Deja vu

Got that deja vu feeling this January - too much rain, cleaning up after the storm, the start of the school week routine.  I also got that slip-sliding feeling again from my ironing board cover.  Nearly three years after making my last cover the elastic gave up the ghost.  I will spare you any evidence of the state of the fabric, it had that brown tinged, well ironed look to it OK - yuck.

I dug into my "pattern filing system" and found the pattern I made three long years ago.  A little bit of quilting cotton, a packet of binding tape and some new elastic and I'm back in business.  For the record though, I still hate ironing...but at least my board has a little bit of love. 

I've got to say that my tutorial on covering your own ironing board continues to be one of the most visited pages on my blog.  You too can do your own, its easy!

Vintage doily name plate

I have a little collection of embroidered doilys stashed away for a rainy day and when a friend of mine recently had a baby I picked out one of my favourites to embroider her new daughters name on it.

Here's the drill if you want to have a go at one of these yourself.  You need:

• One lovely doily
• A wooden embroidery hoop (mine was a 15cm one)
• Embroidery floss
• Computer and printer
• Scissors, needle, sharpened lead pencil

First give the doily a good press with your iron so its starting off nice and flat and crisp.  Next, print out the name you wish to use in a font that you like from your computer. I chose Palace Script MT font and printed it at size 120 (from Microsoft Word).  Place the doily over the name printed on the paper, centering the name as you like depending on the embroidery designs on your doily.  You might like to use a light box or a window here to help you see through the doily fabric, but I found I didn't need one.

Take a well sharpened lead pencil, or one of those disappearing fabric markers if you like and trace carefully over the name.  Then take your embroidery hoop and centre the doily inside the hoop, make sure the metal hoop tightener is at the top of your work, this will be where you hang it from when you are finished. Tighten the hoop.  Now you are ready for the embroidering.

After looking through the purple and pink threads I had in my embroidery box I chose a light purple.  

I used a simple back stitch.

 Once you are done with the embroidery, tidy the ends up on the reverse side by trimming them and then trim the edges of the doily close to the hoop frame.

Tada!  You are done.  Hang on a nail or pin board pin using the metal hoop tightener.  

Simple and sweet.

Scraps, strips and summer

Being the start of the new year and everything I have rolled up my sleeves and cleaned out my fabric cupboard.  I've given it a good tidying and sorted things into new and vintage, plains and patterns, dressmaking and quilting, fat quarters and large quantities.

And scraps.  My scrap bag is full to overflowing.

My last serious clean out of scraps was the year before last, a large bag going to the kindergarten for craft activities.  This time I'm keeping them for myself.  I've picked out the blues (got lots of them, I must like blue), greens, yellows, pinks, purples, and creams to work with, I've left the heavy weight fabrics, the denim cottons, anything too sheer like voile or lawn and anything red or black in the scrap bag (and even that takes up plenty of room in the bag). 

 I'm now attacking the scraps with my rotary cutter, slicing them into strips of all sorts of widths and lengths and sewing them into quilt blocks using the method I found here.

After trimming up the strips as I sew them together I am left with the teeniest tiny little squares and rectangles of fabric.  Should I now throw these away....?

I made eight blocks of about 20 x 20cm in a concentrated afternoon sewing effort.  I'm not sure how many blocks in total I will have at the end of this exercise but its certainly something fun and easy to work at over the warm summer days and evenings we are having.  We'll see where this project takes me over the coming weeks.

Holiday escapism

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

Our little family escaped to the beach on the Sunshine Coast for the Christmas holiday this year.  We loaded the car and headed north for the two hour drive, what a great time we had.

There was sun, salt, sand and sunscreen, swimming in the pool and at the beach, kayaking, bike riding, sunset walks, fish and chips, cold chicken and salads, sweet things to eat, summer fruits...and of course Santa found the boys and their new mummy made Santa sacks.

I think Mum and Dad might have liked a little more downtime on their holiday, but in a way it was nice to be physically exhausted at the end of the day and then have very little to do but enjoy the evening breezes and sea scent.  Technology was turned off, even the mobiles ran flat.

The little boy dipped his toes in the ocean for the first time, and the big boy honed his body boarding skills.  For a kid that once was afraid of the waves at the beach we now can't get him out of the water!

Thanks for sticking around and reading and leaving your comments and kind words over 2012. I've been less present in this space than I would have liked to be, I've done less sewing than I would have liked to as well, but I hope it's just a stage that will pass.  I'm looking forward to 2013 and all that it may bring!

Get it while you can

Nothing like getting a crafty fix when a donkey costume is in order for the class Christmas performance.  

A felt mask and a plaited fabric tail attached to a waistband was my challenge of weekend last.  The tail was easy, some grey corduroy was waiting for me in the scraps bin at the fabric store so I chopped it into strips, plaited it and sewed it to a waistband of the same fabric with a velcro fastener - quick and kid friendly.  But a donkey mask? Quelle horreur!  There was researching, sketching and pattern making, a whole lot of estimation and flying by the seat of one's pants, a raid of my felt box, and I ended up with this:

The idea was to wear the mask over the face...but it mostly got pushed up onto the forehead.

Makes a great silouhette, don't you think?

The performance was a success, he remembered his lines, the adults hardly understood what was going on but everyone finished up happy.  A great end to the school year.

Hee-haw!

Friday shop update

Time for a little end of the week shop promotion.  Here are the results of my recent spurt of sewing enthusiasm.  Two items for girls and two items for boys.  I would love to be able to bump up the amount of things in the shop so I'm aiming to keep on making over the rest of the school term (all bets are off once the summer holidays begin).

