Category Archives: Sewing

Bead People are Go

BeadPeople01
Success! But a little bit funny around the neck where their insides are showing (oo-er!) I shall have to make a whole gang anyway no doubt, since at present there is only one each for the bigger kids, and that is not enough to prevent ‘troubles’. So I’ll improve my technique a bit as I go.

BeadPeople02
The Steiner/Waldorf blocks (also affectionately known as ‘offcuts’ around here, thanks to Dermot being the son of a joiner!) were from Mum for Rohan’s birthday. They came from Winterwood, we visited for the first time last week. For the record – beautiful shop, beautiful, beautiful felt, but I don’t recommend driving from here to there and back again with a passenger prone to carsickness. Sorry Mum! (She couldn’t even drive us, since my car is a manual and I won’t let her drive it!)

My Creative Space – Bead People

CreativeSpaceApr-15

Today I’m making wee folk for my wee folk. Do you want to know how? Trudi posted this great little tutorial a couple of weeks ago as her Creative Space. She also sells kits in her etsy shop, with all the little bits and pieces you need, including some pieces of her hand-dyed felt. The embroidery floss is the only thing not included – I picked these two out of my stash of my own hand-dyed floss. (I’ve been itching to get back to some dyeing, too – so little time, so much to fill it with! But who’d be happy if that was reversed?!)

Have a happy Thursday, whatever you’re making or doing. Check out some more creative spaces over at Kirsty’s.

Hoppy Easter

I hope everybunny had a hoppy easter!

(!!!Sorry!!! Not sure what came over me there!!!)

Easter Bunnies

We had a lovely and far-too-chocolate-filled weekend at my father-in-law’s place in central Victoria. The kids got to run riot with the cousin they don’t see enough of, and I got bit more granny-squaring in, despite the (was it slightly derisive?) commentary from uncles-in-law. Pfft to them, I say. Also, there might have been a little bitty trip to the Bendigo Woollen Mills and Bendigo Spotlight somewhere in there… can’t remember… crafty amnesia has befallen me. (What stash diet?!)

Easter Bunnies

Bunny finger-puppet project from the purl bee. A great little project for the budding crafter: Finn stitched his own, I just added the face and tail for him.

Skirts, skirts, skirts

So as Debby called to my attention, there are things I have made to post. Hooray!

Dancing Queen Skirt (Niamh)

I’ve been in a fug of not-enough-sleep for so long that my crafty groove was in danger of disappearing completely, but since the year turned, little by little I’ve been clawing it back. On one particular day lately, I was just desperate to be doing something other than cleaning the house (which really needed doing.). So Niamh and I turned up the ABBA music, she danced, and I put together this simple little skirt. And then she put it on and danced some more. It’s the Dancing Queen skirt! And the next day, Molly needed one to match!

Dancing Queen Skirt (Molly)

The main fabric is from the ‘Natural Effects’ line by Michele D’Amore. I love this particular fabric, it’s striped with three different patterns, so the end result looks more interesting than just a rectangle of fabric with an elastic casing (which is what it is!) Also, I bound the hem with some Denyse Schmidt ‘Flea Market Fancy’ (the only piece I’ve ever owned. How crazy are people for this fabric line?!) Result? Super cute:

Skirt Girls

Several days later, (actually nights… I left it until late late late one night to work on tulle for the first time. Coz I’m smart like that.) I put together this sparkly concoction for Niamh’s dance classes. Each Thursday Niamh goes to a dance class especially for tinies. It is very cute, but it oversteps my tolerance for PINK! just that little bit. Since there’s not really a dress code (low-stress dance classes = good), I figured I could make something which fitted in with Niamh’s requirements of pretty and sparkly, without it being PINK!

Mermaid Tutu 01

Mermaid Tutu 02

Mermaid Tutu 03

Yeah, she likes it! Naturally, Molly had to get in on this action too (and please notice uber-cool tie-dye t-shirt, which I made years ago for one of Finn’s bears):

Mermaid Tutu (Molly)

PS. Photos of the booties I made for Rohan (which Debby also mentioned) will be forthcoming. Just as soon as I, um… locate the other one!

PPS. There is a disagreement between my significant other and I as to whether my use of the word “fug” in this post was legitimate or not. Dermot thinks it’s not. Mum agrees with me (I probably learned it from her!). What say you? I present to you this meaning – don’t you think that not having slept properly for a year would lead to a “stuffy or malodorous state” within one’s brain?! I’m standing by it, anyway! (Besides, I like to mention the fact that I haven’t slept for A YEAR to him as frequently as possible! It’s a guilt thing 🙂 )

Making…

Bunting on Monday…

Bunting
Project overseen and fabrics chosen by Niamh, purchased in the recent GJ’s fabric sale – to which every craft blogger in the north seems to have been!

Cracked my first Nicole Mallalieu pattern on Tuesday…

Purse01a

Purse01b
Are you sick of this fabric yet? Not I! This is Nikki’s 90mm coin purse pattern, and not terribly tricky… though I must admit it’s not quite finished – I haven’t tackled the crimping/squishing of the metal frame yet, as there’s nothing resembling a cork coaster in the house. Think I’ll be making more of these 🙂

Revisiting “Smartie Cookies” on Wednesday…
SmartieCookies

I had some helpful comments back on this post after we used M&Ms on the last batch of these. This time we used Smarties. Hardly any of these cracked, which is good, but some of the (all-natural, as Marita pointed out) colours were altered in cooking – the green ones turned yellow, the blues went quite pale, and some of the others were dulled as well. They look like they’re out of a 70’s cookbook! Oh well. Tasty nonetheless. I think our playgroupers appreciated them.

