My creative space...its hot

The needle and cotton are smoking around here.

A present for a nearly four year old, its a work in progress at the moment.

Luckily there are not too many cooks....

If you can't handle the heat, you know what to do.

Pop over to Kootoyoo for more creative space.

The Judge, the Book and the Cover

One ugly, yellow Spirax notebook leftover from studying.

Beautiful hand printed "pear" fabric from Selvedge House that I was lucky enough to win in November last year. The feel of this fabric is extremely yummy. Its soft and creamy, like butter, like your favourite old jeans. Mmmm, also love the rich red colour.

I made a little cover for said notebook.

I'll be taking notes.

You be the judge.

Ironing board cover tutorial

I have a friend who always likes to talk about her washing. I think she loves the ritual of washing, then pegging it out, and bringing in the crisp fresh laundary to be sorted and folded, to spread fresh sheets on the bed.

From my blog lately it looks like I like to talk about ironing. I don't like ironing, its a chore I hate, I know you can sympathise. But the fact remains, I do the ironing in this house, and when the cover lost its elastic the mission was on to re-cover it and get back on the ironing wagon as soon as possible, so to speak.

I wrote it all down, and took some pictures along the way so you can do it too.

I was going to write it as a tutorial blog post, but on second thoughts its a bit lengthy so I popped it over in my sidebar under "free stuff".

Swapping with White Mouse Creations

I have recently had the pleasure of doing a little crafty swap with the lovely Yana from White Mouse Creations. Yana is a regular visitor over here at Maika Creations, thanks Yana.

Yana makes some lovely things for herself, friends and family, she seems to turn her hand expertly to any task whether it be toys, clothes or furnishings. I think her embroidery work is beautiful. Just look at what she did for her little niece over here.

Anyway, it all got started because I have admired her tissue holders. She has made fabric ones, and embroidered linen ones, and I asked her could she make me one please? I always have a scrappy plastic tissue packet floating around my handbag, often more than one at a time, my tissues deserve better, they need a holder.

Yana agreed to do a swap with me - one tissue holder for one of my sleeping softies.

It was a done deal. She even made a little wrist pin cushion for me in the bargain. Its linen with a touch of pink embroidery, so sweet. Thanks again Yana, can't tell you how happy I was to throw those scrappy plastic tissue packets away!

Iron another day

Just allow me to indulge in a little "yay me" moment.....

I have made myself an ironing board cover. I have to say that if it weren't for this blogging thing giving me the committment and enthusiasm to finish projects that I start and learn new sewing techniques and ideas I would not have been able to do this. I have drawn on ideas and knowledge from softie making, clothes making and patchwork to be able to do this. I wouldn't have known where to start 12 months ago. Yay for lifelong learning!

I have ironed one shirt since finishing it, just to test it, you know. Its Saturday and I don't feel like being that much of a domestic godess.

My creative space

I. have. a. problem.

The elasitc on my ironing board cover has gone bung.
But no, no "one size fits all" ugly replacement from the supermarket for me. Going to do it myself.

Its going to look like this.

I hope. Thats the plan. Will even tell you how I did it, once I work it out first...

Pop over to Kootoyoo for more creative space.

Patchwork comfort

I finished my patchwork cushion and in a moment of sunshine yesterday tried it out in the garden. I can report that its just the right size, lovely and comfortable, and down right pretty in my cane outdoor chair. Lots of gorgeous Joel Dewberry fabrics from the Ginseng range.

A beautiful pink back.

And I am very proud of my mitred corners!

Also very tempting just to lay down on the grass with it.

Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

Wish granted

for a while

anyway

Wish it would just stop

raining

for a while anyway

F is for freakout

Something got me started today on my patchwork cushion kit that I bought from Amitie while I was in Melbourne over Christmas. Doing the patchwork front was no problem for me, and I worked out the overlapping back pieces OK, with a little mistake that required an unpick and re-sew.

Generally the kit instructions were the absolute bare minimum, and there were no instructions in the kit for how to do the binding, it just instructed the user to "bind as you would a quilt". Luckily I found an ace tutorial on quilt binding here. Three times lucky and I managed to work out how to diagonally join the binding strips. I somehow forgot that "right sides together" gives you the desired results in sewing.

This was entirely unchartered territory for me, sewing the cushion together right sides out and wrong sides facing was really too weird. I kept panicing and wanting to turn it, which of course gave me an inside out cushion cover. I was up and down to my laptop like a yo-yo trying to get the binding on. It worked out sweetly, even the corners - oh yeah baby!!!

Someone kept asking, "Mummy, come and plaaaay!".

Screen printing is fun!

Hello February! What did you do with January? Rudely pushed it aside it seems.

I haven't posted for a little while, I have been otherwise busy: I was sick for about a week, then I was in New Zealand for five days, and trying to catch up on housework after being sick and then away has swallowed up the final days of January.

I did, however, squeeze in a little creativity before the end of the month - I went to an introduction to screen printing course just this last Saturday, run by Thea from Thea & Sami. It was soooo much fun! Here's a little snap shot of what I printed:

Blue Maori fish hooks, "Hei Matau" they are called in Maori, from a postcard I picked up while in NZ.


Red Japanese kamon, or family crest. I really like Japanese door curtains, called "noren", thinking of those made me try out this idea.


Yellow birds, inspired by a Dove soap ad I spied while flicking through a magazine at Thea's studio.


And a two tone blue and black floral design that I constructed from the offcuts of my other stencils, adding in the fish hook idea at the end of the stalk.

You can see yours truly in action on Thea's blog, here. I absolutely recommend getting yourself to one of Thea's classes if you can.

Not sure what I am going to do with these prints. I think I will have to put them aside for now anyway as I have enough unfinished crafting business waiting my attention already! Sound familiar?