Announcing the Crafting a Meaningful Home Blog Tour!

Take a break from holiday gift guides and join author Meg Mateo Ilasco on the Crafting a Meaningful Home blog tour! You'll find plenty of inspiration and some exciting surprises.

Need we remind you that Crafting a Meaningful Home is a smart addition to your shopping list? Make one of the projects for someone special or give a copy of the book as a hostess or housewarming gift. (Check out Etsy and Design Mom for creative wrapping ideas.)

To find out more about Crafting a Meaningful Home and its talented contributors, watch this beautiful video produced by Meg and photographer Thayer Allyson Gowdy.

And without further ado, the schedule:

December 9    Not Martha Giveaway: Meaningful Items in Your Home

December 10  Papercakes Finds  Project Share

December 13  Uppercase  Contributor Spotlight: Lisa Congdon

December 14  Dwell  Contributor Spotlight: Sian Keegan

December 16  Craftzine ...Book Review

December 17  True Up Fabric Traditions & Memories

December 20  ReadyMade Project Share: Family Banner

December 20  Oh Joy! ...stay tuned for details!

December 21  CasaSugar Interview with Meg Mateo Ilasco

December 22  Anthology Magazine blog Full-Length Video Premiere

Gift Guide for Crafty Moms

Mother's Day is Sunday, May 9. If you haven't found the perfect gift yet, click here to see a brochure that includes all of our titles.  Or, check out this handy gift guide to some of our newest releases:

 

Eco-fashionista moms will find loads of inspiration in Natalie Chanin’s Alabama Studio Style.

 

Busy moms who love to knit will want to get their hands on Veronik Avery’s Knitting 24/7 and Leigh Radford's One More Skein!

 

Quilting moms will be mesmerized by the gorgeous designs in Kaffe Fasset’s Simple Shapes, Spectacular Quilts and Sarah Fielke and Kathy Doughty's Material Obsession!

 

Moms who like to be challenged by their knitting will certainly enjoy Reversible Knitting by Lynne Barr and Knitted Socks East & West by Judy Sumner.

 

And moms who want to keep everyone warm will appreciate the beautiful afghans in Berroco’s Comfort Knitting and Crochet: Afghans and the unique scarves in Lynne Barr's Knitting New Scarves.

 

Need more ideas? Try Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross, Printing by Hand by Lena Corwin, and Quilting for Peace by Katherine Bell, or one of the many more choices here.

My Winter Strategy

I'm one of those people who tends to get down during the winter, but I have a strategy for dealing with it that really does help. Here's what I've got going on inside my house right now.

 

 

 

These flowers don't make more sunlight, warm up the temperatures outside, or take away bad news, but each time I look at them, I pause for a moment and feel some goodness. Today I decided to take some photos in hopes of spreading some goodness around.

Our New STC Craft Catalog

We just sent our new STC Craft catalog to the printer. It includes five new books for spring 2010--Kaffe Fassett's Simple Shapes, Spectacular Quilts by Kaffe Fassett; Alabama Studio Style by Natalie Chanin, Comfort Knitting & Crochet: Afghans by Norah Gaughan, Margery Winter, and the Berroco Design Team; Knitting 24/7 by Veronik Avery, and Knits Men Want by Bruce Weinstein; plus our beautiful backlist. For a sneak peak, click here.

Brooklyn Crafts: DIY Event Recap and Pie Bake Off Benefit!

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 Thanks to everyone who attended the STC Craft and BurdaStyle Presents: DIY Design Day at 303 Grand's Perk Street Lounge (and to everyone who wished they could have attended!) this past Sunday in Brooklyn.

It was a great success! Thanks to online event promotion via the Daily News, Going, NY Post, Yelp, Time Out NY, 3rd Ward, New York Magazine, Etsy, and BurdaStyle, we had over 100 RSVPs, and about that many passing through the space throughout the day.

 

We also raised $100 for the local non-profits BARC, Brooklyn's no-kill animal shelter, and Bags For The People, which hosts fabric-recycling, bag-making workshops, through our raffle and sale items:

Here's the lovely Carol of BurdaStyle, and the lovely Ellie of STC Craft, working the sales and info tables!

 
The first craft of the day was bag-making with Katherine Bell of Quilting For Peace, and Deanne of Bags For the People and I Jamaica.


Here are two ladies very happy with their wine bags...


