After a short hiatus, the CraftSanity Podcast is back with an interview with Aimee Ray, a graphic designer, crafter and embroidery book author. You may know Aimee from her blog and you may have shopped for crafty wares at her Etsy shop, too. Aimee is the author of “Doodle Stitching” and “Doodle Stitching: The Motif [...]

Happy spring break! Snow is in the forecast for Michigan, so chances are good that my family won’t be frolicking on the West Michigan sun during Spring Break 2011. But no worries, I’m a crafty mama with a plan. This past Sunday the weekly column I write for The Grand Rapids Press offered spring break [...]

Today is the 1-year anniversary of the arrival of our Siamese cat, Justine. I never considered myself a cat person until I took my girls to meet her a little more than a year ago. She didn’t hide from us and seemed to like us right from the start.

The latest issue of Petite Purls is up and ready to inspire you. My daughters and I collaborated on the Sew Petite feature, a beginning stitching project for you to try with the budding crafters in your life. Ameila, 4, stitched the flower in the hoop above. Abby, 6, decided to go her own way [...]

"The Myth of the Man Who Didn’t Fart", by Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood, 10×10" art quilt, cotton fabric, hand embroidery, applique and machine quilting Here’s my latest art quilt. Read my artist statement over at “Posted Stitches” if you’re curious about what it’s all about. :  )

I’ve stitched with a lot of people, but only recently did I get an opportunity to craft with a daredevil. Today my GR Press column is about Rocky Hauri, aka Rocky Hardcore. He’s a 53-year-old stunt man from Owosso, Mich. who embroiders the uniforms he wears to crash cars. I met Rocky at the Thriller! [...]

Today my weekly Grand Rapids Press art & craft column is about fiber artist Heather Weathers, 25, of Grand Rapids. Her booth was one of the highlights of the Eastown Street Fair back in September. She makes the cutest hand-painted voodoo dolls she calls voodoolls, stuffed monsters and impressive hand-embroidered pillows and wall art. A [...]

Bev and I are still making art quilts and writing about them every month over at Posted Stitches. I invite you to check it out and tell us what you think . The quilt above is Side A of my August “Dreams” quilt. You can read more about it here and see Side B here. [...]

I’m making progress on the embroidered CraftSanity logo that I had planned to sew into a pocket for this apron. But the more I stitch the less enthused I become about the thought of sewing a black pocket over these colorful prints. I’m afraid a pocket will ruin it. Any thoughts? I swapped buttons with [...]

It’s been on my to-do list for months and I finally did it. I made a sock monkey apron for Dulce, the sock monkey queen. I made an embroidery pattern from one of the photos I took of her monkeys and embroidered like mad while watching the Olympics Saturday night. Everything was going swell until [...]

It’s been a rough week and it’s only Tuesday. I’m up to my eyeballs in work and still trying to make time to stitch as often as possible. This is me crafting sanity, my friends. I’m too tired to know if it’s working, so I’ll have to get back to you on that. : ) [...]

This has been a very hectic week and I’m expecting the early part of next week to be crazy busy as well. Because of this fact, it was ultimately important that the girls and I spend some creative time outside today. I worked on a new art quilt while Amelia colored and Abby continued work [...]

Do you ever wish you could drop everything and embroider your favorite song lyrics all over a skirt or something? Okay, maybe it’s just me. : ) I’m on a newspaper deadline until tomorrow and seriously itching to embroider text on something. It’s like a fever. This always happens when I’m supposed to concentrating on [...]

Abby’s “happy monster” quilt is finished. I put the final hand-stitches in the binding at approximately 1:30 a.m. this morning. It feels good to get caught up in a project like this with my beautiful daughter. And she likes it! That’s the best part. I plan to embroider a label for this quilt. I’m going [...]

I finished my first free-motion quilting foray this evening! Yippee! It feels really good to be at this stage. It’s not perfect, but I’m glad I decided to quilt it myself. It was a risky move, but so worth it. It’s been really great to discuss the progress of this quilt with Abby everyday. Tomorrow, [...]