Susannah Allen

Business

2012-02-01T09:10:00.000-08:00

I wish the work side of business would stop getting in the way of the creative, passionate, imaginative side of business. I embrace that side and do the other only because I have to....just like dusting.

Hope

2012-01-21T13:16:00.000-08:00

Change is merely a decision that has work attached to it. Right now, I am drowning in the work piece of change and I'm tired. Where is my Fairy Godmother and her wand? I wish she would come and make all this work go away and my house beautiful as I see it in my dreams.

Tired Me

Change is in the breeze

2011-12-03T07:08:00.000-08:00

We all make goals and plans. Sometimes we stumble along them, sometimes we run with unbridled enthusiasm, and sometimes the path we undertook morphs into something different. Sometimes imagined success has varying colors and patterns that we find unexpected and so we are forced to choose a different route or morph ourselves to fit , enabling ourselves to remain in our chosen direction. I am at that such moment. This chosen path and I are not so well suited anymore, each of us has changed a bit and something much be altered so that we may remain together. Hard choices must be made, to change myself, to change my path or maybe a bit of both. This December is my month of contemplation.

Puppies and Smiles

2011-10-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

A puppy has managed to stumble into my life. I am desparately attempting to make room for her in my hectic, chaotic lapses of time called my life. Somehow I find bits of time here and there to toss her ball, stand out in the sunshine, holding her lease while she pees and there even seems to be time for snuggling. I might find her required need for my time resentful, but with each interation comes a puppy smile, and puppy hugs and adoring eyes. Ok, ....I can probably managed this. After all, whose heart has not the space for love?

Old, Worn and Loved

2011-10-07T12:13:00.000-07:00

Wow, has it been a year since I have posted ?? Really? It doesn't feel that way....hmmmm....

I recently went on a fabric purchasing tour which led me into the bowels of a particular warehouse. I love the dark, creepiness of the battered wood shelving where old remnants lie awaiting their fate. Here, bundle upon bundle of fabric lay tossed into heaps as if unloved and forgotten. I have not forgotten them, I love them. They are attic treasures and I get to sift through their bodies in quiet solitude for few others bother to search these darkened aisles, feathered with cobwebs and old hanging lightbulbs to dimly light our way.
This trip, I found wonderful, soft blue ticking, over dyed by misfortune and tainted a soft fawn brown as if covered with stains. Yards and yards of this mis dyed and stained stripe lay there. It looked like it could be the fabric of my Grandfathers Apron, old, used, worn and loved. I walked out with armloads and on my way out on a different weather beaten shelf, I found the floral match. I smiled. Here was Grammy's old Apron Fabric.

Great clothes begin with great fabric, or at least, fabric that inspires the designer.

Fabric

2010-09-20T21:26:00.000-07:00

Every piece of fabric that lays upon my hand,

causes my mind to drift

into a stream of imaginary images

of all that the fabric could be.

Image after image,

stream after stream,

I imagine all that I want you to wear.

~Susannah

Hostess Apron

2010-09-05T13:09:00.000-07:00

After so many versions, I'm happy.

I like the floral lace rather than geometric points.

... and the green will work for Holiday.

Me

2010-04-08T18:24:00.000-07:00

Somehow, someway, I really, really need to add working out to my day...and to eat real meals....not grab and go food.

Running

2010-04-07T07:17:00.000-07:00

Vermont is warming and I'm drawn to the dirt road where I use to run each day. I worked so hard for the last decade, I am no longer physicaly what I hoped to be. Runnning use to free me from the days stress. Vermont is a beautiful place to run.
~Susannah

The mind churns

2010-04-06T05:05:00.000-07:00

The Gardening season has begun, an entire month earlier than usual. I begin each year by raking the remnants of the snow plow off my lawn's edge, the goal is for this first step to take place on Earth Day. This year it was completed 4 weeks early in late March.Incredible to gain an extra month of Gardening. I look forward to what other surprises might come. In the meantime I play with ideas for new Gardening Aprons. As I begin my summer yard and garden work, I ask myself, what new Gardening Apron would help me?

~Susannah

Fat Girls

2010-03-20T08:14:00.000-07:00

I make Plus Size Aprons. I really want to call the line Fat Girls. I think it gives power to the term, as if to say "Here I am, I'm not going anywhere." My fear is that few people will follow my thinking. So until I feel otherwise, we use the lame term "Plus Size".

When people follow your new idea, its called revolution. When they don't follow you, its called, odd man out.