 

 ...and folks in the thick of making the 30-Minute Shopping Bag from Quilting For Peace.

Thanks to Purl Patchwork in Soho for their donation of such gorgeous fabric!


Second project of the day was the Potato Printing with Heather Ross of Weekend Sewing. Can you believe her amazing potato stamps??!!

And finally, the last project was the Coffee Cup Cozy and Coater from Kata Golda's Hand-Stitched Felt!

Look Ma, I made this!

  

Alicia Kachmar, who donated a bunch of her adorable crafts for the raffle (and who you will meet in my next post,  the start of a series called "Friends of STC Craft", worked on this adorable "Safety Cone" cozy (work in progress)!

 Check out the adventures of her little Safety Cones and Kata Golda's little finger puppet friends here!


Stay tuned for my interview with Alicia, and the results of our raffle! Winners are being contacted now!

Thanks for reading!

P.S. If you are in Brooklyn this weekend, come to the 1st Annual Brooklyn Pie Bake Off Benefit for Bags For The People!
Our judges are heavily involved within the New York food and craft worlds, including our own Heather Ross (read her hilarious post about it here), Tracy Candido of Sweet Tooth of the Tiger, Julie Schneider, director of Etsy Labs, Chysanthe Tenentes of Brooklyn Based, and Tara Laruffa, marketing director of the Union Square Greenmarket.
Winners receive a Bags for the People bag filled with prizes: including a copy of the best-selling Baked cookbook (Stewart, Tabori and Chang), a copy of our best-selling Weekend Sewing book (which also features recipes!), and more! 
Best Overall gets all that, plus a pie feature on Etsy, and these fun things from BurdaStyle and Alicia Kachmar:

So come bake or just eat and be merry! Rules and info here: http://brooklynpiebake.tumblr.com

V&A Patterns

I always love looking at books that showcase different patterns, so I was thrilled when I found out that that we (meaning Abrams, the company I work for and of which STC Craft is a part) would be distributing V&A Pattern, a series of pattern books from the publishers at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Each book includes over 65 pattern images, plus a CD with jpeg files of all of the images, ready to be viewed and manipulated for any non-commerical use. Below is a sampling of four of the patterns from each book. I love the idea of using these patterns to make customized stuff, such as gift wrap, note cards, notebook covers, screen savers, bookmarks, origami paper (or paper for nearly any paper craft), the list could go on and on. A few weeks ago my friend Hannah and I got together and made notebooks with patterns from the Fifties. I'll post a photo as soon as I take a decent one.

 

       
The Fifties      
William Morris      
Indian Florals      
Digital Pioneers      

Winner of the Kata Golda Hand-Stitched Felt Contest and Felt Photo Pocket Demo!

Congrats to Naomi, our lucky winner of a free copy of Kata Golda's Hand-Stitched Felt! Thanks to everyone who entered our contest. Stay tuned for Naomi's answer to the question: "What sort of adventures will your felty mice have?"

In the meantime, as a special consolation prize, here is the felt photo pocket demo that Kata did at the Etsy Labs in Brooklyn, NY.

This is a re-broadcast, in 2 parts, of the live webcast demo. There were some problems with sound, but hopefully these 2 videos will help fill in the gaps. Enjoy! I hope you'll be inspired to buy the book for friends and family (I plan on making nothing but felt gifts this year!)!

VIDEO LINKS:
• Felt Photo Pockets with Kata Golda (Part 1)
• Felt Photo Pockets with Kata Golda (Part 2)

Betz White's New Organic Fabric Line

 

Betz White, author of Sewing Green, has just released her debut line of organic cotton fabric called Family Cottage. Her inspiration:

I believe there’s a place in everyone’s life
real or imagined
in your mind or in your heart
in your backyard or far far away
where you are truly yourself.
Not defined by what you do or to whom you belong
but by the person you have always been deep down at the core.
The authentic you of your childhood, when long summer days stretched on forever.
When time stood still and there was nowhere to be but right where you were.
Fun and joy and life just happened.

To see more photos of the fabric and to read more about the collection, visit Betz's blog.

STC Craft on Flickr

I am both a craft-book author and craft-book editor, so I can  tell you with authority that there is hardly anything more gratifying to an author or editor than seeing the ways in which our work has inspired others. With that in mind, I am posting to let you know about STC Craft's new Flickr goup. We just started it so it's very small, but, of course, we're hoping a lot of people will join and post photos of projects they have made from the books we publish. To check out the Flickr group, click here. To see all of the books we publish, click on our online catalog at right.

