To Love Me is to Know Me

Question...

~Do you feel like you are understood by someone in your life? Like....reallllllllly understood?

Perhaps a couple better questions...

~Is there anyone you trust enough to show the real you?
~Have you ever shown anyone the real you?

And lastly...

~If you haven't shown anyone the real you, can you EVER really feel loved by anyone?
~If someone says they love you, but you know you've kept the real you hidden from them, is it possible to accept that person's love? 

Decadent Trims & Treats

Lots of new things are coming out of my studio. I am having so much fun hand-dyeing scrumptious velvet and vintage linen, stamping them, making ruffles out of them, creating romantic bags and...well, so much more! You can find them HERE. Working on lots more, as well.

Here's some photos.... 

My Great-Grandmother & Velvet Strawberries

My great-grandmother lived in a tiny house in a beautiful, old neighborhood in Salisbury, Maryland that was filled with beautiful things she has made with her own hands. She worked for The Singer Sewing Machine Co. as a young woman and my mother has many stories of making Barbie doll dresses with her when she was a child. My mother was named Catherine, after her.

Now I have my own Emily Catherine, named after them both, and I can still imagine what the inside of my great-grandmother's little Cape Cod looked and smelled like. It was there I learned how to make a cathedral window quilt and how to make perfect French knots. She had a kitchen decorated in strawberries and I'm sure my fascination with vintage strawberry Wilender linens began at her kitchen table.

These little velvet strawberries are of my design, but they are modeled after the thousands and thousands of velvet strawberries made by women for centuries, at least. Velvet strawberries like this showed up in sewing boxes and used as pincushions, on summer hats and attached to pert little straw purses, many decades ago. You can still find vintage velvet strawberries on eBay or in corners of antique stores if you look hard enough.

I can't stop making them! I'm hand-dyeing the velvet, hand-stitching the strawberries, cutting out little felt leaves, filling them with stuffing and a bit of dried French lavender, stitching them together and then lastly, hand-beading them. It is a delight to make them, from start to finish, and though I'm sure I'll tire of it eventually, for now it's my new favorite thing to do in the evening while I watch t.v. and sip hot cocoa.

I imagine them in lingerie drawers, part of sweet little vintage vignettes or given as a gift. You can hot glue them to a purse, use them as pincushions, give them as gifts, or whatever else you come up with! The possibilities are endless!

I have this little group of 3 pink and 3 blue velvet strawberries listed on eBay right now, so if you want to snatch them up, go HERE.

Marie-Antoinette-Inspired Dress Coat

Another of the new things I've made recently. You can find this one on eBay HERE.

I made it from scratch using a remarkable heavy brocade and a new pattern that looks vintage. I decided not to line it since it was already incredibly heavy and instead used an old-fashioned technique: hand-sewing lace trim over each and every raw edge on the inside. Phew! I had no idea the dozens of hours this would take!!! But it was so worth it when the coat was completed.

This is a size Small to Medium. The dress form the coat is displayed on is about a size 2/4. The sleeves are three-quarter-length and there is a pocket on each side. A silk-covered button and circle-yolk are all wonderful vintage-inspired details that make this coat your signature wardrobe piece this winter!

A Marie-Antoinette-Inspired Frock

I've had soooo many computer issues this last month but finally getting the kinks worked out and starting some new things I'll tell you more about soon!

In the meantime...here's a vintage dress with some lovely Marie-Antoinette-inspired details I just finished. I am currently enamoured with velvet and linen and am so excited to incorporate some of these sumptuous details into this romantic frock.

I've started the bidding low. Go HERE if you'd like to take a peek at this one-of-a-kind creation...

Some photos:

Unconditional Love

“The test of friendship is assistance in adversity, and that too, unconditional assistance. Co-operation which needs consideration is a commercial contract and not friendship. Conditional co-operation is like adulterated cement which does not bind.”

-Mohandas Gandhi

What do you think about the above quote? Imagine your friend, who you love very much, is going through a painful time in their life and needs your help. What would you do?

Now imagine your friend has made a series of choices that, in your mind, at least, are exactly why he/she is in the pain, trouble or hardship they are now experiencing. Does that change what you would do?

