Jessica over at A Little Gray has been hosting a year-long sew-along for Little Things to Sew. She’s been posting lovely tutorials for the selected project each month. If you’ve been interested in sewing projects from our book, you might be interested in joining along. This month’s project is Play Town.

When S was younger we spent a lot of time building little cities on our living room floor. Those cities inspired this little town, and my favorite part about them is the versatility of the brownstone building. For the photo shoot we made a parking garage and a yarn store. I still want to make an apartment building (with a little garbage can in the back) and maybe a brownstone or a townhouse. The little houses are so much fun to decorate. I made a pink one that we didn’t use for the book that was inspired by a Victorian house with an elaborate covered porch and fancy windows.

Anyway, upcoming project for the sew-along include the Explorer Vest or the Red Riding Hood in March, and the Travel Quilt in April. If you look back through the archives you’ll find the previous featured projects: the Bucket Hat, Penguin Backpack, Bias-Trimmed Apron, Puppet Theater, Cozy Winter Hood, and the Bear Carrier.

It gives me great pleasure to announce that Oliver + S Little Things to Sew is now available en francais!

Oliver + S Petites Choses a Coudre is published by Les Editions de Saxe and is available at amazon.fr and probably all sorts of adorable little French bookstores and fabric shops too. I really think this an excellent excuse for me to go back to France and get a copy for myself, don’t you agree?

C’est magnifique!

This weekend we bundled up for a trip to MoMA and a quick stop to see the tree at Rockefeller Center. (We were there with just a few other visitors…whoa!) It’s really starting to feel like winter here in New York!

I’m starting to think about all the projects in Little Things to Sew that lend themselves perfectly to the cold. For example, the Cozy Bear Hood…

or the scarf with the hidden opening to fasten it… (shown here with the School Days Coat in a cozy wool/cashmere blend.)

Or the little mittens.

Or all three! Do you have any winter sewing on your list? Maybe a post-holiday project you’re planning? Something that will let you cocoon for a bit after all the festivities?

The Associate Press just put out a lovely piece about Little Things to Sew. The article was written by Holly Ramer and includes this cute photo of a little girl wearing the Reversible Bucket Hat. Your local newspaper may have picked up the story, or you might see it sometime in the next week.

(Associated Press/Holly Ramer)

Included in the article is a link to a free download of the bucket hat pattern and instructions, so if you haven’t purchased the book yet you can try the pattern for yourself.

Here is a link to the article in The Washington Post. Have you seen it in your local paper yet?

Now that school is out for the summer, S is keeping busy for a couple of weeks with play dates and her summer reading list before she gets on a plane to spend time at the lake with her grandparents.

In the meantime, we’re renovating the studio to get ready for some filming we’ll be doing there later this month (more on that soon). S stopped by the other day and offered to chip in by sweeping up some sawdust.

The apron is from Little Things to Sew, made up in prints from Modern Workshop. This was left over from a class I taught at Farmhouse Fabrics a few months ago and, like most of my sewing these days, I never took the time to photograph it afterwards.

It’s clearly getting some good use, however; just before school ended it also served as a paleontologist uniform for some kindergarten dinosaur digging!

Now that it’s March and Little Things to Sew has officially launched, we’re going to get things going with a pop-up blog tour. Instead of telling you in advance who will be reviewing the book, we’ll let you discover it for yourself on some of your favorite blogs and sites. Today the tour got started at The Purl Bee, one of my favorite sources of inspiration.

Keep an eye out for more reviews during the month. And we’ll post a wrap-up of the reviews here, in case you miss them.