used. I love when my mom decides to give me margarine containers full of amazing treasures from her craft room. Anyway, I simply stamped these cards and then carefully coloured them in using pencil crayons. The effect isn'y very good in this photo, but they turned out to be really sweet and I've already used a number of them. They're so great to have on hand!

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Green Pea Necklace

nobody@vox.com(Palais) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 10:08:16 -0700

Before

I have this great red bead necklace that I found at a second hand store in Uxbridge a few years ago. Besides the perma-old lady perfume smell it has, it's a really cool necklace; the beads are large and I love its length. However, I found that, as much a I love it, I never wear it because of the shade of red it is. There's just something about it that made it not fancy enough to go with formal wear and the colour never matched any of my more casual wear very well.

I saw a necklace while I was in Anthropologie last week (we have one near me in Toronto now; so expensive, but I love their clothes and housewares SO MUCH) and I was inspired. I got home and decided to try and cover my red necklace with some pretty green fabric I had lying around. I love the results and I already wear the necklace more than I did when it was red. I also love it's green pea qualities.

After

I'm interested to try this technique with some of my longer, smaller beaded necklaces. I want to try wrapping them with fabrics and some different colours of thin ribbons. I see a trip to Fabricland in my future. On a side note, I live in Toronto, and yet I still shop at Fabricland. It's just so wonderfully familiar to me (and fairly close by). I'm willing to venture outside of this store, because I'm sure Toronto is full of great fabric places, but I haven't found any I like yet. I need to find fellow TO sewers and discover their favourite haunts. Do you know of any great places I should check out?

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Piglet & Pooh

nobody@vox.com(Palais) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 19:53:14 -0700

Mock Up

Friends of mine got married a few weeks ago and the bride had me embroider two hankies (his and hers) with this image of Piglet and Pooh on them. This one is my mock up; the actual end results are almost exactly the same, but with the names of the bride and groom stitched underneath. This was the bride's gift to her hubby the night before their wedding. Adorable.

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Ottoman Empire

nobody@vox.com(Palais) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 19:42:30 -0700

Before

After

My roomies and I are growing up. It's true, we are. We're doing home improvements (and by that I mean, cosmetic changes. We don't use any tools more than those that help us hang things on walls).

It started with re-doing the downstairs bathroom: a new (and not mouldy) shower curtain; pretty candleholders; new towels; a toilet paper holder. Then we moved on to the tiny little front porch: spray paint on the chairs so they match and hide the rust; the purchase of lovely chair covers (we even store them inside when they're not in use so they don't get ruined); hanging baskets full of pretty magenta flowers; a planter with yellow and purple flowers.

Yes, my friends, we are growing up. Taking responsibility for both the curb appeal and indoor decor of our little downtown rental. And now, due to a number of unrelated events, we are working on making our living room far more inviting and less student-housing-in-university like. The Ikea shelving unit? Gone. The couch we found on Albert Street in Kingston in 3rd year and named Vinny due to it's curved nature, low-to-the-ground seating and genreal sleaziness? Gone. The other full-sized, pink-hued leather couch that Rob's parents bought 26 years ago and we crammed into our tiny living room space along with Vinny? Gone.

Rob bought a new and very adult-like leather couch. Vikki's sister moved in with her boyfriend and Vikki claimed all the antique furniture that had been in her sister's place. That's right, we have furniture that wasn't found on the side of the road. We have a cedar chest. We have a tall wood dresser. We have a beautiful mirror. We have an area rug. We have a leather couch. We brought the side table and record player down from Rob's room and added it to our decor. Oh, it's so lovely! Well, except for the pieces of furniture I own. That's right, out of all these new pieces and 1940s antiques, NONE of it is mine. What do I own? An old ottoman from my grandparents' place and a crate with ducks painted on it. Now, since I own absolutley no furniture I felt it was necessary to keep these two items just to feel that I own SOMETHING. Unfortunately, the vinyl-covered ottoman and hand-painted duck crate don't go with the new decor.

So, I took it into my own hands to find a way to make my roomies accept my humble little furniture offerings, starting with the ottoman. I picked colours to match our new rich, earth-toned living room, searched out some fabrics from the collection in my room and went to town measuring and designing an ottoman slip cover. I bet even Ikea doesn't make ottoman slip covers. I'm pretty pleased with the results. And so are my roomies. Hooray! The ottoman is a keeper! Now onto the duck crate...

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Patches

nobody@vox.com(Palais) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:49:37 -0700

A & E patches

A is for Abby

E is for Ella

I handmade these patches for the adorable 2 year olds I take care of once a week. Their mom talked about how, with twins, the girls often have the same clothing, so it's nice to find ways to make them a little different. Enter, the patches. I got the idea from one of my all-time favourite embroidery books (I'm sure I've mentioned it before).

Sewing patches by hand, however, is a incredibly LOOOONG process. I took felt, drew on my design and then hand stitched every single stitch needed to completely cover the felt. Then I had to do a whip stitch around all the edges. I'm really pleased with how they turned out but, honestly, I probably will never make one again. Well, maybe if/when I have children I'll make some again. But until that day, patches by hand are not going to happen. Patches by machine, however, are another story all together.

So, I played with felt and my darning foot on my sewing machine and discovered I could make some pretty cool patches. I had pictures of a couple of birds I made for me and my man for Valentine's Day, but my camera freaked out one day and deleted them and a few others before I'd put them on my computer. I'll have to take some new ones. I think I might make a line of patches to sell with my clothing at Fresh Baked Goods.

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Tie One On

nobody@vox.com(Palais) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:39:34 -0800

Ties

Oops! In my last blog I said that the wine glasses were my last Christmas gift post. I was wrong. I missed posting these lovely ties!

I bought these vintage ties at a couple different stores in Kensington Market. One store in particular, Courage My Love, was awesome for vintage ties! They have 2 large spinning tie racks laden with hundreds of ties. Hundreds! And they are all displayed in order of colour, which was super helpful. I spent a long time picking out the right ties for the right people.

In the end, I chose these 3 ties for my boyfriend, my dad and my brother. Then I silkscreened these designs I created onto them, experimenting with layering of colours. Fortunately all my experimenting turned out-- I'm horrible for experimenting on the final product rather than doing a mock-up first.

I also made 2 ties for my roomie, Rob, for his birthday back on December 10, but I didn't take photos of them. I'll have to do that. Preferably while he's wearing them.

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Birds of a feather drink wine

nobody@vox.com(Palais) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:07:16 -0800

Wine Glass close up

Painted wine glasses

Here are the final Christmas gift pieces! It only took me 2 months to post all my handmade Christmas gifts! Eee...

So every single person I made gifts for also got one of these wine glasses. I went out and bought a few colours of Testor's Enamel from Curry's. I got the idea to paint wine glasses not long before Christmas so I had very few colours to choose from, but I'm happy with the way they turned out.

Of course, after I gave these glasses away both my brother and my boyfriend informed me that they each have about 20 different colours of Testor's Enamel that I could have chosen from (I forgot that boys tend to own these paints from their childhood; my brother used them to paint model cars and Jeff used them to paint tiny metal knights and soldiers). Oh well! I've got Jeff's collection of paints in my possession now, and I know exactly where Greg's are stashed at my parents' place. I'm sure I'll find more uses for Testor's Enamel in the future.

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