Category Archives: Other Craft

Grrrrrr. And Aaaaargh. And Rawr.

Posted on July 31, 2008 | 16 comments

It has not been a great day. Let me just tell you two things which should never be together. Sand. And Laptop.

Yessirree… fun and games in the Sugarlemon household this morning. The F-word may or may not have been used 😳

Anyway, we aren’t going to dwell on that now, are we? (Fear not – I talked Niamh into a nap, and spent that time taking the keyboard apart and judiciously applying the vacuum and canned air. All is well.)

Instead, I have an actual post-with-photographs lined up! For starters, here’s the pic I grabbed yesterday with the intention of joining Kirsty’s On My Desk meme. So here’s my ‘desk’. Aka the kitchen table. Let’s be generous and call it a ‘workspace’ shall we?

This is pretty much all leftover cruft from Monday and Tuesday craftiness. Do you see that little sketch of an idea just there? And the pattern pieces, and the scraps of fabric? And that really looong needle? Well, lookee here:

Yay. I had an idea come to fruition for once! I’ve taken off the softy training-wheels. This here is Leopold – my very first ever original stuffed critter. I’ve had a couple of ideas rumbling around in my head for a while, and I finally decided to just go for it and see if I could make them work. You can see a bit more of how he’s constructed in this photo:

He’s basically four ‘2D’ components stitched together through the middle (hence that very long needle). After a bit of faffing around, I’m really happy with him. I’m really happy with the ribbon-tag mane.

King of the jungle indeed. How convenient that our backyard is looking particularly jung-ular (!) at the moment 🙂

Leopold is off to Pip, hopefully tomorrow, for the Softies for Mirabel cause. Niamh is not totally on board with this idea, and I have a feeling I’m going to miss his friendly face as well. I think there may well be a Leopold Mk II in my near future. In fact, I was also considering a hand puppet version…

16 Comments

Posted in Other Craft, Sewing

Tagged craft, lion, on my desk, Softies for Mirabel, softy

Out of Uniform

Posted on June 25, 2008 | 5 comments

Finn’s school had a dress-up day today to raise money for another local school recently damaged by fire. The theme was SUPERHEROES & CAREERS. I know. Weird combo. Don’t ask me.

Anyway, I spent yesterday on the sewing machine (pants, apron, super big toque) and today our little super hero went dressed as a chef. (Niamh decided to get in on the crazy hat action too :giggle: – told you she really liked it!)

I have another post lined up for you – almost as cute as this one – but I figure that you’d die of shock if I posted twice in one day… so you’ll just have to wait!

5 Comments

Posted in Family, Other Craft, Sewing, The Kids

Tagged Family, school, sewing

Welcome to Two

Posted on June 3, 2008 | 9 comments

The big day. It dawned misty and magical, so after packing Daddy off to work and Finn off to school, Niamh and Mummy walked down to the reserve to get some Birthday Girl photos.

But. Hmmm. There was a lot of this:

(She’s about to yell!)

And this:

“No Wotos Mummy”

So Mummy took a photo of Niamh’s beautiful Soulemama-birthday-crown on a magical and mystical log, instead.

(Note – I made this yesterday. So much fun – It took me about an hour (and only that long because I was messing around with elastic casings). Niamh does like to wear it about, honestly. At her convenience, not mine!)

Then Niamh had to try out the very wet playground (of course she did):

(At least we got to show off the new shorter ‘do’)

Then we found out Mummy forgot to pack a playground snack. (Ouch). Whereupon we went home, and Niamh had a nice long kip:

And Mummy got the kitchen ready for this afternoon’s cupcake fest:

Finally… proof that there was both smiling and crown-wearing yesterday:

Happy Birthday beautiful girl!

9 Comments

Posted in Family, Other Craft, Sewing, The Kids

Tagged birthday, sewing

Valerie!

