Sarah manages Clear Eyes, Full Shelves, a blog for readers – cleareyesfullshelves.com

Sarah Tweets at @SarahSMoon & at @FullShelves

Sarah co-hosts a podcast with a friend in Australia which discusses sports, culture and other random things – the-postscript.com

Sarah is also on Tumblr – sarahmoon.tumblr.com

Josh occasionally tweets at @TheRealJMoon

Josh like Tumblr a lot joshuamoon.net

You can also visit Sarah’s professional (and oft-neglected) website at sarahmoon.net to keep up with classes she’s teaching and services she offers.

Sarah has contributed a few posts to TrueUp, including this fun interview with David Butler.  

Sarah also contributed a series of humor posts about basketball on A Stern Warning. 

You can always drop us a line via the contact page on this site, if you’d like to stay in touch!

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Most of the time, I feel like I totally fail at blogging over here. I swear, it’s for a combination of completely legit reasons:

1. I really haven’t had much time this last year (gulp!) to make much stuff. Sadly, both Josh and I are slammed with various work projects, and so it’s hard to make the time to do much creative stuff.
2. Since we had to move into a smallish rental condo near downtown last year (which completely and totally sucks), we just don’t have a lot of space to do stuff. When we were living in a regular house with a garage, yard, etc, it was a whole lot easier to make stuff and experiment creatively. Fortunately, this isn’t a permanent living situation.
3. Similarly, we don’t have a great space for staging photos. We always enjoyed taking most of our project photos outside, using trees, etc, as props, so the project photos have kind of sucked this year.
4. I blog about fabric-y stuff for my work, so it’s hard to feel motivated to come home and blog about fabric-y/sewing stuff for fun. Even though I enjoy it, it’s still odd when work/hobbies collide. Furthermore, this summer I also wrote some crafty roundup posts for PNCA’s Summer of Making, so I kind of feel like I’m already everywhere, more or less.
5. I’m bored with writing about projects, unless it’s something that’s new/different or featuring a designer or company with which people may not be familiar. I’ve spent quite a bit of time mulling over what direction–if any–we should take this site.

All right, enough navel-gazing, let’s get on to some crafty goodness…

I’ve mentioned that my mom is an embroidery superstar, and earlier this year, she picked up some amazing vintage embroidery patterns at Knittin’ Kitten here in Portland.  This weekend, we were over at her house letting our dog get to know her new dog, and she off-handedly mentioned that she’d been working on a project and pulled out this amazing handkerchief that she’s almost finished stitching. Good grief, she’s amazingly skilled with the needle and floss. I think this would make a gorgeous center to a pillow based on a log cabin block, incidentally. (Speaking of log cabin, did you know that Susan‘s next book is already available for preorder from Amazon? I’ve seen all the projects and they are absolutely fantastic!)

Incidentally, this is probably my favorite picture of my mom and I ever… This is the two of us before we went to the first Blazers game of the season–just had to share that one with y’all.

In additional tales of my mom’s craftiness, she recently asked me to teach her how to knit. I taught myself ages ago, when I was in college and before there were all the cool books and websites about contemporary knitting. I literally knew one other person who knew how–my archaeology professor at American U. I asked my friend Michelle (Remember her?) for a bit of guidance, since I’ve never taught anyone how to knit and she’s the most skilled fiber artist I know. We met up with Michelle this weekend over at Happy Knits, which is a newer shop (about a year old, I believe) that’s a breath of fresh air over on Hawthorne. We helped my mom pick out some gorgeous Delft blue alpaca-wool blend bulky yarn and some nice, big circular needles. She’s really making some progress and I imagine will be bitten by the knitting bug by the time she finishes her first scarf!


I also picked up some yarn for myself so I can finally make a hat to go with this coat (I can’t believe how short my hair is in those photos, by the way–it’s nearly reaching my elbows these days), which I still wear all the flippin’ time. (And it still gets all kind of unusual reactions–that’s what happens when you wear around the most badass coat ever–people say stuff.)  I’m making Natalie Larson’s Spring Beret pattern, which I found over on Ravelry. Of course, I had to pick out some crazy violet and magenta hand-painted yarn to go with my crazy poodle jacket.