And The Weiners Are…

(Winners are always weiners in our household!)

Courtesy of random.org, the winners of my SEWN giveaway are… dum ta da dummmm:

1. Simple Sewing was won by Justine (comment #35), and
2. Yeah, I made it myself was won by Sarah (comment #22)

Congratulations to you both – I’ll have your books in the mail to you just as soon as you let me know your details 🙂

Now… am off to soothe my poor throat with split pea and ham soup and take it easy for the rest of the night (I hope). We spent the weekend away with family and have brought home with us yet another random viral thing. Grrr. (No, not swine flu!)

Giveaways Galore

How did you fare in the Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway Day? I did very well for myself indeed. Unfortunately I let the deadline for giving stuff away slip by me (which is why I’m joining in a different giveaway, see below…), but I had a ball finding new blogs and entering a couple of dozen giveaways. And I won two! Firstly, I was the lucky recipient of a voucher to Lauren Williams’ madeit store. Lauren creates jewellery pieces using fabric covered buttons. I chose these two pieces:
LaurenWilliams

And I love them both!

Secondly, on its way to join my small but growing quilt book collection, will be the learn to quilt book given away by Dianna of “Someday I’ll Be…“. Thankyou Dianna 🙂

Which brings me to my giveaway. I’m signing on to ‘attend’ the SEWN Launch party. Have you heard about this? SEWN is the new online quilting and sewing community about to launch. As part of the party, loads of blogs are signing up to giveaway free stuff, and you can win prizes at the site as well.

What am I giving away? These two books:
Giveaway
1. Simple Sewing by Lotta Jansdotter, and
2. Yeah, I made it myself by Eithne Farry

How do you win? Simply leave a comment on this post, telling me which of these books you’d like to win (or ‘both’, if you want to be in the running for either book), and you’ll be in the running to win 🙂 Make sure to leave an email address so I can contact you. I’ll randomly draw two winners on Monday June 8th, at (let’s say) 6pm Melbourne time. (That’s Melbourne, Australia, not the other one!) Good luck!

Lastly, I know this has been a pretty Niamh-centric blog of late, but I just have to show you her creative space! A friend gave her a sticky-foam-shapes craft kit for her birthday, and would you believe this occupied her for two straight hours today?! That is simply astounding for a three year old, if you ask me!

NiamhCreativeSpace

My Creative Space

Have been practicing my free motion quilting. I first tried this on Saturday. Forgetting to switch to the darning foot was not a good start! I’m getting a little better. It all goes awry when I actually think about it; seems to work much better when I switch off my brain – which makes it just about the perfect activity for me right now!

Creative-Space-Jun-4

Kirsty set us a challenge to include heart(s) in our creative spaces today. Uh… no prizes for finding mine :giggle: (But click for a bigger pic if you need to). That was fun!

PS: There are two! (But they’re kinda the same)

My Creative Space

I wasn’t sure whether to show you this end:
Creative-Space-May-28-1

Or this end (eeeek):
Creative-Space-May-28-2

Of my creative space (aka “the ironing board”, and yes, that hideous green-ness is the ironing board cover, and yes, a new one is on my to-make list!) today! This spot has obviously become a dumping ground for the remains of projects past. It was actually worse than this! I had to move things to iron a pair of school pants for Finn this morning (it’s actually a rare occurrence that I iron clothes at all – but they were still damp!)

The Robert Kaufman music fabric up there is for a new bag for Finn’s piano books. They’re currently residing in last year’s school reader bag, which is becoming increasingly, embarrassingly decrepit. Must really get onto that. The other pending project involves cutting a matryoshka doll out of that fabric and appliqueing it onto a white tee for Niamh. I get fed up with all the pink-pink-pink-pink-pink-purple-pink of little girls’ clothing, so I’ve been meaning to do a few little things like this for her.

Oh, and while we’re here, how about a finished object from a couple of weeks ago? Here’s the patchwork ball I was working on in the car – it was surprisingly satisfying to hand-stitch something from start to finish. I need more handwork projects like this, I think.
Patchwork-Ball

For more creative spaces, pay Kirsty a visit 🙂

My creative space

Creative-Space-May-21

…won’t be seeing much in the way of creativity today. There is more mess in my house than house, so I should probably do something about that instead. But I did want to show you my (other) new baby. I finally kicked my old Janome to the kerb a couple of weeks ago and bought something with bells and whistles. I confess, I really wanted a Bernina, but for the same bells and whistles, I would have had to pay twice the price, so this is my compromise, and I do really like it… so far. I’ve had not a lot of sewing time on it yet, obviously. But what could that be in the artfully blurred background? Could it be my (finished) blocks for the Oh Fransson! Quiltalong? Why yes, yes it could. Now I need to buy sashing, batting, backing & binding fabrics, learn to quilt on this new machine o’ mine, and I might actually turn out a quilt sometime soon! (Or not soon. You know. Either is good).

Visit Kirsty for more of today’s Creative Spaces.

Now… about that mess… :yuk: