LizzyHouse

Quick Update About the SALE!!!!

All of your pattern orders will go out tomorrow!

And, the fabric sale has been moved to Friday! The 31st!

I will be at my place from 2-7 PM. All fabrics available, around 6-8 yards of most prints. $10 a yard

1954 S. 900 E. #2

Also, if anyone local wants to come help me cut some fabric down tomorrow, I would be most grateful and you could have first pick of everything. I'm a generous gift giver too. Send me a message

Any leftovers I will post or make bundles with this summer. 

xoxox I'm so exhausted!!!!!

Last Chance!

Hey peepers. 

You've still got a chance to join in my Pattern + Print class at PNCA. There are a few spots still open, which is lucky for you. So now is the time to take the leap, commit, face the music, and all those other things. You want to know how to design patterns. You want to know how to ACTUALLY print. 

I'm the girl to teach you. 

You can find all the info here!

Also, PNCA is offering what's called a Fabric Pack, and it's two fabric design classes. Mine and another by Designer, Chelsea Heffner. You get a major savings when you sign up for the pack. Which is awesome if you are looking to get serious about fabric design. 

So... I'll see you next week! 

My love for PNCA goes on and on

The last two years in a row I have taught Pattern Design + Printing at PNCA for the their Continuing Ed program. I love PNCA as you can read here, and here, and I love teaching people to print, and I have really come to love more and more teaching people to create repeating patterns. It removes the biggest hurdle on the road to becoming a textile/surface designer, and I like being that hurdle remover. 

So come join me! for my third year! If you've been putting it off, this is your chance. We will spend a fantastic 3 days together from March 29-31 (that's a Friday through Sunday), and I will share with you all the things I know about designing textiles, breaking into an industry, and my one true love, printing your work. You will learn to create repeating patterns, and you will learn how to use them by hand. 

Let this be the year you really do something about wanting to design fabric. 

xolizzy 

Register here! 

Hey, this is actually crazy.

Virginia is doing the #scrappytripalong as are many of you (who started this? Was it you, Brenda?). And I received a text from her, Virginia, the other night saying that she had cut up her entire (oh my glob) 50 fat 1/8s she bought right before Christmas. She decided to do her entire quilt, a queen sized quilt, out of my fabric. So the 50, some Lizzy Dish she had received, and everything of mine she had ever stashed. Cut into tiny strips

I saw the pic and nearly cried. I couldn't believe how much work, and what all of that fabric together meant to me. I mean I see all my fabric together every day, because I keep it on shelves in my living room, kind of as living art, but to see collections crossing collections all tucked in together in tiny little blocks and rows really did something to me. 

Well her collection wasn't complete, and I want her quilt to be complete, so I decided to reach into the vault, and cut a little bit of everything. 

What does that mean? 

That means that I have 5, and only 5 fat 1/8 bundles of 130 prints available. It's really hard to believe that I have that much fabric, that these years have amounted to serious numbers, but they have. So with this, you can either make a scrappy trip along quilt in all LH seriousness, or you can stare it, forever. The choice is yours. I have more than 130 prints in total, but this will mean, like in the earlier stuff, that you will at least have one of every print (not necessarily every color way) invented. 

This bundle is not for the faint of heart. Also, I am finishing a new fabric collection so the bundle will ship Tuesday the 15th. If you are Domestic, then you will have it by next weeks end. 

Find the bundle here. 

All the Pearl Bracelets.

This has been a long time coming. Probably since about 2007... truth. That's a lot of years ago. But honestly. I have always been so impressed and touched that you have all used and loved my little Pearl Bracelets. In your quilts, on your children, on your dolls, in your products, in your books and on their covers... since they came onto the market in early 2009. Introducing a rainbow of them has always seemed like the right thing to do, and the right thing to do often waits for the right time to do it. 

In an effort to save heartache and confusion and redundancies I have named every one of the pb's, regardless of what collection it was originally from, because they are now available as a collection. 

So, I went ahead and made a chart for you to download. This way you can keep track of which ones you have, and which ones you still need. It also lets you keep track of the date you purchased, as well as where you got it. In addition, there are multiple lines for inventory, so when you use some, you don't need to start the whole chart over. 

Each entry has the name and the sku number so even if the pics of the pb's online are hazy or look like a wild berry color never seen before, you will know what is what. We are fighting confusion with knowledge. 

Download Pearl bracelet collection chart <-------- get the chart here and start filling in what you already have, and begin plotting for how you will obtain the rest! It's legal size, so that's 8.5 x 14

Please just print it or take it to a print shop. For right now, I'm not changing the doc size. 

On a personal note, I just got back from Paris, and I have always, and will probably always feel like a fraction of me truly belongs in France, and calls out to it, and in a way that hurts me. So every once in a while I go and visit that fraction of myself. 

And with that, I leave tomorrow for the East Coast. To visit, and love, and teach, and learn from some of my dearest peeps. I'm excited and overwhelmed with a full heart. Just like a fraction of me is France, a fraction of me resides here in Salt Lake. I'd say a good percent, so it becomes harder to leave for longer. 

download the chart. Love your lives. Love Pearl Bracelet. Pet a cat. Hug someone who needs it. Eat a peach before they leave us. And will you, for me, take a minute to count your blessings and marvel at how truly sweet our lives are?

i love all of you! 

ps. Mystery Boxes are being mailed out today! Of course! 

I made a decision.

photo taken Fall 2011, when I was finishing the Colorist. 

It's my friends birthday on Saturday and as a treat we went to a spa for facials. As I was laying there on that table I had an epiphany, and it was clear as day! I'm not going to produce paper quilt patterns anymore. I'm not going to completely throw out the idea of producing quilt patterns, but part of the epiphany was a big question mark. 

Why? Why have a continued doing this? And the answer is not my favorite kind of answer. 

Because that's what you did when you got into the Industry when I did. You made quilt patterns. You started a pattern company. And so I have found myself on this road that I don't necessarily still belong on. I'm a printmaker, and a textile designer. I love making things. I love sewing. I love quilting. But my heart is not in pattern writing. It's in producing art. 

I would like to say how proud of the work that i've done I am. I think the Colorist is brilliant, and Outfox the Fox is one of the coolest easiest patterns to follow on this green earth. Castle Treasury is a pain in the butt, but there is no denying just how beautiful it is. And my 1001 Peeps book is a literal work of art. It really is, and I am just so pleased with the things that I've created over the past 5 years. 

So with that I'm closing my pattern shop. I'll move my paper good stuff over to my etsy store until I get a more permanent solution, and if I do create a pattern of note, it will be downloadable. 

The biggest thing is that I am recharting my course as a printmaker. That is where my heart is, and when I ask my HF what it is that I am really supposed to be doing, I always get the same answer, "you know what you are supposed to be doing". That's printmaking, people. 

I PROMISE I'm still designing fabric. And I'm still designing a free quilt pattern for the lines to support my peeps and my shops. I'm just correcting the path.

You guys... cleaning out my house has changed me! And the closer I get to it being complete the more things are taking shape for my little future. 

All patterns are 50% off while supplies last in the shop, and I'll shut it down September 1st. Tell your peeps! Tweet about it! 

I'm getting back to the business of being an artist, and as always I hope you'll stick with me. 

Quilted Koala fabric covered boxes!

A couple weeks back I endeavored to rearrange, reorganize my apartment. I wanted every room to do their proper job. Kitchen = kitchen, bedroom = bedroom, office = office, living/ dining room = living/ dining room. You get the picture. Since I moved into this place EVERY room has been everything. If I was having a party I would move my inventory from my living room to my bedroom, and then it was like princess and the pea with boxes, only I was being tested to see if I could tell that there was still a mattress under there. 

I'm not finished yet, but I'm getting closer everyday. All the bones are set up, and now every stitch of product is in the office. When I package your orders, I am not prancing from room to room, I am turning around. What a clever thing?!

The best part of all of this though is actually getting organized! And not a moment too soon did my beautiful Quilted Koala fabric covered boxes in Brown Pearl Bracelet and the orange jewel print arrive! They are so nice! And I don't know what it is, but having such a beautiful box makes me want to keep beautiful things in them. It also makes me want to put things back where I got them. A novel concept, I know. 

Not only are these boxes beautifully constructed, really good looking, but M. Elizabeth House is actually on the road, the actual path to being organized in a way that is potentially permanent. So, I thought I'd show you what's in a couple of my boxes. 

I have my notions/closures/button box. I love opening it. It has buttons and things that I have collected over the past couple of years for my clothing making and I'm excited to have them all together, and to eventually match them to a champion project. 

My Pattern box. I trace all of my patterns, and then I redraft them for my figure or my favorite neckline, or just to show off my clavicle... anyway. After I trace/cut a pattern, I put it in a clear bag and label it so I don't have random pieces of tracing paper floating around, or worse lose a piece. It seems simple enough, and now I keep them all in one place. 

cutting tools. I am always losing scissors. And I can never remember where I put that new blade for my rotary cutter that I should have replaced a year ago. They have their own box now, and I'm always putting scissors back into the box. It's amazing. Progress people.

This is a big deal. Knowing where things are, and having it be beautiful. Form and function at its fabric covered box best. 

And best of all, until August 31, Quilted Koala is offering my peeps 20% off your order of my Pearl Bracelet and Jewel Boxes! Just enter lizzyhouse at the checkout! 

A note about the box sizes. I am using the small and medium nesting boxes on Billy bookcases from Ikea, and they fit really well. The larger ones are in my office, and I will show you those when the ugly duckling room is all swaned out. Also in my office, the bin, it's my favorite. 

 

Summer Shop Update!

Hi peepers. I've been working on a slew of new products for all your summer treat making! These products have come from a love of making beautiful things as well as threatening jeers for the past 5 or 6 years that have been aimed at me with the sole intent of getting me to produce recipe cards. Well it finally worked. You've shouted long enough. 

Tonight at midnight all of the new stuff will go live in my little shop. I've been giving you glimpses on instagram and twitter, and so some of you have inklings of what I've been up to. But I will have you know that there is one item that is limited. The summer treat set is in an edition of 50. It includes 10 recipe cards (5 of each design), 10 hang tags, 10 canning labels (only available in the treat set), and 3 yards of the prettiest blue bakers twine you've ever seen. All of these designs come from Hello Pilgrim which I can't seem to get over. So I won't, I'll just keep loving it. 

  

And if this treat set goes over well, then there might be a few more up my sleeve. Radish edition anyone? 

So! See you tonight or tomorrow! 

I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY!!!!

I love quilting. I will always love quilting. I will always quilt.

It brought me out of a darkness. It gave me a new language of skills. I can actually write and think in pattern speak. I love design. I'm a pretty good designer, and designing quilts is fun, and interesting, and challenging, and can be a little magical to see a drawing or a print off of something that you worked up materialize itself on your wall and in your hands. With fabric you designed, no less!

I come from the best. 

But I at the same time, I have never really known where I fit. Its always been as if my stuff was too designed, or too different to really hit it. I think I've been focusing a lot on the subtext of things, I do that, and I don't know if that translates as well in a moderately mass produced pattern as it does a limited edition hand pulled piece of art. I take that back, I know it doesn't. 

So that made me question the validity of my producing fabric designs. You see I've been waging a bit of a war with myself. Is there a reason to keep producing this. Will people get it. Will people care. Is it too weird. Does it make sense that I keep doing this? Keep investing in this? Some people really seem to like it... 

Things have really grown, and I have really grown. And I love my peeps. LOVE. I love you here. I love you on instagram. I love you on twitter. I even love the handful of you Facebook. 

but I want to let you in a discovery I made. This is not a goodbye. This is not my signing off. This is something I have been working towards understanding for some time now.

My fabric makes sense to me when I make clothes. Fabric seems to make more sense to me when I make things that I wear, or sisters wear, or friends wear. It comes alive. And there are parts of me that I don't always get to use, like my secret engineering side, the side that can look at flat pattern pieces and assemble them in my mind, work out all the kinks, redraft the bust (obviously), and then assemble a beautiful thing. Making a new thing to wear is all of my favorite things about the creative process. I love the planning, I love the math, I love the problem solving (I especially love the problem solving), and I love the details. 

I also really love clothing, especially dresses. 

What's odd is this is something that I have wanted to do for years. I knew I could be good at it. I knew it was in me, but I just didn't do it. But it's my dear friends like Karyn, and Virginia, and Jana who cheered me on when I said... ok I'm gonna make this now. And then I did, and there was more cheering. Maybe I just had to work it out, or get to a place, or be in the care of people who could take down the road blocks that I had assembled as I had internalized the pros and cons of my ability for years. 

And now it's something that I have been doing, and gaining speed at for almost a year. 

So I will continue to design quilts, because I love them. I love designing them, and I love making them. But I'm also going to keep making clothes, and I am going to get really really good at that. And we are going to see where that takes me and my fabric designing.  

But above all what this discovery has led me to better understand, is that I am not putting limitations on myself anymore. I am not going to draw lines in proverbial sand about who I am and what I am allowed to create and for what purpose. That's done, and I am happier for it. So I'm going to do the things that make sense to me and call it good. 

Creative House!

So turns out... 

the earth is actually square afterall, and as luck would have it I fell off one of the sides. 

but seriously. So much has been happening, and I owe you posts from March! When I was at the Farm. But while I get my business together, and hold this baby, I want to share a project that I collaborated with Marisa of Creative Thursday on! 

our collaborative name is Creative House! and we created a podcast about the ins and outs of the textile design! It covers almost 2 hours of discussion about the industry. How we came to it, and where from, and also things that you will deal with once you get into it. It makes a great compliment to How to Enter the World of Textile Design for the Quilting Industry! So if you are looking for more information, look no further. We even talk about money, which is something that peeps tend to shy away from, but you're always curious about so we went there. 

We are fun, and helpful, and qualified to help you get to where you want to be! 

So check it out!