When I was at Quilt Market in late-October, I got to catch up with a several of my favorite peeps, including the wonderful and gorgeous Rachel & Melissa. (You’ve bought Melissa’s awesome book, Small Stash Sewing, right?) Also, I got to hang out with Antoinette for the second time this year (!)–and meet her fabulous son, who is quite possibly the coolest little boy ever. I’ve said it about 8,000 times, but I love that the internet enables us all to connect with one another, regardless of distance, and then actually translate that into real life.

Finally, I’d love for y’all to check out my friend Cherri’s recent blog post about how her wonderfully generous son is collecting gifts for troops stationed with him in Iraq. If you’re able, this would be a wonderful way to get into the spirit of the season and spread some joy to folks in our military who don’t have families and friends sending them gifts.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

~Sarah

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Hi all! We got a little lax around here and completely spaced drawing a winner in the City Quilts blog tour. Better late than never, eh? Thanks to the wonders of Random.org, we picked a number and our winner is Susan Spiers, who said,

I live out in the country, quite opposite from city living! I always am inspired by the colors of nature, shades of greens in the bushes & trees and the bright colors of flowers!

Susan, we’ll be emailing you to get your shipping info for all the goodies you’re getting!

Thanks to everyone who participated in this and all the stops on the tour. If you haven’t read through the comments about when people drawn their inspiration, please do–they’re truly wonderful. And, of course, if you haven’t yet picked up a copy of Cherri’s wonderful book, City Quilts, please do. (It was recently #1 in its category, so, clearly, all the cool kids are buying it) It’s a must-have in any sewer, quilter or fabric lover’s library. And I’m not just saying that because Cherri (and her wonderful daughter Lizzy) is one of my favorite fabric-y friends.

~S & J

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In case you were wondering, of course we coordinated our outfits so we'd match. (Not really.)

On my list of things that are awesome, the opportunity to hang out with people I’ve met through this blog, Twitter, Flickr and all the other social media and web platforms that I’m part of is way up on the list. I’ve met Rachel, Kim, Melissa, Caroline, Susan and a whole slew of other folks thanks to the internet, and I’m pretty grateful for that. How did sewing dorks meet other sewing dorks before the internet?

A couple weeks ago, Josh & I drove up to Seattle for the day to meet up with Antoinette, who was in the Pacific Northwest for work. (Read all about her fun weekend meeting up with bloggy friends over here.) We had a lovely dinner at our favorite Seattle restaurant (which is both vegetarian and vegan friendly, by the way) and had a fantastic time chatting like old pals. Of course, being the dorks that we are, we forgot to take pictures until we dropped Antoinette off at her hotel.

Really, this may be the worst photo that's been taken of me this year. No lipstick, crazy hair, weird posture... Ugh.

Also, awesome is my authentic Yummy Goods Unicorn You=Awesome T-shirt. I’ve been waiting for what seems like forever for Melissa to start offering these online–who doesn’t need a little Unicorn love in their life? I screwed up and ordered a size too big, but I love it nevertheless. The best part is watching people read the shirt and then kind of grin. Unicorn makes people happy. What made me happiest, though, was the sweet way Melissa packaged my order.

Fantastic!

Orange tissue tied up with some Sugar Snap--you know I'm using this fabric as a headband right now.

The anticipation!

Some atomic fireballs--Josh snagged these. He & Melissa share a mad obsession with these candies.

I’m so glad that I photographed this, because it really made me happy on a day I was really stressed out from my hellish commute (I think it had taken me an hour to go 10 miles).

Saoirse has taken over these ottomans we made about three years ago–to the point that she gets irked when people sit on them. So flippin’ cute. Man, I love this dog much.

My world has been rocked.

A few months back, I finally sucked it up and ordered some fancy-schmancy earbuds. I have quite a few situations these days in which I need to block the world out. However, I had no clue how to actually pick out earbuds–despite being a certifiable geek, I always bought the cheapo ones. Finally, I settled on some thinksound extra-bass noise cancelers. Oh. My. God. That is all.

