Dress in Action

New dress:



I noticed in this photo that you can now see Sarah's first top tooth! No. 3 has arrived!

New dress

Dress in progress (wasn't sure if I'd have time to finish it tonight so was going to post a teaser!)



Finished dress and matching pants (which may or may not be worn with dress)



Sarah wearing the new pants earlier in the week. Note that they are too big for her - I've made everything in size 1.

To market, to market, to buy pretty things..

We went to the markets today and came across the Crabapple Cupcake Bakery stand! Such pretty cupcakes and delicious to boot. I had read about them on the internet recently and was so chuffed to come across them.



I finally found the Mums On the Move stall and checked out their pram snug. I had seen it on the internet a while ago and wanted one for winter but wanted to see the item myself before purchasing. I spoke with the lady selling them who has been making them for a few years. I said I was buying the charcoal one to keep it generic for future babies and she was very nice and gave me a pink star (which is easily removable) to make it more girlie for DD. Thankyou!



Yesterday we were at a 1st birthday party where my friend had made the following beautiful spread! Just gorgeous!

On the Town

I went shopping without DD and bought the following gorgeous light corduruoy fabric which will be perfect for making with my corduruoy dress pattern.



I also bought this Michael Miller fabric which might be good for a bag if I ever get around to making one. I would probably need more fabric though - I got a metre of the flowers and half a metre of the spots.

Ruffled

I am working on a two piece set and have just finished the pants. The ruffle took ages and was a little frustrating but well worth the effort.

Patterns

I am getting organised and want to sew a new dress for Sarah. I've got this gorgeous broderie anglaise material that I want to use. I thought I had pictures of the fabric but I haven't so it won't be seen until the dress is made. I just have to decide which pattern to make the dress with - I think it will be the McCalls one.




(These pictures are using my old camera until the other gets fixed.)

Cripes!

I broke my camera :( I was juggling a baby and trying to format the memory card and I dropped it twice. :( :( Now the zoom won't close and there is a "lens error". I am so upset as it was the best camera and I'd just gotten it for Christmas from hubby and I absolutely loved it.. WAAAAH!

Quilting

I did a patchwork quilting class in the UK. My first ever square was the star in the top left hand corner. The teacher in the class gave me the scraps for it and she charged me for these scraps!



I did the four squares above and then decided that I wanted to do a Stars and Heart quilt from a Naive quilting book that I bought.



This is how far I've gotten with it. I think I have screwed up the stars as they are turning out smaller then the hearts squares. I need to make 17 Heart blocks and 18 Star blocks. So far I've got 5 stars and 9/10 hearts.



Then I found this Rose Quilt kit at a Stitches & Craft show. The really bad thing was that I worked on it for about 2 years. I started doing it in the UK and it wasn't until we were back in Australia and I was waiting on IVF results that I finished it off. So its taken a lot of time and a lot of love to complete this quilt. It is a lap quilt.



This is my first big applique project. All the pieces use double sided interfacing and are all stuck down. I still have to do embroidery on it but I'm not loving it as much as I intially did and am not motivated to get the embroidery done.



I was thinking of taking a photo of all my quilting kits that are yet to be started. Some years I'd go to the Stitches & Craft show and not find anything I liked and then others would have heaps of lovely things so I found it best just to buy them and put them away for a later date. Sometimes I think I'm a collector of pretty things rather then a quilter!

Lamkins

I got this pattern from Funky Friends Factory -- if you go through their website you can buy kits with fabric included whereas I bought my pattern on Etsy and bought the fabric myself. I found the polar fleece so lovely to work with! I embroidered on the eyes rather then using beads.

Work in Progress

I have been sick and Boo has been teething. I have finally found some time to start cutting out some pieces for my latest project:

Magazine Stash - 42-46-48-52-53

While we were living overseas, I had the good fortune of coming across these Marie Claire Idees magazines. They are French and are published quarterly, so through our travels, I managed to pick up a few of them. They are the most inspirational magazines I have ever come across, they have some fabulous ideas, they are typically all about making even the plainest thing look absolutely beautiful (typical French style) and even though they are all in francais, they have some good notes in the back on embroidery techniques which I quite liked. I would really like to work on my embriodery skills and be able to sit in the evening working on cute little embellishments.

Five

What does 3 Madeira slab cakes, 2 buckets of Betty Crocker icing, a half dozen packets of various lollies and some creative energy make?

A 5 year old birthday cake!!!! Its for my niece and I'm hoping she'll be loving it.

First Softie

OK, I worked on this for ages on Saturday night. It had applique in it which required vliseofix which I put on wrong, cut out wrong, sewed on wrong.. you get the idea! There were lots of hurdles, I did machine applique for the first time.. I eventually gave up on it being perfect and just ploughed through. Its done now, I'm not entirely happy with it and it turned out *much* smaller then I expected it too.

Wow!

Wow, I cannot believe the pride and joy that I feel to see my daughter wearing the dress that I've made for her! Whatever the word is for it, I am full to the brim with it! She looks fantastic!



I thought it was nice to see an action shot as well.

Tropical Dress

I have just completed Boo's first handmade dress!

Fabrics

I've just realised that I'm a softie freak. I was looking at my blog pictures so far and they are all of softies and even my fabric stash is made up of fat quarters which is most appropriate for softie making!! I even have a softie pattern earmarked on etsy although I am trying not to outlay any more money until I've used more of these fabrics. Ha!

They are multiplying...

I can't help it, I love these little dears and they are fabulous little presents! My niece is also really enarmoured with them and wants to watch me make one. She will be getting her own one very soon.

Champagne Celebrations!

I have finally gotten this weblog up and running! This was after a lot of cursing last night as the clock ticked close to midnight and my husband had to come and rescue the computer from me! What I thought was very obvious, just wasn't working but DH did some FAQ hunting for me and helped me work out how to use Flickr photos. Thanks honey!!!

A big plug to the Essential Baby Sewing Webring which has inspired me to start to do some sewing for my beautiful daughter. I was always very crafty growing up and made a lot of my own toys. I did a lot of sewing of clothes towards the end of high school. At HS, I made a lovely little children's smock dress and I shall be hunting for it at my mother's place. I've actually done more quilting work over the last few years although I am VERY slow going with my quilting. Making a child's dress actually seems easy-peasy compared to my quilting progress where I've unfortunately got a lot of works in progress.