Posted on June 1, 2008 | 3 comments

Look at all that lovely de-lurking down there! Thank you for all the kind comments on my birthday post. (Only one ‘You’re Ace’ though. Hmmmm.) I’m delighted to announce that the ten pretty flossies will be making their way to Valerie any day now.

I was going to give you photographic evidence of the name-draw as carried out by my barrel boy, Finn – but Melbourne winter evening + poor kitchen lighting did not permit. Besides – see above. It looked kind of like that! You’re just going to have to take my word for it 🙂

Valerie, if you would be so kind as to send me your details, I’ll have the floss off in the mail to you ASAP.

Oh, by the way, if anyone else is interested in what happened to my floss dyeing tutorial (I had an email a little while back about this), I do plan on getting it back up at some point – hopefully with accompanying photographs. In the meanwhile, I have the text of it available as a PDF, so just email me if you’re interested in doing some dyeing of your own!

3 Comments

Posted in Dyeworks, General Ramblings, Other Craft

Tagged blog giveaway, hand-dyed

Hip Hip Hooray…

Posted on May 28, 2008 | 17 comments

… the blog turns three today!!!

By some odd chance of fate (the strangest coincidences keep happening to me lately – something in the air?), this lovely lady asked me yesterday how long I had been blogging. It occurred to me later that my ‘bloggiversary’ (cripes I hate that word!) must be sometime around now, and lo and behold, May 28 is it. Yep, I’ve been rabbiting on for lo these 36 months now. So Happy Birthday blog!

Now like all good crafty bloggers, I’m giving the birthday gifty to you 🙂 Readers-slash-commenters bring the life to a blog, and I am so grateful to those of you who have hung around, especially over the last angst-ridden, sparsely-updated twelve months or so. Niamh and I have assembled this pretty little palette of Sugarlemon hand-dyed embroidery floss. All you need to do is delurk, tell me I’m Ace (or not!), and one random person scoops the lot.

Also, we made Birthday Scroggin. I can’t guarantee there’ll be any of that left when the time comes to send off the floss though :giggle:

(Actually, the Scroggin has nothing to do with the bloggiversary, but it is very festive, don’t you think? Inspired by an old Kiddley post. Yum).

(Oh yes, and smilies still not fixed. Gosh I’m lazy!)

17 Comments

Posted in Blog Blather, Dyeworks, Other Craft

Tagged blog milestone, hand-dyed

Hearts & Flowers

Posted on May 13, 2008 | 6 comments

There’s no escaping it – excluding January, 2-oh-oh-8 has been a pretty lean year for me, crafting- and stitching-wise. I’m a bit bummed about that, but as usual, when I’m feeling a lot of stress about other things, I find the urge to create falls in a heap. Instead, I’ve been doing a lot more reading than usual (the highlight of which has been the very beautiful Girl with a Pearl Earring – how, oh how have I not read this before?) More recently, I’ve developed an unhealthy addiction to Packrat on Facebook (and I’m going to go ahead and blame Annette for that, even though I know she will protest!)

All has not been completely lost though. Way way waaay back in February, I did actually do a wee bit o’ cross-stitchin’ 🙂 Can’t for the life of me remember where this cute heart is from (DMC??), but it was a freebie chart, and I stitched it with a pretty pink hand dyed silk from Jo.

Then, in March, I became a joiner-in-er! I sidled into a Brown Owls meeting one night, had a bit of fun stitching up my name and Tweenie panels, decided that a room full of crafty strangers wasn’t quite as scary as I thought, and became a Seconder that very night. What is Brown Owls? Why it’s ‘Brownies’ for Crafters, of course :giggle: (or ‘my weird cult’, if you believe my sweet husband!) Bunches of crafty chicks sitting around the clubhouse drinking tea, eating bikkies, chatting, and learning and sharing bits of crafty goodness. All thanks to the Good Lady Pip.

