Daisy Janie

fabric sighting | restyled vintage chair (you can get one, too!)

above: cane barrel chair restyled with Daisy Janie's Maxie fabric in organic cotton hemp canvas.

Wendy from Gussy emailed the Maxie chair before & after back in March - I flipped my lid when I saw it and the many, many others she has redone.

With a talented knack for seeing the good bones and lines in vintage chairs, she refurbishes her finds one by one - giving each a completely unique and original new look. She has a gallery of "unGussy'd" chairs from which customers can select for a redo - and she'll work with you on fabrics, finishes, upholstery and woodwork. You can also buy an already restyled chair in her Gussy etsy shop.

I always, always look at piping details on furniture, and Wendy does this soooo well. A small detail that speaks volumes about the overall quality of the work! Please stop by Wendy's website and check out her chair portfolio.

Check these out...

Parfait.

Lark.

Nordic Summer.

Ripple.

in search of | tealight holders.

1. recycled wood | from woody becker, $19
2. wood block | from the shabby chic cottage, $32
3. concrete and wood | from formd, $20
4. porcelain, set of 2 | from genevieve x, $25
5. found driftwood, set of 2, from nature's cabinet, $18
6. vintage milk glass, set of 2, from french quarter mercantile, $15

sneak peek & pictorial | chinese slip knots with fabric.

This slip knot fabic looper is part of a project I'm working on ~ a free somethin-somethin pattern for you, sweet & savory readers! Since I've never created a traditional pattern, I'm fretting about how to convey/depict the steps without the crutch of images to fall back on like those below. Wish me luck (or send suggestions)!

ending in the center.

Last night, no plans, no constraints, and no worries led us to The Labyrinth Garden. A positively spontaneous stop - I didn't even know I'd been driving by this magical place for 8 years.

We walked and talked in equal measure without walking and without talking. We each made our way to the middle - paused, sat and reflected before making our way home. A centering end to our evening of meandering.

seeing | marginal beauty.

My oh my. Feast your eyes. A selvedge roll-up. Chomp, chomp, chomp. That's me eating this magnificence up. Sorry it's so loud - I can't chew with my eyes closed.

I was sorting some selvedges for a project today (organic cotton/hemp canvas) and rolled up what remained so it wouldn't get all wrinkly when stored. Whoa baby! I was blown away by the texture, the movement, the geometry, the monochromatic tones. So earthy. Like tree rings or water ripples. Just goes to show ya (me) what engaging beauty lies within the often overlooked margins of everyday work and life. 

Did I really present trash, bugs and selvedge on my blog this week? Good golliwogs. That's weird. It was not planned, I assure you. Completely coincidental - just things that I stumbled upon throughout my work week, and I thought I'd share them with you. (Having the topic 'miscellany' included in my header is a convenient catchall.) I figure they fit somehow b/c my posts are usually born out of work, inspiration, creativity..something along those lines. Hope you enjoyed them! Have a nice weekend!!

buggin' out.

Really buggin' out this week - not as much as this adorably patterned chickie or fella sitting on a fold of fabric abyss - but pretty darn close!!

Writing is the one thing I tend to put on the backburner the most - I'd seriously rather do any other business task but that. So I swallowed my procrastination pride, buckled down and cooked up a few simmering items the last coupla days. Interviews, submissions, wholesale newsletter, the P.O. specs for my next fabric collection, Shades of Grey (hip hip), the FAQ and about pages on my website. Still working on my Quilt Market app. Sounds a lot like work, doesn't it? (the crowd boooooos!)

Also revamped the entire Daisy Janie website so wholesale info is front & center, where it needs to be.

What task bugs you out and forces you into procrastination mode?

geo grand trash talkin.

Answer: A 6-inch ball of shrinkwrap.

Question: How much trash is leftover when Daisy Janie receives a shipment of Geo Grand?

Multiply this small ball of trash by 4, and you have the total amount of solid trash leftover when all of Geo Grand is shipped to DJ headquarters from India and when all of it is shipped back out to my retailers.

Incoming shipments include fabrics wrapped in LDPE plastic bags (in accordance with GOTS) in cardboard boxes on wooden pallets wrapped in shrinkwrap. Everything but the shrinkwrap is recycled or repurposed*. Outgoing shipments include fabrics packaged in recycled, blank newspaper pages and contained in cardboard boxes. Both are fully recyclable.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
*Hold everything! This isn't trash after all! I just googled recycling for shrinkwrap and learned there are programs to which you can donate your LDPE and HDPE shrink wraps. Dr. Shrink offers a REBAG recycling kit you can buy to collect your shrinkwrap; the address is on the bag - kind of like ink cartridge recycling. Seems a lot of marinas offer recycling programs as well b/c they use a lot of shrinkwrap on the boats in the winter. { I love The Google! }

I'm extremely proud of this accomplishment - it's consistent with my desire to make Daisy Janie's carbon footprint as small as possible. Other green initiatives include purchasing wind energy credits to offset our home's electricity (where my office-studio is located). I also purchase credits from TerraPass when I set up freight for shipments, to offset the carbon footprint of the trucks. Not a perfect solution to being green, but it's a step in the right direction! It allows me to vote with my dollars just as consumers do when they choose organic cotton fabrics like Geo Grand in favor of non-organic cotton fabrics.

above & below: Trash in black & white. Beautiful.

in my hand | our garden guardian.

