And so, I sew: October 2010

Tuesday, 26 October 2010

Life in the jungle

I saw this fabric on the table at our kinder fete and quickly snapped it up.

It's a curtain, quite wide and a decent drop too - there were, of course, two of them.

I got them for the princely sum of $2.

Not each, that's $2 in total.

Bargain huh!

I couldn't resist the happy colourful jungle animals.

Thing is I planned on making little tunic-style dresses from it, but it's backed and so not really conducive to clothing.

The print is fairly large scale so I was thinking of bags, swimming bags because it would be a little water resistant too.

What do you think??
Any other suggested uses for my new friends??

Monday, 25 October 2010

MIP Monday

About this time last year I teased you all with a series of sneak peeks of garments I was working on for Toni at Make It Perfect.

Well now that Toni has done the big reveal I can show you what I was up to!

Let's start with skirts - always a winner in my house.

This litle skirt is called Vanilla Splice.

It and the apron skirts below are made using part of the same pattern - just with different variations.

Look how small my baby is!

She still loves this skirt and wears it heaps.

These two Tea Party Apron skirts have been a huge hit and worn endlessly - in fact it has been hard to post some pics as they are wearing them. You might actually have seen them before on my blog but not realised!

And here is the littlest again in the Fizzy Frothy Bubble skirt - very sweet and puffy.

Made from some of my very treasured Heather Ross bikes fabric - we love this skirt.

These are just a few of the patterns I tested - I'll post more next Monday to tempt you further!

In the meantime add this book to your Christmas list as you won't be disappointed.

There are lots of patterns to chose from - made using clear and simple instructions.

Head on over to Rachel's blog to check out some of the test garments she made.

Sunday, 24 October 2010

Barry in my bed

Cass and I have had two bets on the footy - fortunately for me, my team has won both times.

Cass sends parcels wrapped beautifully in old pattern pieces and tied with striped bakers twine.

I ripped the parcel open so quickly that I forgot to take a pic, trust me it looked cute.
You can see it here.

What was inside was a selection of gorgeous fabric, one with cute panels that will look fabulous as appliques, very sweet Red Riding Hood linen (always a winner), the lovely pink patterned cotton fabric on the right and also some laminated Paula Prass for me to play with - lovely - thanks Cass.

But also resting in there was my good friend Big Bad Bustling Barry Hall. He is very kindly passing on a message to the man who lives here.

Just letting him know that the snoring, (which indicentally was at its peak the night before Cass's parcel arrived) will not be tolerated.

(Pic pinched from Cass as one of the girls is asleep in my room, and Barry doesn't want her disturbed!)

He goes perfectly with my other Barry treasures that Sal made for me.

I've said it before, but I feel very blessed to have made some wonderful friends through the blogging/online community.

Women who are not only talented and obviously kind, but witty and take the time to send a funny/cool/clever gift to someone who lives halfway across the country to fulfil a promise made on the basis of the performance of a football team.

Thanks Cass - I'll make sure he's very happy here!

Sunday, 17 October 2010

UFO's in my house!

If you arrived here via a Google search hoping to find information about extra-terrestrial travellers in my living room - you might want to click off now, as that's not what I am talking about.

I'm referring to the number of Un-Finished Objects that grace the table and floor in my sewing area.

Little piles of them.
Some cut and pinned and ready to sew...

(Nicole Mallalieu beret in cord and satiny stuff - a now belated gift for a friend)

Some that are more than 3/4 finished and just require the 'hard' or unknown bits to be done to finish them...

(Kirsty's shrug for me - needs a little more crochet of one side then to be joined together, the scary unknown bit)

Others that are well on their way...

(Oliver+s ice-cream dress I was supposed to finish as part of the social - in July! In gorgeous fabric I won from Amy, that I never even blogged as I was embarassed not to have finished the dress... thanks Amy)

This was the prototype lunch bag I made six of for the Sew It Together weekend - it needs one strip of velcro applied - which is fiddly and awkward on the vinyl without a walking foot...

And there's one dodgy crooked line I need to unpick and re-do.

A stretch dress where I tried to 'wing it' and combine the bits I liked from two patterns.
I hate the black neck and it looks huge so it will need to have the neck removed and some gathering to bring the shape in...

One of two velour leotards almost finished that were made for the big girls' birthday - in *ahem* March.
They need elastic on the legs, cuffs and neck - yep - that's all...

A pinafore-style dress that I cut from cute duck fabric that Bec gave to me - I love these cute ducks - so much that I this is the duck I copied to make the smallest child's birthday cake.