The photo above shows all of the socks in Judy Sumner's book Knitted Socks East and West  spread out on a desk in my office. I just uploaded this image to Flickr. I've also just posted a gallery of images from Knitted Socks East and West here. This book will be released in August (around the time of the amazing Sock Summit).

Greetings from Knit Cafe Note Cards on Sale

Perfect for spring or really anytime you want to send a personal note, our beautiful Greetings from Knit Cafe Note Cards are on sale on the Abrams website. Regularly priced at $12.95, they are now only $5 (sale price is shown at checkout). There are 15 (3-7/8" x 5-1/4") notecards, 3 each of the 5 shown below, plus 16 envelopes. Suzan Mischer originally commissioned photographer Judith Gigliotti to take these images for her Los Angeles yarn shop, Knit Cafe.

A Handmade Holidays Question and a Book Giveaway

We keep hearing that a lot of gifts are going to be handmade this year. What are your plans? Please take a moment to answer our Handmade Holidays "Questionnaire" below (leave your responses in the Comments section).

*Are you making more handmade gifts this year than you have in previous years?

*Please tell us something about the gifts you're making.

*What is the title of one STC Craft book that you'd like to receive as a gift this year?

On Friday, December 12 at 3PM, we'll pick 5 people at random from the list of responses and send each one the book s/he requested. To see all of our books, click here (and be sure to flip through all 6 pages). Thanks!

(Photo above by Susan Pittard from Handknit Holidays)

Congratulations, Hannah!

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I'm very happy to report that Hannah Rogge's newest book Save this Shirt: Cut It, Stitch It, Wear It Now has been named a 2008 Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association. This is Hannah's second YALSA honor. Her first book, Hardwear: Jewelry From a Toolbox, earned this award in 2007.

-To see a gallery of projects from Save this Shirt, click here. 
-To see a gallery of projects from Hardwear, click here.
-To read about a weekend Hannah I spent together in November, click here (and scroll down).
-For a list of all of this year's YALSA winners, click here.
-And please join me in congratulating Hannah--an extraordinary crafter, author, and friend.

Joy


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About a month ago, Heather Ross, a friend and the author of the upcoming Weekend Sewing, came to my house so we could do some work together on her book and also to make holiday cards using her portable printing machine called the Print Gocco Kit. The Print Gocco comes from Japan, where--according to the people who sell it--one out of three families has one. Basically, you create your artwork (or Heather creates it for you), then using the Print Gocco, burn a screen (as in silk screening), then one-by-one print your cards. Heather knew what she was doing (she actually created her wedding invitations this way) so it didn't take us very long and it was lots of fun. The artwork depicts my dog Maggie catching a Frisbee (her favorite activity). I present this card here as my way of wishing you that kind of pure joy this holiday season and in 2008!

I Love the Kids' Books

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Sometimes people ask me which of the STC Craft books I like best, a question I cannot answer. In part, this is because I need to be diplomatic. But, more than that, this is because I believe that each book is unique and special in its own way. It sounds sappy and maybe like a cop out to some people, but it's true.

 

 

KidsCrochet-200.jpgStill, there are a few books that I think are especially important, and those are the three books in our kids' crafting series--Kids' Embroidery by Kristin Nicholas, Kids Crochet by Kelli Ronci, and Kids Weaving by Sarah Swett. These books teach all of the basics and also a little bit about how crafting fits into cultural history.

 

 

KidsWeaving-200.jpgIf you know children who like to make things with their hands, I hope you will check out these books, and, if you have some extra time over the holidays, do some crafting together. I believe that when we teach kids these skills, we are giving them a gift that will last their entire lives (sappy but true, once again).


 

My Weekend with Hannah I

Earlier in the fall STC Craft published Knitspeak by Andrea Berman Price.

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Sarah Von Dreele designed the book as well as a magnet to give away at book signings and other promotional events.

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On Saturday night Hannah and I used the magnet artwork to make a T-shirt. 

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(If you want to make a T-shirt like this one, go to the craft- or office-supply store and buy iron-on transfer paper (pick up a T-shirt while you're out if you don't already have one), then download this file, then follow the instructions that came with your transfer paper to iron the artwork onto the T-shirt.)

 

Then I taught Hannah to knit. (She's definitely a natural.)

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