This summer Josh surprised me with the most awesome gift ever–a Kindle. I’ve always been a huge reader, but the last year or two I haven’t been reading much because we just don’t have the storage for books. Sure, I could use the library, but it seems like every book in the Multnomah Country Library that I want to read either has 100+ holds on it, or has been stolen. Josh got me this Kindle (which is a K2–a new one came out this week), and it’s literally changed me life. I’ve read a huge number of books in the two months I’ve had this thing, and discovered that a lot of my buddies who I know through the basketball geek community are also huge readers who love the same sorts of books as I do. I really hadn’t realized how much I missed reading every night, until I started doing it again…

Mmm... Echino.

Of course, I had to make myself a case for my Kindle, so I created a simple pattern (I know there are loads of instructions online, but it didn’t occur to me to Google) and made a sturdy case with some leftover Echino fabric I had sitting around. (By the way, have you seen the phenomenal case Quilt Dad made for Beth? So freaking awesome!) Of course, me being me, I neglected to think about how I would close the damn thing, so I have to keep it shut with a hair band. Oops. This coordinates with the awesome giant tote bag (the fabulous Jackie Clark‘s Junk Bag) that I carry everywhere (which I need to photograph for y’all).

TopPot Doughnuts in Queen Anne, Seattle.

Also awesome: doughnuts.

~Sarah

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If you didn’t get a seat in Heather Ross‘ fabric design class at PNCA this weekend (it filled up in no time!), here’s your chance to meet Heather and learn about her design process. Come hang out at PNCA (12th & Johnson in the Pearl) on Friday, July 23 at 7:00, meet some cool local sewers & sewists and some folks who have come in from out of town as well.

See you there!

~Josh

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Welcome to our stop on the City Quilts blog tour! We were thrilled to chat with the delightful author, Cherri House, about her book, her design process and the joys of being a creative entrepreneur.

"City Shops" by Cherri House -- Inspired by a Barcode

Sarah & Josh: In City Quilts, one of the things we liked the most were the photographs of the city juxtaposed with your quilts. We’d love to hear about your design process, and how you use the city as inspiration for creating the quilts in City Quilts.

Cherri House: Part of the book submission process is to provide an index of what the quilts in the book would be. So, I just started writing down city things…anything city oriented made the list. Some things lent themselves to becoming quilts, much more than others. To a degree I had painted myself into a corner, because several great city names like City Park, and City Garden were names that I had already used in self-published patterns. For some of the quilts, I played with the names, to see if I could pull a quilt out it, and others, I had the quilt design, and needed a fitting name. For example City Shops – I had wanted to do a barcode quilt for a long time, so the name was a good fit. There were others that never got past the design stage – I wanted a City Hall quilt, made from red fabric strips, to replicate ‘red tape’. I still have about 20 more city quilts in me, waiting to be made.

S&J: And a follow-up to that question: How can people follow your lead, and use the world around them to inspire their creativity?

CH: 1. The first thing that someone may want/need to do is to avoid getting hung up on being too literal. You don’t have recreate something exactly; just recreate the essence of whatever the inspiration is to you. This is a sky quilt that I want to create, of course the sky isn’t rectangular blocks of various blues, but it is my interpretation of the sky .

"City Sky" by Cherri House

2. Find something that inspires you, and use the tools you have (materials and skill set) to translate that into whatever medium you use. I use fabric, always and forever – it’s what I know, what I am comfortable with, and what I have an endless supply of. My daughter Lizzy might paint, draw, or fabricate something out of paper or fabric, because those are her materials. My daughter Ashlee would write a song, because she is a singer/songwriter, my daughter Melissa might write a song, create something from yarn, or fabric. If you are a woodworker use wood, if you are a welder, use metal. You use what you have, and what you know.

3. Don’t let the “appropriateness” of the source of inspiration hinder what actually inspires you. It’s kosher to be inspired by mountains, sunsets, the ocean, but a parking lot…who finds beauty there? Get rid of the thinking that only far away and often expensive places are inspiring – seek out beauty everywhere.

