What Inspires Me

I am asked frequently "What is your design style?" I have a hard time answering this questionns. First and foremost, my design style when working with clients is whatever their design styles are. Personally, I like a lot of different styles and enjoy combining styles. I get my inspiration for a lot of different places.

I love to create window treatments based on elegant gowns. I like adding a little of nature to the interior of the home. I like adding a little of the unexpected to my designs. I like combining the colors in a beautiful painting and I like using an object in an expected way.

enjoy some of the things that inspire me.

Suwanee Day

I am fortunate to live in a wonderful city, Suwanee, GA. I love this town because it gives the feel of a small hometown. Even though it is located in one of the largest counties 45 minutes from downtown Atlanta. Suwanee, GA has some of the best parks around and I enjoy walking the miles of walking trails we have. Today we celebrated Suwanee Day. This is an event that happens in September every year. Crafters set up booths and show their talents in arts, crafts and sewing. It always amazes me how many talented individuals there are. So today, I wanted to share with you some pictures of this beautiful town that I live in.

One of the things I love most about this city is the support for the arts. Suwanee has been purchasing bronze statues to be placed around Suwanee, this is one of the first purchased and is located in beautiful Sims Lake Park. This is where I walk every evening.

This is an aerial shot of the human made "S". Isn't that cool!!

Sims Lake Park.

Picture painted on the backside of the amphitheater

This is Pierce's Corner. It is right outside the door from my design studio, which is in the building below.

The caboose is right in front of my my studio. Every Christmas they have a caboose lighting celebrations and Santa comes and the children sing Christmas carols.

This is the new City Hall located in Town Center Park. This where Suwanee Day is held.

Mixing Fabrics and Textures

I love fabrics. I am so amazed at the beautiful designs, colors and textures. I love to play with mixing fabrics and combining different color combinatons. Here are a few combinations that I think would make any home come to life.

I found these fabric combinations while surfing the web today. These combinations were from the Calico Corner web-site. It is amazing how many fabulous textile designers are out there and how creative they can be.

Teaching at the Custom Home Furnishing Academy

Just returned from teaching a Goal Setting Class at the Custom Home Furnishing Academy in Charlotte, NC. The students worked very hard creating the business of their dreams and setting goals to in order to turn those dreams into reality. I am so looking forward to hearing about their success. I really enjoyed teaching this class and hope to be able to teach many other business owners how to create and accomplish their goals.

A Few Of My Favorite Fabric Designers

This is designed by Lila Tuellers

I love the mix of colors in this fabric designed by Lila Tueller

The above fabric is designed by Heather Bailey

I love the vibrant colors of the blue in this fabric designed by Anna Marie Horner

Another Anna Marie Horner fabric.

Other designers to check out are Amy Butler and Sandi Henderson.

I am a fabric guru. I will admit it. I love fabrics of any color, texture, style, whatever it doesn't matter. I have found some great fabric designers. Check out these sites for fabulous fabrics for clothing, home decor', and quilting. I get so excited when UPS comes to deliver my new fabric samples books to my studio. I spend the rest of the day just flipping thru and touching all of the new fabrics and dreaming of which job I could use the fabrics.

http://www.fatquartershop.com/
http://www.quilthome.com/
http://www.michaelmillerfabrics.com/
http://www.hancocks-paducah.com/

I have alway said "One day I will find a way to use up all of the fabrics pieces I have carried from home to home, because I just can not get rid of them, I may need them one day.

We are all overwhelmed with the economic news. If you are not careful, you will wrap yourself up in all the bad news and not be able to move forward. Well guess what, we don't have any choice but to keep moving forward. We don't have any control over what is going on in the economy. I heard someone in a meeting say this and I really liked it. "If unemployment is at 7%, well guess what 93% are working. The media doesn't put it that way. They only report the bad news.

So what can we do to stay motivated? Instead of thinking about all the bad news, think about all of the things you have to be grateful for. Live a life of gratitude.

Take advantage of the slow time to create your goals for the year and determine what you action steps will be. Take a class to increase your knowledge or skills in an area you are weak in. Read motivational books and listen to motivational audio tapes. Spend some time creating a vision of what you want your dream life to be like.

Practice turning the negative into positive affirmations.

I guarantee these suggestions will lift your spirits and will even attract good things to you.

I would love to hear your ideas and suggestions.

Interesting Awning Valance

These are the pictures of the finished valance. I have to admit, this was one of the funniest and most challenging treatments I have done. I did get to use some quilting techniques that I have been reading about.

I also made a trunk for the beautiful elephant. My client wanted a trunk that her children would be able to bend. She really wanted them to be able to swing on it, but I decided that probably wasn't a good idea.

This client had an incredible jungle scene painted on the walls of her children's play room. It is incredible. She contacted me because she wanted a valance that would carry on the theme. When the painter painted the mural, there is a tree that starts on one side of the window and continues to the other. I have been studying quilting and 3D quilting and fabric folding. It finally dawned on me to use this application on this valance. I am going to appliques the branches on the face fabric and then create the leaves individually using the 3D and fabric folding techniques. I am very excited about the project.

Today I cut out the valance and pieced it together, next I cut out the branches and glued them onto the fabric. Tomorrow I will be attaching them to the valance using a satin stitch. I'll let you know how that works out.