I’ve been to another two meetings since – in April we played with hooks and yarn. After the crochet class, inspired by Lara’s collection of flowers, I came home and puzzled my way through a few online tutorials to create this bunch:

At last night’s meet we had a bit of a Mix-up – everyone brought in whatever they liked to work on, plus some Show & Tell. I was so worried I was going to be the daggiest crafter there – because it has always seemed to me that even in this atmosphere of crafty revival, cross-stitch is still stuck firmly in the ‘Nanna crafts’ category. But surprise! and yay! I wasn’t the only one who brought cross-stitch. I know… I worry about the silliest things 😳

Oh yes, and on the weekend, one of my red flowers made its way onto a last-minute handmade gift for my Mum for Mothers’ Day (makes me feel like I’m back in kindergarten… in a good way!)

Pretty!

But the thing that is making me happiest of all today is a small but significant breakthrough in the Finn situation. We’ll get there yet 🙂

6 Comments

Posted in Counted Stitchwork, Finished, Other Craft, Sewing, Yarncraft

For Jenna

Posted on March 5, 2008 | 4 comments

Cards for Jenna

Today’s Show & Tell comes to you courtesy of my ‘1000th comment giveaway’. Remember that, waaaay back in November? Nope, didn’t think so! Jenna had probably well and truly given up on me by the time her package arrived… this week! I have no good excuse – I had gathered together a little bunch of goodies months ago, but then wanted to make something to include as well… but seeing as I had lost my stitching-mojo along the way somewhere, I was stumped for awhile. Finally, finally, I settled on some personalised Gocco-printed stationery. I put together a little starry design based on Jenna’s blog theme, had lots of fun printing it up, packaging it all together in little organza bags, and finally got that package off. I’m so glad it has arrived, Jenna, and so glad you like everything 🙂

Oh, and can I just say for the rest of you – I am sorry about these pictures. I was trying to finish everything up while Niamh was napping that day, and I just didn’t manage to get the best photographs. You’ll just have to believe me when I (very modestly) tell you these look so much better in the flesh!

Cards for Jenna

(Stars courtesy of the 90 Stars BRK font found at Da Font)

4 Comments

Posted in Other Craft

Tagged blog giveaway, gocco, stationery

January Dump

Posted on March 4, 2008 | 7 comments

This is a bit of a filler post, I apologize. It’s a bunch of stuff I made in January but never got around to blogging, perhaps because I was busy with the making, and with all that other stuff. So here you go:

I made this little artist-tote thingummy for Marita’s daughter Heidi’s birthday. The inspiration came from several places, but in the end I sat down and made it up as I went. Despite a few dud calculations, I think it turned out okay.
Mini Artist Tote outside
Mini Artist Tote inside

My sister stayed with us for a couple of days in January, and asked if I could make her a pouch for her new digital camera. The camera is shockproof and waterproof, so the pouch didn’t need to provide super protection, just a barrier against scratching. The first attempt came out a bit small (bonus for me, as it’s now my coin purse), but number two was a winner.
Zipper pouches

Next up, bibs (same spotty fabric!) for a friend’s baby. This is where I shamefacedly admit I haven’t sent them off yet, d’oh! Suzie, if you’re reading this, I’m so sorry, and pretend to be surprised when you (finally) see them, okay?
More bibs

Then, Finn’s school library bag gave me the chance to use up some more of that mushroom fabric, plus co-ordinating colours picked by him (hence the yellow, of which I am less than fond):

But wait. That’s not all! I also made a green stripy grocery bag – no pic, but it’s from this craftster tute. It was easy peasy, and I plan to make a bunch more. Aaaand, then, squeaking in on the last and second last days of January, I de-and-reconstructed a men’s green shirt to make a school Art Smock. Yay!

And just in case you think I wasn’t busy enough in January, guess what else I did? (This will make you fall down in disbelief, I promise)… I read FOUR books:

The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
Other People’s Children (Joanna Trollope)
I Choose To Live (Sabine Dardenne)
Dandelion Soup (Babs Horton)

(Of those, I heartily recommend the First and Fourth, but reserve merely a ‘meh‘ for the others).