And this retro dress I started last summer- thankfully I cut it in a size that would fit the smallest child this summer...

By no means am I saying this is all.

This is just a few to help me keep perspective and to urge me on to completing some of them.

Items that for one reason or another have lingered too long; out of fear, disappointment, being put aside to meet another deadline or just the urge to move on to something new, having spent considerable time getting them to their near-complete state.

So - will you 'fess up and show us some of the yet-to-be-completed items in your workspace?

Or do you finish things as you start them??

I hope I am not alone!

Thursday, 14 October 2010

Little Frida

I love my kids, I think they're all ace.

This little one - I could eat at the moment.
She's delicious.

Cheeky, cheeky, cheeky.

You can just see it can't you!!

Same fabric as the last post, same pattern too but view A, the tunic, still with capped sleeves and a pocket this time.

Wednesday, 13 October 2010

Spring Peonies

Peonies are one of my favourite flowers so after seeing this print on Cass's blog one day I knew I would just HAVE to get some!

This is the Frida dress by Modkid, view B with the capped sleeve - made in Peony Plaid (the blush colourway) and some sweet pink dotted fabric I got from Amitie during their last sale.

This pattern has some really nice options, a tunic and another dress with a frill on the bottom and capped or loose sleeves, also the option of pockets.

Because there are lots of pieces you can mix and match your colours and use up pieces of fabric that are not huge to get it made.

For instance - I made this dress in size 6 and also a size 3T tunic using only 0.5 metres of the dots, that's not bad going!

You can't see it, but under the arms there are little ties - also in the pink dot.

Next time, if I had something suitable, I might think about using ribbon for this feature as making small ties is always fiddly, they do look nice though....

If you don't have this pattern - wait a month or so to buy it as Patty has just re-released it and it now goes up to size 10 - mine stops at a 7.

Easy to sew, cute result and quite versatile - makes it a winner in my book.

Oh, and even more importantly, the four-year-old fashion critic I made it for loves it!

Sunday, 10 October 2010

Gesundheit!

(This post is long, but trust me, if you want a laugh at my expense, it's worth persevering.)

This is Solomon.
He's a 200kg Australian Sea Lion who lives at the Coffs Harbour Pet Porpoise Pool.
Before each show you can sidle on up and feed him a fish.

The smallest child in our family is the bravest one of all, she wants to be kissed by seals and dolphins, pat animals in the street and make friends with chickens.
It goes without saying she wanted to feed the seal.
By herself.

Picture from here.

When first in line I made the mistake of holding the fish for her, after all he's a seriously big sea-lion and she's a relatively small child.
Back in our seats she declared "No! Me feed seal!", when she realised she'd been ripped off.
We rejoined the queue, the last in line.

We sterilised our hands.
She took the fish and reached up.
Being too small to reach him I picked her up, we leaned in closer and without any warning at all...
Solomon did a massive sneeze all over the two of us.

I don't just mean any old sneeze.
This was a "blow-your-hair-back-and-spray-your-face-with-a-wet-combination-of-salt-water-and-fishy-smelling-saliva-filled-hurricane-like" sneeze.

There we stood, in front of the entire stand of people gathered for the performance, covered in what might best be described as seal snot.
They all roared laughing as the smallest and I tried to fathom what had just happened.
She cried, I cringed and together we used the anti-bacterial hand gel offered earlier to smother our faces, hands, arms and anything else we could.

I am eternally grateful to the lady behind us who handed me a pack of anti-bacterial wipes as I sat down with the small fish-smelling child on my lap.

We sat through the show (which is great entertainment by the way, even though I am still not sure how I feel about marine-animals being held in smallish pools)- smelling delightful.

I didn't pat or kiss her little head as I usually do when she sits on my knee, because I knew what coated each strand.

I felt thirsty but dared not lick my lips, as they had a salty tang to them.

Once the show ended and we'd moved away from the area, I bent down to retrieve somthing from my bag and the man of the house snorted down a laugh as he extracted from my hair...
a fish scale.

We went home, where I scrubbed us both in the shower with soap and shampoo to within in inch of our lives.

If anyone was in the crowd that day and has this event on video, I would urge you to send it in to "Funniest Home Videos and send me half the large sum of cash you win.

I'm going to need it for the kid's therapy.

Friday, 8 October 2010

Freedom

We've been away, enjoying the freedom of no routine.

Freedom gives you the time to do what you want, rather than what you have (or feel you have) to do.

Time to spend doing lots of this...