"City Tracks" by Cherri House -- Inspired by railroad tracks

S&J: Your designs have a structural feel that we’d think would appeal to men (Josh loves your quilts!)—and so few sewing or quilting designs do (Denyse Schmidt’s work being a notable exception). Do you find that a lot of men connect with your designs?

CH: Yes they do! They seem to like the clean lines, and linear aspect of the designs. I’ve received several emails from quilters who are either architects, or have a male family member that is an architect that they want to make a quilt for. Scientists seem to like my designs as well – male and female.

I’m so curious when I receive a pattern order from a man, I think, “Is this for you, or your wife?” We need more male quilters!

"City Bank" by Cherri House -- Inspired by a scene in "The Bourne Identity" (one of our favorite movies!)

S&J: Finally, we love hearing how people develop creative career paths and grow businesses doing what they love. How did you start on the path of designing quilts and making it a business?

CH: Since I started quilting for my own family in the 80s, all of the quilts that I made were from patterns that I created myself. I didn’t know that people bought patterns; I thought everyone worked the same way I did. Lizzy had been telling me for years that I needed to sell quilt patterns, but I thought it was a joke – I thought to myself, ‘who would buy a pattern?’ When Melissa, my youngest child left for college, loneliness and too much time sat in after about two weeks, and I decided to take the plunge and start a quilt pattern business. That was three years ago in June. For Cherry House Quilts the key to growing our business has been staying focused on our niche corner of the industry, of creating contemporary style quilt patterns using mostly solid fabrics. It has set us apart in that our quilts have a unique look, and appearance.

To celebrate the Cherri’s book, her publisher, C & T, is giving away a copy of City Quilts, and Robert Kaufman is giving away a nice stack of solid color fat quarters. We’re including a souvenir from our city, Portland–a few of Sarah’s original letterpress prints of the Steel Bridge which you can keep or give away. To win, please leave a comment letting us know what inspires you each day. A winner will be chosen randomly at the end of the blog tour.

(Note: We moderate all of our comments, so if you’re comment doesn’t show up immediately, it’s waiting in the queue, so don’t worry.)

Steel Bridge Post Card by Sarah

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Each blog host will also feature a Q&A with City Quilts author, Cherri House. Here are the participating blogs and dates–there’s a great mix in here.

• July 12th – Cheryl Arkison
• July 13th – Amy Lobsiger
• July 14th – Stefanie Roman
• July 15th – Pat Sloan
• July 16th – Spool
• July 17th – Robert Kaufman
• July 18th – Fat Quarterly
• July 19th – Emily Cier
• July 20th – Sewer Sewist (That’s us!)
• July 21st – Jaybird
• July 22nd – Vickie Eapen
• July 23rd – Jessica Levitt
• July 24th – TrueUp

Images from City Quilts (Image Courtesy C & T Publishing)

Cherri’s book is a wonderful for non-quilters (or seldom-quilters such as ourselves), because she pays so much attention to concepts such as color values and the way fabrics interact with each other. Furthermore, city-lovers will adore how Cherri translates the urban environment into cloth and stitches. We’ll be talking with Cherri about her book, men who quilt and stitch and the joys of running a business built around your passions.

We also have a sweet giveaway on this–and every–stop on the tour.  C & T is giving away a copy of the book on each stop and Robert Kaufman will be awarding the lucky winner a gorgeous stack of fat quarter solids (yum!). We’ll be adding something to this giveaway as well.

We’re looking forward to seeing you on the 20th–and make sure to visit all of the stops on the tour while you’re at it.

~S & J

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Laura Gunn's new Poppy Patterns made up in fabric from her Poppy collection from Michael Miller.

Gina, the owner of my favorite fabric shop ever–Bolt in northeast Portland, emailed me this week about an awesome event at Modern Domestic, the new sewing studio down the road from Bolt (Gina’s a partner in that business as well).

Modern Domestic is hosting a talk by Laura Gunn, who designed a beautiful new fabric collection, Poppy from Michael Miller, next Thursday, July 8th. I’m usually not a huge fan of fabric that’s so painterly, but I just love Laura’s work, it just makes so much sense translated into textiles. The colors are clear and bright and designs are the perfect scale for fabric. Gina tells me that Laura will be talking about her fabric design process, which should be fascinating!