So now. I think you can guess what two of my New Year’s Resolutions were!

7 Comments

Posted in Other Craft, Sewing

Tagged artist tote, bibs, library bag, Reading, resolutions, sewing, zippered pouches

Pre-Christmas Crafting

Posted on January 12, 2008 | 12 comments

I didn’t pledge handmade this (past) Christmas, but as it turned out, many of our gifts were handmade anyway. First there were these, next up were a couple of bags for some more small friends of ours. This one:
Library bag for Mr G

using that ubiquitous mushroom fabric, was for a five year old boy, and was given as a Library bag, complete with new book inside. The other:

Bag and Bunny for Miss A

I made for his sister, who is three months younger than Niamh. The bunny pattern came from here; the bags I made up as I went along. I was quite pleased with these, and I think the recipients were happy too 🙂

Next came a wild burst of kitchen activity (mostly by Dermot, I do admit), and some playing with my new toy for labelling and packaging, to create the fabulous boxes of goodies for our families:

Christmas Goodies

All boxed up

Gocco Printed Xmas Cards

(Inside: Orange cordial, Spiced nuts, Mexican drinking chocolate, Dried Mango, Cranberry & Pistachio biscotti, Orange spiced tea blend – all handmade; and a teatowel – which we did not make ourselves!)

Finally, at the eleventh hour (the night before Christmas Eve), I managed to squeeze in some homemade goodness for my own kiddos. I finished up the stitching of ElfGirl and ElfBoy, and made them up into a couple of simple drawstring bags. In hopes of starting off a new Christmas tradition (which I kept hearing about on various blogs), these held brand new PJs for Christmas Eve. Here they are under the tree:

Xmas PJ Bags

Oh, and lest I forget, somewhere in there, I also managed to whip up Finn’s party cake:
Bowling Party cake

I made up a packet teacake for this, as everyone knows kids only eat the (hideously sugary buttercream) icing and leave the rest. For his actual birthday, I made a more grown up cake – a rich, moist, dark chocolate cake covered in ganache and silver cachous… but forgot to take a photo, d’oh!

Next up, post-Christmas crafting 🙂

12 Comments

Posted in Family, Other Craft, Sewing

Tagged birthday cake, christmas, embroidery, gifts, gocco, packaging, sewing, tote bags

Windows, Lights… Pillows?

Posted on December 18, 2007 | 4 comments

‘Tis late. We’re not long back from ‘doing’ the Myer windows and the Boulevard lights – two Melbourne Christmas institutions if ever there were. With a stop off at Haigh’s on the way. Yum. Two happy but tired kids fell asleep on the way home. I thought I’d show you a couple of recent finished objects before I do the same.

This cushion:
Finn's Cushion

which is a long awaited finish (remember the work in progress?) from Finn. He finished it in time to show his teacher last week at his (sob! sniff!) last Kinder session.

The proud boy (since having a new camera – early gift from Mum, thanks Mum 🙂 – necessitated taking new playground shots of kids):
Finn

And a finish from me, which I probably shouldn’t really be showing off yet, since it’s still en route to the recipient:
Ornament Exchange 2007

This was for an ornament exchange on the Aus Xers yahoo group. I joined up before I realised what a slump in stitching I was about to experience. Blah. So I have to confess… I probably broke the rules a little bit. This stitched piece (a Drawn Thread freebie) was sitting in my ‘to be finished’ pile already(!) When I realised I had zero chance of getting something new stitched for the exchange, I picked this out and finished it up as a pillow ornament. Is that bad? Anyway, I’m not counting it as a finish for the year, but I do plan to restitch it for myself, because I think it’s really pretty. If I manage to kick myself in the butt after Christmas is over, I might just get it done before ’08!