Treat Yo Self!

When we started Drapes of Wrath almost a year and a half ago, we had no idea we'd still be going at this point. It's an awesome feeling of pride and success. And all throughout that time we've been constantly striving to improve our workmanship, come up with fresh designs, and really put 110% into our work. Recently we finally broke down and admitted that if at least a third of the time you spend sewing an apron is spent ripping stitches because the bobbin jumped the track, or tried to eat the fabric, something has to change.

We'd outgrown our sewing machine, not that it hadn't served us well. But it had become like the grumpy old cat that crosses the whole linoleum kitchen to hock a hairball on the carpet out of spite.

Enter the Singer 160 Limited Edition sewing machine. We'd been eying it longingly for a month or so since it came out when it finally went on sale. The price was equivalent to our online shopping when the shipping cost isn't an issue, and we could take it home that very same day.

This was our Treat Yo Self moment, as you can tell we're big fans of Parks and Recreation, and we weren't about to let it slip away. We bought the machine, and after an unbearably long "instructional" session with the representative at the store, we brought it home.

This machine is a thing of beauty, both literally and figuratively, starting with the sleek black design with gold trim, reminiscent of the original singer machines. It has a large sewing area with a lot of room to move fabric around, which is invaluable when we're working on our suit aprons.


If it's physical beauty weren't enough of a selling point, this machine sews like a dream. It's incredibly smooth and rarely steps out of line.  While it's not a super robotic embroidering machine, it had a wide selection of stitches that more than meet our needs. All of which can be easily switched to, or adjusted with the touch screen panel.


We've actually had it for a while now, but honestly we've been to busy playing with it to stop and take photos for the post. We even got a special attachment used for ruffling and pleating. My personal favorite function is one of the decorative stitches which makes a little vine pattern with leaves. It adds a cute and fun touch, and is no more difficult that sewing a straight line.

 When it comes down to it, we're not only treating ourselves, we're treating all of our customers. When you have good tools that make your work easier, and more enjoyable, the quality improves as well. We've been able to create high quality pieces that we are more than proud of as we head into the uncharted waters of internet small business.

Portland Iron Chef Apron: Put A Bird On It

We recently were invited, through the Pacific Northwest Artisans Team on Etsy, to participate in a silent auction in Portland, OR. The auction will be held at the 11th Annual Portland's Original Iron Chef event, benefiting Children's Relief Nursery. We were drawn to this event initially because, being from Oregon, we like to give back to our home state. But also, how perfect an opportunity to give an apron up for auction at a cooking event!

All of the fabric used on this apron is up-cycled, with the exception of the heat resistant batting used in the potholders. We wanted to keep the design simple and size-friendly, but we still wanted to add a touch of personality. For this we were inspired by a skit from the show Portlandia, where a couple take over an entire shop in Portland putting birds on everything. We finished off the theme by making the potholders egg shaped.

The event is Friday April, 20th and we can't wait to hopefully see some pictures of the event and maybe even hear from the winner of our apron. Did you see that apron before? I didn't. Now it has a bird on it!

Mandy's Bytes: Dulce de Platanos

Today's recipe post stems from our new project on YouTube, You Can't Handle the Fruit! in which we try various fruits and veggies that may be intimidating because of their appearance or just fear of the unknown. After our first video featuring dragon fruit, we got a request for plantains. Since plantains need to be cooked we decided to use this recipe for Dulce de Platanos from Epicurious.

Dulce de Platanos
(Sweet Plantains in Buttered Rum and Coconut Sauce)
2 very ripe (brown to black) plantains
1/2 stick of butter
2 Tbsp dark rum
1/2 unsweetened coconut milk
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup heavy cream
First cut the ends off the plantain and peel them, then slice into diagonal slices, unfortunately for our dish the plantains we found were no where near as ripe as they should have been.

