This year has been fun, and we’re a little sorry to see it go so soon. We’re very glad that you have been a part of it!

To thank you for being a member of our little sewing family, we made you each a little gift.

We know how helpful it can be to have the measurements of your little one handy, so we’ve made up a wallet-sized measurement chart that you can print out, trim down, and fold up.

When folded in half, it’s the same size as a credit card, so it will fit neatly in your wallet and will be handy the next time you’re shopping and can’t recall the shoe size for your 2-year-old. Or when you’re shopping for tights and need to know the height and weight of a certain 6-year-old.

I’m planning to complete one for S (those aren’t her real measurement in the photo, but it will be fun to see how close I came when I estimated!) and save each one when I replace it with a new one as she grows. I think it will be fun for us to look back at the charts as she gets older, and maybe she’ll be curious about how her growth and development when she has children of her own.

You can download your own measurement chart from our website. Happy holidays!

Oliver, S, Ms. Potatohead (courtesy of the real S), and all of us wish you and yours a very happy holiday!

Do you use Firefox? If so, you’ll enjoy this.

We’ve just released the latest Oliver + S persona for Firefox: our paper dolls dressed in the new Nature Walk and School Photo patterns. Why not use it to dress your browser in Oliver + S for back-to-school.

Back in design school, one of our best professors frequently gave our class the assignment to go home and each sketch 50 dress concepts before class the next day. To come up with that many unique ideas in one evening, on top of our full course-load of homework, felt unimaginably difficult. But it took that many sketches to really push out new and imaginative designs, and somehow we always managed to complete the task on time.

I recently gave myself the same type of homework and spent the past three full days filling a sketchbook with page upon page of ideas for future sewing patterns. Hopefully when I look back at the designs I’ll find some useful ideas, now that the fall patterns are at the printer and it’s time to start work on the spring collection.

While I was in the studio, looking for some inspiration, I also came across some other sketches and thought you might enjoy seeing them. These are the spring sewing patterns, not in their first incarnation as preliminary ideas but as part of the package I send to Dan, our illustrator, each season, so he can paint the paper doll clothing. Among the many ways that I communicate with Dan are sketches I make showing him what the clothes should look like on the dolls. I also send photographs, fabric and color swatches, and lengthy notes about each garment. But the sketches are the most useful part of the package, I think. I can show exactly what the silhouette is: how long a skirt should be, how closely (or loosely) a garment should fit, where the pockets are placed and how the collar sits. Here is the Ice Cream Dress (sorry for the smudges; I generally work with pencil on vellum so I can draw directly on top of the a paper doll to get the proportions right.):

I get to pretend that I’m an illustrator when I do this, except that I use a lot of words to show what I mean. Dan doesn’t have that luxury. (On the other hand, he’s a professional illustrator; I merely need to communicate an idea, thank goodness.)

Here are the other spring patterns, just for the fun of it:

So I spell out (literally) a lot of information here, but there is one area in which I let Dan have complete control: I always suggest a few props to coordinate with the name of each pattern, and Dan chooses exactly which prop to draw and how to show it. He’s never disappointed me. My favorite prop is still the bunny slippers. After he finished the painting, I found an exact match for them and bought them as a prop for Quilt Market.

Ok, back to my sketches.

Attention Firefox users. You already dress your kids in Oliver + S designs. Now you can dress your browser in Oliver + S too.

We’ve recently released our first two Firefox personas. One features Pearl, our spool dog. The other (shown above) features the Oliver + S paper dolls wearing our new Spring 2010 styles.

You can get them as free downloads from the Mozilla Personas site. Enjoy!

Remember our friend Pearl from last fall?

We’re happy to announce that Pearl is back!

Starting today, and while supplies last, all website orders for Oliver + S patterns will again ship with a complimentary copy of the Pearl spool dog postcard. Cut out Pearl’s front and rear, glue them to a long thin spool, and send Pearl out to play with your Oliver + S paper dolls.

Enjoy!