Peas Projects

One of the silliest things I get happy about is when I'm packing up orders and I get really close to lining up my stamps on the wrapping paper. Sometimes I'm wildly off, but if you get a package that's this close? Know that I was ridiculously pleased with myself for it.

Good news! We have 45 yards of our French Spring print Back in stock!

A large-scale buyer decided against this print at the last moment, so it's your last opportunity to grab it!

Taking a short break from studying for exams to start the art for a new print and let my mind relax a bit. 🥰

The entire legumey 🫛 clan is off to the Fort Frederick market fair! I'm not a vendor, but come say hi if you see me!

Seriously. I love you guys.

The Red Posy fabric and Banyan Yellow have been reordered. (in larger quantities!) I've also preemptively reordered the insanely lightweight linen since I'm getting low on that again. With all this fabric going out... I'm incredibly curious to see what you've all been making with it!

This spring has been wonderful. I'm very grateful to all my enthusiastic customers making it our most successful yet. We just got our New York Rose restocked, and I'm putting in an order for more Banyan Yellow. We are out of stock on our French Spring block print and I'm trying to order a restock of that as well as American Autumn- though the block prints take quite a bit of time to make.

In the meantime... I'd like to make up around three more prints to release this summer/fall, and would love to hear from you about what kind of prints you'd like to see! If we choose your suggestion (and you were the first to suggest it) I'll send you the sample print of it, free of charge!

A few requirements to consider:
1. It has to be open source, public domain, creative commons... Whatever the image is, we need to legally be able to use or reference it.

2. It could be a fabric scrap laid flat or a made up garment but I need to be able to see the pattern clearly and have some idea of its scale. Some museums list texted fragment sizes, but I've also estimated pattern size based on average height and the garment on a mannequin.

3. The source should be an 18th century print or painted fabric. Cottons or linens preferred.

This week has been something! I've got a big test (yep, I'm back in school) coming up, RL has kept me running, my littlest Bug had career day- she said I HAD to come dress up to talk about being a small business owner. I was the fanciest one there! And this morning I found the rest of my stock of New York Rose fabric was speckled by black dye- clearly some kind of factory accident. I've only got 4 yards left in stock that are untouched. Deeply unhappy about that, but I've got 50 yards ordered and it should be back in stock next week.

It's been a ruffle-stitching day today! I ran the machine for 6 hours almost exactly and got two sets of 'left sides' done. Each set is 119678 stitches so I averaged (including hoop-swapping and edge-trimming time when the machine wasn't actually running) 665 stitches per minute. Not bad! My ears need a break though, even after wearing PPE muffs all day.

I keep puttering away at the pockets and I've got the digitizing done! They're ready for some test stitch-outs. I've got two versions. The pic here is from my embroidery software, giving a digital mockup of how it'll look.

On the left is a version with a 'triple bean' stitch for the stems. The original pockets have a single line of stitching for the stems too- though their thread was thicker than machine embroidery thread so it does change things. The flowers and leaves are also done at a lower density. On the right is a more 'normal' density version with a very narrow 'sketch' zig zag for the stem that makes them a bit thicker.

The differences between the two amounts to ~12000 stitches when accounting for stitching both pockets or maybe 20-30 minutes of work stitching. (The Beast can get up to 800 spm with the giant frame but color changes and jumps between the small elements slows it down)

But we'll see how they look once I get the chance to stitch them and see which version looks nicer in real life!

I haven't gotten to actually stitching yet- it still needs some optimization so it's not hopping between needles all over the place when stitching, but I made progress on digitizing the pockets!

This set is from the MET(https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/110121) and they're very similar but the original artist made some alternate color choices as well as different center motifs. Plus, there was only one small section with a close up. The overall photo quality is so low that I had plenty of flexibility to do whatever I want without feeling bad for the inaccuracies. 😆

The originals also have the initials MP and the year 1796 stitched on. It could be fun offer customization with whatever initials and years people want.