Start by melting the butter in a large skillet, the recipe says to warm the butter until the "foam subsides." We weren't really sure what that meant at first but, sure enough, the butter got foamy. And then it subsided. The butter was also just starting to brown, this is when you want to add the slices of plantain.
The slices need to cook in the butter on each side for about 3 minutes. Make sure not to crowd them too much in the pan, we used a nice big 12" skillet. After 3 minutes flip them over to cook on the other side. One they are done cooking use a slotted spoon or spatula to scoop them out onto a plate.

Save the butter, you'll be using that next. Add the sugar to the pan with what's left of the butter and stir until it caramelizes, this will take at least 5 minutes. While this is in progress, combine the coconut milk and rum in a small saucepan and heat until warm. You'll be able to smell the alcohol cooking off.
Once the sugar is fully caramelized, remove the skillet from the heat. Pour in the coconut milk mixture and whisk continuously, the caramel with bubble and produce a lot of steam, so don't let it take you by surprise. Return the pan to low heat and keep whisking until the caramel has dissolved in the coconut mixture.
After the caramel has dissolved again, return the plantain slices to the skillet and cook, without stirring for another 5 minutes until they are warm all the way through and become tender. (Since our plantains weren't ripe, so they never really got tender, which was very disappointing.) In the saucepan not heat up the heavy cream until warm.

Once the plantain slices are tender, drizzle the warm cream over the skillet and shake to mix the cream into the caramel sauce. Then let it all cool, and serve over vanilla ice cream.

You can see our You Can't Handle the Fruit! video review of plantains on our YouTube Channel.

Spring Fling Fabric Preview

It's been a while since we showed off any of the awesome fabrics in our stash (which is waay to big at the moment), so while were were picking out things we want to use for spring time we took some pictures to share.

We just found these floral vintage linens at the Goodwill in Monroe the other day and fell in love with them. We happened to have the perfect green in stock, also up-cycled from linens.

We've been holding onto this adorable bunny print until it got closer to Easter time.

Of course we couldn't do spring without a bunch of beautiful floral prints, this one has a gorgeous deep red that matched a maroon linen we had left over from a custom order.

This is a piece of vintage fabric that was a gift from a friend. I love these vintage floral prints that are so delicate and the combination of yellow, black and blue is very unique.

Lastly this find was so awesome, also from our trip to the Goodwill in Monroe, we bought an entire queen sized vintage white sheet just for this floral edging. Fabric hunting is easily half the fun of running our shop, it's so hard not to keep it all for our own devices. Keep an eye out for these to show up in the shop!

New Thank You Cards

From the time we started our shop, we've gone through many different ideas and techniques for our care tags and Thank You notes. Most of the time we would just grab blank card, or use a fancy card-stock page for the care tag and thank you note. But none of these looked very polished or professional. The one technique we feel really fits our style is using stamps. So when we saw a large stamp at the store which had Thank You in many different large and small typewriter style fonts, we knew it was perfect.

It matched our logo font of a typewriter style, and was just the right size for a small card. Our original plan was to use a neutral card stock with the Thank You stamp and then paste on a cut out of a bright color with our logo in the front. But as we made the cards, placing our name stamp at the bottom, they looked so crisp and nice that we decided to trust our gut and keep it simple.

Once we decided that, we realized that now we had a huge package of bright colorful cardstock that we no longer had the intended purpose for. But as the saying goes, go big or go home. We made cards of every color in addition to the neutral toned cards.

In the end the grand total came out to 76 cards, each having been stamped three times, for a total of 228 stampings. But the end result was well worth it, I love the way our cards turned out and I will feel proud using them knowing that they were made in anticipation that they will all be used.

No longer will we wait for an order to come in before making a care tag and a card as an after thought, as though we weren't really sure another sale would happen. It's time we started acting with the confidence and assurance that all of our 82 sales have shown us: we make things that people want to buy, and we should be proud of it.

So keep an eye out for one of these cards in your next order, because they were made by hand with the care and appreciation we feel towards all of our customers.