The event starts at 7:00 (at Modern Domestic on Alberta Street) and will last until around 8:30. Gina tipped me off that not only will there be snacks and drinks, there will also be some sweet giveaways!

See you there!

~Sarah

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What You’ll Need

• One pound whole wheat shaped pasta
• Five cups chopped vegetables such as bell peppers, broccoli, corn, onions
• Two cloves chopped, fresh garlic
• Two tablespoons olive oil
• Two cups grated cheddar cheese (you can substitute other cheeses, according to your taste)
• Two cups skim milk
• Two tablespoons butter
• Two tablespoons flour
• Two bay leaves
• Handful of breadcrumbs (optional)
• Salt & pepper

Directions

You’re better off having several pans going at once with this recipe–sure, it makes more dishes, but it goes a whole lot faster that way! When veggies aren’t seasonal, use good-quality (preferably organic) frozen veggies, and defrost according to the directions on the package.

• Pour the milk into a sauce pan with with bay leaves, simmer over medium heat–be careful not to burn the milk. One the milk has started to form bubbles around the edges of the pan, remove it from the heat. Don’t skip this step–it makes all the difference!

• Meanwhile, begin cooking your vegetables over medium heat, starting with the garlic and onions; I usually cook each type of vegetable separately, since their cooking times vary.

• Also meanwhile, boil your pasta according the package directions, minus one minute of the cooking time (i.e., if it takes ten minutes, cook for nine).
• Once the pasta is cooked, rinse it with cold water to stop the cooking.

• Once your vegetables are cooked, set them aside.
• Preheat oven to 425°
• Melt the butter in a large sauce pan (I use a large soup pot); be careful not to burn the butter.

• Lower heat on on the butter (medium-low).
• Add the flour, whisking rapidly until the flour and butter mixture are incorporated and smooth.
• Hey, you just made a roux!
• Slowly stir the milk into the butter and flour mixture, whisking until smooth and the thickness of pudding.
• (Don’t forget to remove the bay leaves!)
• Next, add the cheese, a handful at a time, again, stirring until smooth.

• Add the cooked pasta and stir in thoroughly.

• Add your vegetables, stirring thoroughly, making sure all are coated with the cheese mixture.

• Coat a lasagna pan with oil or butter, and then add your vegetable, pasta and cheese mixture to the pan.
• Sprinkle the top with the breadcrumbs, if you’re using them. You can also sprinkle with a little bit of shredded cheese, if you like.

• Bake for 20-30 minutes, until the cheese bubbles and turns brown.

• Remove from the oven and let cool for 5-10, until the cheese sets up.

• Eat and enjoy!

~Sarah

Note: Recipe is © Sewer-Sewist 2010; please do not reproduce or republish.

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Fremont Bridge

This spring, along with my friend Bryan, I took a wonderful digital photography class through PNCA’s continuing education program. (Shameless self-promotion alert: I’m still teaching there–check out all their wonderful, high-quality courses for the community over here.) I loved, loved, loved it–I did photography a million years ago back when I was in high school and it was one of my favorite things. (Okay, it wasn’t really a million years ago, but it was the early- to mid-nineties, before google and all that other snazzy stuff.) It’s remarkable how much I’d forgotten, but I have to say, I much prefer the digital darkroom to the “real” one I learned when I was a kid. Of course, now I’m jonesing for a fancy-schmancy DSLR. (Hey, Nikon! I’d be happy to “review” the D5000! And while we’re at it… Hey, Beats by Dre/some other headphone company! I’d also love to “review” some noise-reducing earbuds! [I obviously screwed up and never hopped on the blogger free stuff gravy train of the mid-2000s. Damn integrity...])

Some of my favorites that I took during the class are over here, if you care to peruse them…

This photo of my mom is one of my favorites I've ever taken. She looks pretty hot in that hat, right?

This bad boy's on sale right now--I receive no kickbacks from C & B, but I sure do love this couch.