I've got a good weekend coming up - a new baby to visit, the Finders Keepers markets are here in Brisbane this weekend, and the local once monthly Farmers' market is on Sunday morning.  Yipee.

Happy Friday everyone!

New

A new camera body and lenses have come to live at our house.  A lovely macro lense is rocking my world, I have a whole new way of photographing the world around me up close.

The curls of my baby's hair.

The seedlings I've been planting in my garden.

And I've been playing around with exactly how close up I can take a picture of a piece of fabric.
Just because.  Look at the weave on that chicken!

Much fun.

What's new for you?

Ticking off the list

Before I allow myself to start anything brand new I am forcing myself to finish things from the great pile of the unfinished and getting down to a few "must do" projects.  I've sewn buttons back on shirts and cardigans, lengthened a dress, whipped up a pair of baby pants for a friend's newborn and dedicated a whole day to creating a costume for my boy to wear to the school fete.  My sewing machine has been purring along out on the back deck.

Scraps of fabric from bag making and previous forays into pants making were crying out to be combined into a new pair of shorts for the babe.  

And I'm trying to finish a cover for my third Ikea chair.  It needs a tiny bit of tweaking before it's a perfect fit.    I didn't care to finish the cover off this afternoon though, I was too busy chasing my cheeky one around the chair with the camera.

 

Hopefully once my chair cover is done I'll be free to launch into making a few new items for the shop.  Yipee!

Hello, sewing machine

 My sewing machine has a new home at the moment - outside on the table on our back deck.

This is the only place that I can sit and squeeze in a bit of sewing erstwhile attending to drink and snack requests, lost toys, nappy changes, sibling argy-bargy, cleaning up of spills, wiping of tears and other general small child requirements.

What's got me sewing again?  I put my hand up for making some items for the craft stall at the up-coming school fete.  The fete is only a few weeks away now, and a promise is a promise after all.  I'm not exactly zipping through the work, more like a steady plod, but I am getting there.  

About a month ago I was given a plastic bag stuffed full of fabrics that were donated for the craft stall with a request to turn them into handmade goodies...but to be honest most of the fabrics were rather ugly, and to be super-duper honest a little bit stinky of somebody's storage cupboard. I gave them a good wash and an airing but I didn't have the time to make something from all of it.  The most useful fabric was a fairly large amount of mid-blue curtain fabric with a blockout backing.  

The curtain fabric made five nice tote bags with exterior pockets made from drill fabric I picked up from  Spotlight.  I also bought the header tape for the handles.  Sure, it cost me a bit of my own money to make these but I believe in doing the job properly.  Don't want to be giving craft a bad name now, do I?

With the rest of the fabric I trimmed up the pieces and tied them into little bundles with labels.

Who knows, there might be a fabric addict at the fete who finds these little bits of fabric to be just what they need!

This outdoor sewing thing, I could be onto something...

To begin again?

It's one month since I returned from overseas.  Its two months since I last posted on my blog.

Funnily, just like that, I stopped.  To start with I didn't have much to talk about from abroad, and then I didn't have time or inclination, and lately I don't really know why or if I should continue.

Our trip was hard work, very hard work.  This was my fourth time travelling long haul with children, but the first time with two.  Irritatingly hot weather and hot, sleepless nights, a "wake several times a night and up at the crack of dawn baby", a sick baby, a teething baby, family events and related organisations and generally a lack of downtime pretty much crushed the spirit out of me.  Along with that all my creativeness ran dry and the small packet of embroidery items that I took with me sat unopened the whole duration of our five week trip. Telling, huh?

At home again I have a nearly walking one year old who pretty much ensures that my bottom does not hit a chair for longer than a few minutes at a time during the day (if you've had a toddler in your house I'm sure you can relate).  Time for sewing or blog posting?  Not really.  Time for reading blogs?  A tiny bit.  Time for commenting on blogs? Not at all.

Instead I've turned my attention to a touch of spring cleaning around our house that has hardly called for the use of the sewing machine.  I've had holes in the living room wall patched and painted, a bunch of pictures framed, new pictures hung in the hallway, sold a bunch of baby gear on Ebay, donated baby toys to the school fete, donated the bunting from my shop to the school fete, mended the straps on the high chair, celebrated a first birthday, made preparations to celebrate a sixth birthday, got into the groove of school readers and sight word learning, re-arranged and tidied the bookshelves, re-framed photographs, bought some new knives for the kitchen, won a set of saucepans, won a new necklace, shopped at the farmers markets, eaten lots of strawberries, had a guest to stay for a weekend, visited doctors and dentists and the like, had one late night out with friends, stopped night time breastfeeding, got the baby to finally sleep all night long, cleaned vomit out of the family car and put the goose down doona away now the winter chill has lifted. And that's of course aside from the usual everyday cooking, cleaning and care of small humans.

Where to next with me?  I'm not really sure actually.  I've re-opened my online shop and I have a few vague plans to sew items for it.  I'm thinking a lot about blogging and the general online presence, about the feeling of "talking to a virtual brick wall", about the over-share and over-promotion on all the possible online forums available to use these days, about bloggers I've loved but have become infrequent posters or have even stopped, bloggers that used to talk craft but have expanded into a whole lot of topics besides and even about a blogger I loved to read and she died, and that suddenly was the end of her blog. I think about that often actually, all this stuff you put out there and how to reel it back in again if you need to.  And why, I'm really trying to answer the why right now.

Why do you do it?  Can you help me?