Let's get more specific. What kind of hardship would your friend have to be going through for you to decide NOT to assist them? Here are a few possibilities that might pop into your head:

-Drug addiction
-Other addiction
-Having an extramarital affair
-Abusing someone close to them
-Breaking the law
-Knowingly hurting someone else

Regardless of what those things are, there are things that those who are close to us can do that would cause us to respond in ways that express our disaproval. We might start by gently telling them we are worried about their behavior/actions/choices. Sometimes we might express our disgust. We might feel we need to exercise "tough love." We may decide that ultimately, we have to back out of the relationship.

But where does "Tough Love" leave off and Judgment, Rejection and Conditional Love begin?

Is it possible that we could actually love without condition...meaning our love doesn't change, no matter what, EVEN IF someone we love is destroying their lives (or even others' lives) right in front of us? Is that love "too unconditional?" Is there such a thing?

One thing is certain: loving under those conditions, and especially loving in a present, there-for-you kind of way would be...well, messy.

But is that when love BECOMES unconditional...right at the point where it gets messy?

What do you think?

Teaching Our Children to Trust Their Instinctual Nature

A couple of weeks ago Kristin commented on this post and mentioned her desire to be mindful of the attack on our instinctual selves while parenting her girls. Her comment got me thinking: it's all well and good to talk about the way we as women (or men) can "unbind" the feet of our instinctual self and run free, but what about our children, whose feet may have not yet been bound or have only been bound for awhile? Can we as mothers and fathers parent in such a way that our children are given tools and understanding so that living out of their natural, intuitive selves is second nature?

My experience so far in talking to my kids about their intuition has shocked me. I thought I'd have to teach them about their "knowing place," but as soon as I mentioned the term and described it, they nodded and said, "Oh, yeah, I have that," as if I was kind of silly to not have known that already! :) I asked them where it was and they pointed to their chests.

Still you kind of have to wonder if my kids have heard me talking about this stuff, but I've noticed other children have similar responses. I was substitute teaching for 3 weeks in a row for a friend's kindergarten class last Spring and on the last day, when we were ready for recess early and they were sitting quietly, I asked them if they had a "knowing" inside and they all nodded. No one looked confused or asked for clarification. They acted just like my girls had and all but two of the children pointed to their chests when I asked them "where" that knowing came from. Two girls pointed to their tummies. These are kids that, without exception, have grown up in very poor homes. English is a second language to all but a couple of them. Several began learning English that year, in kindergarten. It seems this "knowing" is something people from all different backgrounds, cultures, religions and traditions understand and can identify.

One interesting conversation happened when my eldest told me she had gotten a "step" (the first step in the discipline structure...it's basically a warning that's on paper you have to have your parents sign and return) for talking out of turn. She was upset; she felt it was unfair because someone had talked to her, and then she had responded to them, but only she was given a step. When I tried to ask her why she thought she got it, what she could have done differently and what she might do differently in the future, she couldn't stop arguing and defending herself. Then I said something without thinking. I said, "O.k. Emily, so you feel it's not fair that you got a step, but did you KNOW in your knowing place, when you were talking to your friend, that you shouldn't be?" She stopped in her tracks, the arguing stopped and she said, "Well, yeah..." I said, "O.k. that's all I'm saying." We talked about how she could listen to that knowing place in the future.

I think the most interesting part for me in Emily and my conversation was the distinction she made between "obeying the rules" and "listening to your knowing." Obeying the rules is good, we decided. Listening to our knowing is also good, and perhaps even better.

So I've been asking myself, "What else can I do to foster this listening to their knowing, encourage them to trust in themselves and their inner wisdom, and stop binding their instinctual feet in the way I inevitably would if I didn't intentionally choose to do something different?"

Here is one exercise I'm going to do with my kids next Sunday when we have our family time. We are going to read, "Horton Hears a Who," discuss it in the way this article describes and then do an activity of some kind that I haven't settled on yet. I want to hear what they think about the story and how they identify with having a "knowing" about something that others don't necessarily see, hear or understand.What should we do when we "know" or "feel" something others don't? Should we persist in trying to communicate it? Should we keep it inside? When is it important to insist that others listen to us? How can kids insist that adults listen to them?

Do you have any ideas for talking to kids about their instincts, knowing and feelings? I would love to hear any ideas.