Creativity

2010-03-05T10:57:00.000-08:00

My creativity has existed within the confines of the tangible; fabric, walls, clay, roving, and quilting. I never intended to be a graphic artist. I still don't want to be one. But living with a near empty wallet causes certain truths to exist. One of those truths is that I cannot afford a web designer. Unfortunately, it must be me. Intentional or not, I seem to be getting better at the task. My latest efforts.
http//www.vermontapron.com/

Love

2010-02-02T20:42:00.000-08:00

It isnt enough to love someone.To remember yourself in the relationship, you have to love not only them but what they bring to your life. You have to love who you become loving them. Love will change you, if the change that comes makes us ugly, then turn away from it and let it go away to someone else.

Love should cause you to bloom, cause you to become more beautiful, more fulfilled and capable of going beyond yourself. If you find yourself with less, find yourself with more sadness than joy, You need to turn away from this love, it isnt for you. Being free leaves you open for new discoveries. Be free and open and turn true to yourself and your own needs, never someone else.

Pattering

2010-01-26T07:54:00.000-08:00

It's January still. I await February and then March and most of all the first rainfall of the new year. I love the pattering on my rooftop , like thumbtapping of a happy hand, awaiting bliss inpatiently. I know it will come. I trust its presence in my life, every year, I smile when when I hear tapping so softly at first then with a celebratory pounding of its arrival back into my life. I smile and lay back in my bed, happy. It's the turn in the year. For once the pattering has come on the roof, the flowers will come, the sun will be warmer and the smell of grass with fill the air during manly whirring sounds. The trees will no longer be silent but sing rustling tunes to the wind, as if soft whispered clapping and I can choose once again to be in light or shadow, every day with grass beneath my feet.

Keep warm for winter and listen for the coming of pattering.
~Susannah

Teacozies....

2009-10-31T22:49:00.000-07:00

Teacozy, Teacozy,so pretty and fine
Teacozy,Teacozy, in ribbons and Lace
Dress up my old pots
in Teacozy Couture
And make them all lovely, in beauty and grace.

By Susannah Allen

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T10:12:00.001-07:00

As I get older, I appreciate this holiday more and more. I find myself exploring the religious aspect of it as friends treat it as a religous holiday. I also appreciate its playfulness. It is the one day each year we can truly dress as we want with nothing less than applause from our community.

Blessings to all.

Teacozy Advertisement

2009-10-23T21:05:00.000-07:00

I'm getting better at graphic arts. Better stated, I am getting more comfortable with it as an art form. I wish I had time for classes. Instead I fumble along, relying on the internet and all it has to offer wanna-be students like me. I am happy with the above photo for advertising this week. Rarely do I feel satisfied. I am getting there.

Some People

2009-10-16T21:06:00.000-07:00

We go through each day passing by person after person. Some say Hi, some don't . Some become a friend or not and pull away, or stay only to later drift away after years of comforting our heart. Some people land in our lives and bring an immediate irritation to our day and we try to quietly step past them.

But some people are stumbled upon by accident and we take a look only to see what slowed our step and out of curiosity we take a longer look and discover a value that we decide to look upon further. Sometimes these people shine and brighter our lives. Sometimes they bring light so bright that we will never be the same, we become illuminated in a way that we never knew we could become. Sometimes their patience and nurturing allows us to bloom and become beautiful in a way we never knew was possible.

It always seems that these are the quiet people...they sit quietly waiting for a wandering soul to pass by so they may as quietly shine and nurture them before moving on to another lucky soul.

I love my mentors as they gave me light in a darkened world...and showed me where to find the sun.

Other people's Art

2009-10-03T06:48:00.000-07:00

You never appreciate someone else's art until you try it yourself. That is what graphic arts is for me. I have no idea what I am doing in the world of graphic art. It looks easy. It is not until you try to create what you want that you realize what an incorrect conclusion that one was! Thank goodness for google and its unlimited supply of information and learning tools.Google, I would not have a business without you.... ok I might..... but it would totally lack advertising and hangtags.

~Susannah

Quilting

2009-08-27T22:28:00.000-07:00

The thing that I love about quilting is that although it is in its simplest form - a blanket to keep us warm against the nights cold air. In its more complex form, it is art. It can be controled, perfectly aligned art or contemporary and expressive with no clear bounderies present in its makers mind as she begins. I had no idea of what I might do when I was given these pieces of fabric. I knew I was creating two quilts that would cover children in the night in its simple form and in its complex form, it would provide a platform of contemporary expression in a jungle themed children's room. This is what took shape from the little piles of fabric that sat upon my table.

Two Quilts nearly the same yet vary in the placement of their colors.

Blending in their jungle palette....

Keeping warm a little girl's night...

and her baby brother....

Thanks for visiting

~Susannah

..as fingertips caress the woven threads before me..

