I currently have two spots where I regularly purchase knit fabrics online: ISee, which has been a fave for the past couple years - lots of my Citrine Cardigans made from those ISee knits. And then lately I’ve also been ordering knits from Lyrical, which has had a nice selection of sweatshirt and sweater knits. I like that both of these shops often have rib knits that match to the base fabrics (jersey or sweatshirt terry, usually), and Lyrical even has it where you can add them both to cart at the same time, spot of brilliance there. Anyway, I signed up for the Lyrical newsletter which I kne ..read more

Hellooo!! I’m like a deer in the headlights, like what month is it even? Wow, OK, it’s March already. No surprise, I skipped the Friday Faves post in February…honestly that month is already a complete blur. * Scrolls through photos app on phone just to remember what happened* Oh! Last month Mr Rae and I celebrated 20 years of marriage (see photo of us as just-married-babies below) and we took a delightful weekend trip without kids to San Diego. Thank you to my sister Kricket and Ross for kid-sitting - that is still hands down the best present anyone can give anyone with kids. We stayed in La ..read more

I dropped off the keys and said goodbye to this studio space in downtown Ann Arbor this week. As I wrote before, it was a bit of a surprise move, owing mainly to the sale of the building last fall to a new landlord and a subsequent rent increase. Is it a bit of a bummer that I just repainted the space less than a year ago? 100 percent. But fret not, I’ve made my peace with it, sunk cost fallacy and all, and am happy to be moving on. Moving - the packing, sorting, purging, and searching for a better space - has understandably brought up a lot of feelings and reflection about what I'm doing an ..read more

Tis the season for warm knit layers, and Citrine is the perfect cozy cardigan to wear over all of the things! Since the Citrine launch almost a year ago, I've been posting all of the Citrine cardigans and variations/mods that I've made to my blog. One of my favorite things to do is play around with a pattern to create variations, so I included notes and tutorials when applicable to make it easy to make one of your own. I love that these “extras” add even more value to the pattern when you buy it. You can always find these posts via the Citrine page, but I'm rounding them up in this email so yo ..read more

Turning leftover fabric from past projects into patchwork garment fabric is starting to become a regular thing for me (see Exhibit A: my scrappy Cleo skirt and Exhibit B: Citrine made from scraps). Another garment option for patchwork is a quilted coat - quite the hot thing in recent years - but while I love love love my quilted coat (see Exhibit C: Patchwork Coat), there’s really only so many of those I need (one). Whereas once I’ve created a new fabric from leftover scraps or harvested pieces from worn-out garments (see Exhibit D: these little shorts I made for Elliot), there are almost unl ..read more

When Amy (friend, model, and pattern tester*) showed me this fun Garnet/Ruby combo dress she made last summer when we were testing the pattern, I gasped with delight. The colorful Ikat squares look like a box of watercolor paints (which is why I’ve nicknamed it “the Paintbox Dress”) and the yellow sleeves are just so sunny and fun. It makes me happy just looking at it. We took the dress out for a little photoshoot so you can see how Amy wears it, complete with matching handmade earrings, a fun hat, and the cutest red shoes, of course! Isn’t that fabric great? Found at Seams, of course! (o ..read more

Hellooo!! Here in Michigan, January has been serving up the usual Climate-Collapse-Combo of unseasonably warm followed by suddenly arctic temps, with a hearty helping of snow day / ice day school cancellations for good measure. Elliot got really sick with something flu-like (not COVID tho? And he had the flu vaccine…so IDK…) right before exams and Mr Rae was traveling to SFO and then Switzerland for two weeks this month, so things feel decidedly off-kilter. I still haven’t figured out my studio situation, but lots of other things are moving forward. It’s life!! Two really bright spots in my mo ..read more

Here’s another lovely Garnet from one of our testing contributors, Emiko! She tried out the Garnet pattern a try when we were testing it out last summer (you might recognize her as one of our Citrine testers as well.) She created this gorgeous version made with a blue French cotton lawn that features a tiny little floral print. Take a look… I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but cotton lawn is a great fabric choice to make Garnet. It gives the top a more structured look than rayon challis, silk noil, or double gauze, and not as casual as linen. This is because it has less drape than those other ..read more

I’ve hoarded this Alexander Henry fabric for many years and decided finally that this was going to be the thing I made with it: a Garnet + Ruby top. Most of my patterns are “showoff” patterns — I really love an uninterrupted print - and Garnet and Ruby are definitely in that camp as they don’t have a ton of intricate seams or other elements that distract from the fabric, which for me is what I really love about sewing garments: it’s a blank canvas that makes the fabric shine. Like I’m literally realizing as I type this that sewing clothes for me is 95% about the fabrics (the colors, the textu ..read more

If you were wondering if you can make my newest pattern, Garnet, into a dress, YES! it’s super easy. Here’s one I made last spring out of a lovely rayon deadstock I found at Bolt online (one of my many favorite spots to hunt for good apparel fabrics - bookmark it!!), along with a few notes on how I made mine: HOW TO LENGTHEN GARNET INTO A DRESS To lengthen Garnet, simply find your front/back pattern piece, cut it along the “lengthen/shorten here” line, and add 18” to the length if you traced view a, or 15” to the length if you’ve traced view b. Then cut out your front and back on the fold ..read more