Looking Towards Summer

Some of you may know I am at one of my busiest times of year when I find myself balancing exam time at work/school and trying to sew Lots of straw millinery pieces for clients and events.

While many around the country are already wrapping up their school year, our students will be taking exams through the very last week of June. This is a time of juggling lots of details while doing our best to appear completely calm for our students and teachers, despite the inevitable somethings and unpredictable weather.

In the other part of my life, I have my eyes on three events – This weekend I am doing a straw demo for the museum’s Fiber Week. Find me in Jones on Saturday and likely Friday as well. Demo pieces to be determined. In June, I will be doing a straw demo in Foster with a focus on Regency pieces for the museum’s 1814 and Jane Austen event. Then, of course, I will be doing my full millinery display/demonstration on the village square for the museum’s Civil War event. This year will have a deeper focus on women’s employment and business ownership. In betwix and between is the much loved Independence Day Celebration, which will (hopefully) be more along the lines of lounging about. Era of dress to be determined.

Now, the whole purpose of this post was because I wanted to talk color. Straw color. Some of you may have seen my unboxing of straw a couple weeks back. My fabulous favorite millinery supplier got new straw colors. I love them!

Left to right – A silvery gray – A soft beige rose – pink rose – walnut – white –

I will be trying to make a balanced assortment of bonnets and hats in each color. I figure (hope) I can make a mid-century hat and a bonnet out of each hank. Larger Regency and Romantic era hats will likely take most of a hank.

I thought I had both the copper/rust and the mossy green from last year on hand. Ooops. The copper is here. A couple hanks of the green are coming.

I know one of your big questions is going to be “When will they be available?”

I am making a mix of pieces – those from my last summer list, those for the shop, those for demonstrations. For right now, meaning during the school year, I am doing one to two pieces per week. That will increase when exams are over. I am going to try to stick to three pieces per week, maybe four. That is about 36 hours to 48 hours of sewing. (If you’ve been following for a while, you know that I have a tendency to push my hands to their limit with sewing. I am going to do my best not to do that this summer. No dropping the iced tea pitcher anymore.)

**Please note: I am still not taking custom requests/orders. I know that seems odd to some. What can I say, I am a better fiber artist than I am business person and tracking order makes me nutty.**