In completely unrelated news, we got a new couch this past fall. (We really try to buy locally as much as possible, but this was from a chain, Crate & Barrel. And, I’ve got to say, I cannot explain how fantabulous they were, from the ease of order–we ordered online–to their wonderful delivery people. It didn’t hurt that we got a great deal on a really good couch that’s made with sustainable materials, in the United States. I have really bad reactions to the off-gassing from things like foam and the stain treatments that are put on fabrics, and this particular sofa had none of those issues. Plus is nice and wide and two people can sink into it comfortably, unlike our old, beat-up “small scale” sofa.) It’s been a great sofa, but the colors are a bit blandish–kind of a woven mix of olives, golds, rusts and sable. We have a totally funky rug that goes in front of it, so the sofa needed some livening up.

The blue in this Denyse Schmidt cheater print is one of my favorite colors ever.

Saoirse "customized" this pillow for us--do you see it? She's such a talented pooch.

These were the most ridiculously simply pillows ever. We had some of Denyse Schmidt‘s Patchwork Promenade from her County Fair home dec line laying around the house (Josh ordered a little too much from Kathy last year) and it had the perfect colors to match our funky circle rug that my mom got us for Christmas last year. I literally just cut the large 18×18 block pattern out, stitched them right sides together and stuffed them–it was certainly the easiest pillow project ever. And, they compliment our osprey pillows beautifully. I’m thinking of using the same fabric to create some large floor pillows using sets of four of those blocks and maybe some weird button action. We’ll see where that goes…

Mulberry silk fibers.

The afore-mentioned Bryan went on a really cool trip to Scotland this month, and being a totally badass friend, he picked up this bundle amazing hand-dyed mulberry silk fibers for me. How fantastic is it to have friends who know how delighted that I’d be to receive a little pouch of special fibers from Scotland? The thing is, I really don’t know what to do with it, and the tag isn’t that helpful…

"Suitable for any number of imaginative wool work and creativity projects!"

So while my first inclination is to just keep the fiber in its little pouch and play with it every once in awhile, I would love to know what to do with it, should I ever decide it wants to be something else. Ideas? Anyone?

Finally, some very exciting news–I met a BIG celebrity: Melissa Averinos’ Unicorn!

Melissa, Unicorn & I. I first met Melissa at J. Caroline's first Fabric 2.0, which Quilt Market was held in Portland in 2008.

If you haven’t watched Melissa and Beth’s awesomely quirky Unicorn Stories, you’ve missed out on something kind of mind-blowing. Stop reading and go watch right now! Turns out, I wasn’t the only person at Quilt Market who wanted to have their moment of fame with Unicorn… Unicorn gets around. Melissa has assured me that he’s just in it for the snuggles. Plus. since I now have a copy of Melissa’s new book, I can make my very own Unicorn.

Speaking of Small Stash Sewing, it is, as you’d expect, just wonderful and I love that Wiley really produced it so Melissa’s personality really shines through. I’ll write a longer review of it (urging you to hit up your nearest independent bookshop to buy it immediately) later, I swear! My copy, however, is pretty special… Look at the inscription.

I love the internet! It's amazing how the internet has allowed so many wonderful inside jokes to evolve--enough to fill up an entire book page. Though all the parts about my being "so pretty" are completely true!

Whoo! Isn’t that the best? Anytime you can slip an Atomic Fireball reference into just about anything, it’s is a good thing…

I also recently met (in real life!) the wonderful Cherri House, who it really seems like I’ve known forever, and her sweet daughter, Lizzy, who is such a talented and creative fabric designer. It’s always a treat to actually meet internet folks in real life–I love how conversations carry on like you see each other every day. (Actually, that reminds me of one of my current pet peeves; I went to a marketing seminar and the presenter talked about how “young people today” don’t make meaningful connections because they’re using the Internet and cell phones to communicate. I know that those technologies have enabled me to connect with like-mind people that I count as dear friends all around the world–and that’s a meaningful thing!)

Alrighty… That’s about all that’s up with over at Casa de Sewer-Sewist. Hope you’re heading toward good things this summer.

~S

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