This one is for you pops – 101 Tees just arrived in the mail!

I would be a gazillionaire, if I could bottle the feeling I get when a years worth of work arrives at my doorstep in the form of a book!  It has been a long and hard journey.…I made 178 designs for the book and 150+ made it to print….but for some reason we call it 101 Tees….???  LOL!

This book was particularly difficult to design and write – I guess I should not say difficult since the projects are all easy to make.  A journey is probably a better way to explain it.  You see, when I was first chatting with my editor about the follow up concept to 101 Snappy Fashions and we decided on tees as the next canvas, I did not know the life changes that were around the corner for me and my family.

I had a few of the initial sample designs finished when my father-in-law became ill and was admitted into the hospital.  I was under a pretty aggressive deadline so I was borrowing time from the next day and then time stopped.  It was hard to feel creative.  It was hard to thread the needle.  It was hard to concentrate.  And then I thought about my father-in-law…..he was a successful tailor who had overcome more odds than any other person that I know.

As I visualized his life, him stitching and sewing his way for survival while he was held as a prisoner of war, I was filled with his ambition, his love of the thread and his passion for creating.  I began designing anywhere I could.  The embroidered tee in the above picture I made in his hospital room.  I remember showing it to him and he had such a big smile and giggled when he looked at it.  He gave me a thumbs up.  After he passed away it was hard to make anything.  It was hard to glitter.  Hard to paint.  Hard to think about anything creative. I wish he was here to see the finished book – since it was his life story that got me through the process.

As I flip through the book I am so excited and I know Hrant would be so proud of it!!!!  It is nuts when you see it all put together.   So many talented hands and minds work to make a book, a book!  To celebrate this journey and my latest book, I am going to do a bunch of giveaways and eat a big piece of chocolate cake!