2009-08-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

I adore fabric. I love its variety of textures, its courseness or silkiness, its softly fallen drape or its stiff as a board stubbornness. I adore the brightly colored cottons and the faded, muted tones of old linens. I adore the heavy weight fabrics that land with a thud onto the cutting table and the soft silks that blow away on the breeze that sneaks in through the window. As a designer, I love to blend them in their many weights and tones, like the sum of parts, like an artists palette, I blend and paint them into a new choir of voices, more beautiful together then alone. I hope I have given each piece a richer voice then it would have had alone.

Thank you for visiting. I hope you find peace in your day and the nightime to come.
~Susannah

I was Ballerina Once

2009-06-26T21:35:00.000-07:00

I was a ballerina once, long, long ago. The sky was either blue or rain, the ground was green or snow. I was a ballerina once, with hair down past my knees, silky soft and curly too, at least I felt it so. I was a ballerina once, in the pinkest shoes I knew, I also wore my Mickey socks as well with the cutest bow. I was a ballerina once and the crowd cheered loud and long, while they sat in all our dining chairs, lined neatly in a row. I was a ballerina once my tutu couldnt be found, so I used my silky dressy slip and was so pretty just the same. I was a ballerina once, even though my brother laughed. I spun and bowed and walked tippy toe, so proud of what I was. I was a ballerina once when the sky was bluest blue, I was a ballerina once when when all my dreams were new. I was a ballerina once, that once so long ago, I miss that little piece of me, that never got to grow.
~ written by Susannah Allen

Crookedness

2009-05-24T06:04:00.000-07:00

What is wrong with being crooked?. .....Why do lines need to be so straight? Roads are never straight, they meander along the rivers and homes that lay upon the ground. The road simply travels amongst what lays. Straight lines are not a product of nature, rivers, streams, and the earth itself is round. Plants never grow in straight lines, they pop up wherever they want. Even the earth takes its toll on what we build, time and age are the natural processes that remove our linear lines and create graceful curves in the roofs of the homes we build, gentle dips appear in floors as they age, and yet we remain attracted to straightness, control and linear appearances in everything.Why must I make my life so linear?

Quilting is linear and precise but I like my quilting crooked....or at least straight lines lain in crooked directions.Lines that head to who knows where , meeting up with other lines ..or not.
How many times I have headed out and changed my direction, like Robert, I headed where I saw no steps...and when of the mind, I took a turn ...or two.... and found myself here. Each arbitrary turn or change brings us to a new place, passing those who follow their own paths into their own unknown.
Where willl tomorrow take me? What lies beyond the very next bend? Maybe something extrordinary, maybe something boring, maybe something more painful than I have known before. If I am afraid I can always stop and sit awhile in this place in which I find myself for now, for knowing it makes me feel safe....and once I have rested here, my fear may subside and once again I will rise and take steps in a new direction and become the person those turns create. I may embrace who I become or find myself in grief for who I use to be.

Colors in my Yard

2009-05-23T20:06:00.000-07:00

Summertime brings a quilters palette to what was once a blanket of snow,so crisp and white,cold and quiet,now summer brings the squeaks and twits of busy birds, a ground so green, so dewy and warm under my barefeet. Summer creeps in its bed of green and bits of laughter pop out its head in colors under the sun. Pinks and purples, blues and yellows giggle in the warm air until the grass turns brown and cold again.

Thank you for visiting

~Susannah

Sadness

2009-05-16T10:08:00.001-07:00

It is a truth that some people live lives that are very sad.No reason really as to why they are singled out amongst the rest of us. They just are.They seem to have things that we value but you will find that they worked 4 times as hard to have what we have.They seem to be void of friends and relatives that take interest in them. Why? There never seems to be a reason. People they know die sooner, move away regretfully or fall away from them by circumstances. No matter, the sad people end up alone within their walls that required more effort to end up in the same place as the rest of us.

Life just seems to miss some people. Life seems to land on others, even robustly on some. The sad people seem to have missed it all. They are somehow passed by.Sadness is a state of mind that waits for release, waiting for the cloak of joy they hope is to come, they hope will make all this worthwhile. It typically doesn't.They typically pass away in silence in some forgotten corner alone, as they breath their last breath in the solitude they have come to know, that has come to embrace them, that has come to be their comfort by way of nothing else to fill the void. Sadly, joy does not find us all. Love does not come to all who wait. Sadly, sadness is the friend to many simply because it was all they found in the world.

Winter Passing

2009-04-11T22:24:00.000-07:00

When winter slithers in during late Autumn, I relish its arrival. Its sends me fast into the house to rest my gardener's weariness. Shovels and hoes are cleaned and set aside for the new year. I set myself inside a fire-warmed house and dream of next years seedlings. I welcome the rest from the ever-calling landscape that surrounds my house.