This Halloween guest once graced our front steps but was swept away on a windy November day - his head rolling along until he fell off the edge of the porch and landed softly in the mulch...kerplop. There, he rested until this Spring when I found him lazing under an azalea bush, perfectly intact & looking toward the sky. His once piercing, hollow eyes, hardened, heavy skin and spooky smile had become nothing but soft, rounded, friendly wrinkles. Like he was happy to see me.

I dug up and re-landscaped our entire front bed the day he was discovered (ooooh, my achy-breaky back...). I set him aside. When I was done, I placed his teensy featherweight body back under a bush, amongst the plantings and mulch - where he graciously keeps watch of all the garden goings-on. Nice to have friends in all the right places!

recipe | pickled red beet eggs.

Don't judge an egg by its color or name. These are seriously delicious!

This is a quick & easy recipe for one of my favorite summer foods. In the winter, we tend to keep hard-boiled eggs in the fridge, but in the summer, we switch to pickled red beet eggs. I think b/c they're often served at picnics in this part of Pennsylvania, I tend to think of them as a summery food. But they make a nummy & healthy snack or lunch addition any time of the year!

Ingredients:
1 dozen eggs
2 15 oz. cans sliced red beets
1 C white vinegar
1/2 C sugar
1/2 t salt

Directions:
Hard boil or hard cook eggs. Here's a technique, if needed. Peel when eggs have thoroughly cooled.

In a saucepan, heat vinegar, beet juice & sugar over medium heat until sugar has dissolved. No need to boil. Set aside to cool.

In a large, deep bowl, add peeled eggs first, vinegar/beet juice liquid second and sliced beets from both cans last. Adding the beets last helps keep the eggs submerged in the liquid so they can absorb the most flavor and gorgeous color! They should set for at least 4 hours; overnight is even better.

Pickled red beet eggs are a staple item in Pennsylvania Dutch kitchens. Although we're not PA Dutch, we live in a geographic location that is culturally rich with PA Dutch influences. Other cuisine from the PA Dutch table that rocks my world include: whoopie pies, chicken pot pie (this is NOT served in a pie shell...it's more like a stew), apple butter, cole slaw, lebanon bologna (embarrassed to add this, but it was considered a delicacy as a kid), and shoofly pies.

What are foods that you know about and make solely because of the cultural influence in your area?

exposure compensation. a new-to-me camera setting on my nikon.

see the difference?

Please google, read and experiment with Exposure Compensation for your particular camera. These images illustrate the potential; let the information you find (or already know) and personal taste guide you.
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Being able to take awesome pics of my fabrics and work-related projects is a goal I've set for myself. I'm so tired of doing more work on the back end of a photo shoot than the front end - and always being disappointed with the results anyway. I know I would actually do more tutorials, offer more recipes and blog more in general if I could forego *some* of the image editing. I don't own photoshop, and my doctoring software is as old as dirt.

Fool me once, shame on you (camera).
Fool me a thousand times, shame on me.
It makes me queezy and supremely annoyed when I think of how much time I've wasted trying to coerce decent photos out of my camera using only the default settings w/out flash. I've been alllll over the inside and outside of my house with every fabric in every season at every time of the day ... with or without a tripod or white reflective material or curtains open or closed or in direct or indirect light or full moon or a crescent moon or a good horoscope or a bad horoscope...seriously. That's a lot of freaking pics - and (repeating to underscore my point) a lot of wasted time.

no photo retouching done at all on these shots.

The Dreaded Workaround Pitfall.
How many times did I think to myself, "This is it - I'm feelin' lucky! Today is the day I'll get spectacular photos!", and when reality dashes my expections with yet another round of shitty shots, I *still* refuse to back-up from my pressing, immediate need, pull out the Nikon manual and learn how to use the settings?! What a colossal lack of efficiency & effectiveness! It illustrates to a T the concept of opportunity cost in economics, where my time represents the scarce resource and all the other profit-generating activities I could have been doing are the value lost and real cost to my business. Not going to go there...

Desperate needs call for desperate measures. 
I wanted to create an image bank of Geo Grand as marketing support for the resellers offering my fabrics. I had to sit down with Nellie Nikon and practice everything I read in the manual. Lo and behold, on page 47 was a delightful description of exposure compensation. Holy Moly - where has this setting been all my life??? I've played with every other setting ad nauseum on the settings menu so I was pretty shocked & dazed that I missed this somehow. Harumph. Well, the reason I hadn't discovered it until now (aside from neglecting to read the manual) is that it's not on the main menu! You get to it from the info button. The info button. The freaking info button. Who'd have thunk?

The take-away.
Feeling frustrated is normal and completely okay. However, allowing myself to feel frustrated again and again and again - when abatement was well within my power and grasp - was foolish and lazy. Even tho I was working hard, I wasn't working smart! Take heed.

Do you have any camera settings that you swear by? Please share in the comments.