But winter has rested outside my window for far too long. I am quite rested now and grow weary of this lifeless house. I grow weary of the whiteness that blankets my northern landscape. My heart longs for green buds and the sound of the birds that I know will wake me with the sun. I peer out the window's sashes that enprison me inside. I watch the snowfall melt away and a picnic table appears on my lawn, once hidden in the snow, I see even its legs. Soon, even the tables feet will appear and soon after that I will see dark yellow straw-like grass, still sleeping its winter nap. But I know the secret. After the snow melts and shows the yellow grass so still, the sun of spring will come and waken it again to green. ...and then out the door I go and back into the garden.

Quilting

2009-04-04T20:29:00.000-07:00

Triangles, squares, rectangles and really anything that falls from the scissors edge, our hands lift gently, lining up edges and place them beneath the presser foot. Our hands hold still as our foot takes over with its marriage of electrics and mechanics that stitch the fabric together. Seam done, our foot stops and our hands remove our new assembled cloth. Our eyes choose another piece, then hands, then foot, then hands again and the piece grows....it grows into something expected and unexpected, something we will take pride in and something that will teach us what will need to be better next time.

In the end we step back and look over what we have created. I am always a bit amazed what comes from the union of our eyes, our hands, one foot and a pretty sharp scissor.
~~~~

The evolution in my quilting soon took a turn for vintage or the contemporary pretense of it. The faded rose at each corner made all the difference. I tied the layers together not yet owning the ability to hand quilt. An art that deserved it own time and undivided attention.
~~~~~

My Vintage pretense masterpiece only found home near the old door, with the old candlesticks. I never did dare to actually pour that cup of tea.

~~~~~~~

I got bold and brought one outside where neighbors might see, I wondered what it would look like in the sun. The house trim matched and the chairs were the perfect accent. Even the plant stand in the background seemed to join in the chorus of color.

~~~~~~

I was getting tired I think and thought bigger pieces meant it would make up faster. It didn't work that way. They left less room for error. I didn't like the final quilt as much as I might have, had I taken the time it deserved. I hung it in the sun, it somehow deserved such a nice sunny day.

~~~~~~~

I think I began to embrace color organization with more zest than I knew I had, Once outdoors, I was matching quilts to porch furniture and lawns.

~~~~~

My favorite photo. I liked the marriage of color in the landscape and in the quilt; the blacks, the greens and the accent of the sun dancing off the white on white floral that brightens everything.

~~~~~
Thank you for visiting.

~Susannah

Doll Clothes;Dresses of Our Keepers.

2009-03-31T18:36:00.000-07:00

What is it about Dollclothes?
No matter how old we become, there is kinship with the dolls of our childhood. There is comfort in their prescense and comfort in the clothes they wore. We all have them tucked away somewhere; Barbie's gown, Betsy's blankie, someones lost shoe, all bring tugs to our heart. And why not? It's deserving. These pieces of stuffed muslin, cast plaster and vinyl were our first friends, the first receivers of our whispered dreams, the first ears to hear our cries and displeasure at the world around us. No one knew us, like our Dolls. They carried our heart and feelings until,well, it wasn't that we outgrew them...no, none of us did. We simply became too old to carry them publicly. So we quietly, thoughtfully, and regretfully began to set them aside. But they remained our keepers. They are the ones who still and will always be there in the night ready to listen, always agreeing, while wearing the prettiest dress we never did get around to ironing and silently accepting whatever hairdo we graced upon their heads. They remain our first best friends and keepers of our early secrets. Here are a few of the outfits I have made for someone's Best Friend.
~Susannah

...Blogger Home

2009-03-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm here at last, my home, my own little rowboat now set sail on the sea of blogs that brings us together, that make friends of those who never met, read thoughts of those I have never seen, now I,too,have my own little chair upon which to sit and write.

I made my very first banner!!! ..(taking a big proud bow!)..I would like to thank a few people that deserve credit.I need to thank Penn Arts and Sciences for their page on how to make a banner, without their page and its simplistic directions, I would still be in frustrated tears as I attemped to undergo a task for which I have no training.Thank you Penn! You saved my morning and my enthusiasm for graphic arts.Yay! I now know how to resize and attach 3 photos, add my name and save it! I feel enpowered! I feel brave!

Mostly, I would like to thank Shannon Neely for her photography. Thank you Shannon for your gorgeous photographs.Your art inspired me and guided me to find the voice I hoped to share.Your work impresses and touches me. Thank you.

~Susannah