Fabric Flower

Simple and very sweet Frayed Flower tutorial.

The flower lasted all afternoon before it was pulled apart by its wearer. We started hearing "ow.. ow.. ow.. ow.." from the backseat of the car.. I turned around to find that DD had pulled opened the safety pin and was learning about sharp points..

I brought a new blade for my rotary cutter.. I knew it needed changing but what a difference it is to have a fresh blade!! Its so much easier to cut fabric - it just glides on through and I only need to cut once! Bliss!

Repurposing metal tins

Inspiration from here and here I used a baby formula tin and I'm hoping to make a few more of these.

Tissue Tuesday

More Tissue Cases:

I'm going to make a pile of fabrics pre cut for these cases as I love to start off sewing something simple which gives me more confidence and then I can move onto more complicated sewing.. not that I'm up to too much of late.. I have plenty of ideas though.. ;)

I grabbed some lovely magazines on the weekend which I thought would help with some inspiration. It always helps to see what other people are doing and it always inspires me with fabric coordination.


There is a fabulous girl's dress in the Get Creative magazine which I am absolutely in love with:

Fabric selection

I just completed the drawstring bag tutorial on the sewbunnybum website. The funnest thing in the universe, to me, is fabric selection - picking matching fabrics and selecting contrast colours as well.. its a challenge and there's so many different paths you can take - love it! What process do you go through? I used some pink Michael Miller (Dandy Damask?) and pink gingham with a light blue ric-rac splash of colour.



The bag is intended to keep a set of figurines in.

Sneezes and Mushrooms

I had some sewing time today and I made a tissue case (Look in list for tissue project). A simple little project and a really good one to get me going again. It is good fun to pick the fabrics to coordinate together!





I also embellished a fabric shopping bag. My daughter started using this bag a few days ago and it had a boring supermarket logo on the side.. so I've made it more kid friendly and hidden the logo away.

Sewing in Miniature

I love this.. sewing little things.. I actually drafted a paper pattern, ironed out a few bugs, and the first material dress worked out really well. The button holes even worked really easily too - whoopie. I made a very similar dress for DD 2 years ago and was working off my memory of that one.

Been baking..

On 5th April 2009, we welcomed a very cute little boy into our family.

(2.5 weeks)

1 day old piccie:


Sisterly love:

(5.5 weeks)

Beautiful quilt made by this talented lady. Sorry Emma but in those early days I could only get crying (screaming) shots because all he ever wanted to do was feed and laying alone on a quilt is not feeding!
(5.5 weeks)

August Birthdays

Every year I make a cake for my niece, Claire. This year she wanted a number '7' and the only cake she was mildly interested in the WW cake book was the photo one with the lollies all over it. So, this was my best effort at putting lollies all over the cake without going too overboard with it. I used mini m&ms for the outline border and a sliced licorice strap for the name.



I also made a bunch of cupcakes for her to share with her friends. I have used Smarties and mini m&ms and assorted soft lollies. I highly recommend the Black&Gold lolly selection at IGA for cake decorating - they are small bags and lots of variety to choose from.




Trivia: Niece of 7 went for the face cupcake first and niece of 4 went for the mini m&m flower cakes. Cute!

There's a bear in there

Hello bloggy peeps! I have been inactive for a little while and we have a new little one in our family now. I will post pictures of the new bubs in another post.

For now, I really, really wanted to sew **something**, so I got some material out this morning and just kept pushing myself to go-go-go, no time for contemplation, just do! It means there was dodgy sewing, no pins and no measuring anything out. I used some patchwork squares that I had left over from another project, I tried to incorporate some ric-rac edging (not so good) and its just got some simple flannel backing. So, voila! A little teddy bear quilt for my dear daughter. I need to make a few more and hopefully she will stop nicking all the face washers in the house!



With a bear in there:

Cutie

Cute advertisement for those FP Little Mommy dolls?

Matching outfits! Who does that?! ;) Purely coincidence..

Quack, Quack

Here is the duck appliqued:


And here is the finished dolls quilt:


OK, wow, a project completed within a matter of weeks - awesome! I recycled some flannelette sheeting for the backing which came from MIL.. it was nice to use something with a bit of history.

Slowly does it.

Wow, I have had a very busy sewing day today. My main project was to make a library bag - I used a beautiful lightweight denim that I bought at the fabric store today. It really is a gorgeous fabric to work with - really smooth and soft. I made a basic little applique for the front and I may just gift it to one of the boy's in my mothers group - I have been wanting to make something for the kids and this would be my first chance.



Then I finished off the stitching on some appliqued tshirts that I made a little while ago. It was slow and steady all the way as I find applique stitching really difficult. Isn't all stitching difficult? ;)

I will give a sneak peak of my final project for today and shall update again soon.

Yum.. been cooking..

Last week I finally had some energy back and I did some cooking. I made a baked cheesecake from the latest Good Food magazine which turned out absolutely divine. I love baked cheesecake! I also made a lovely chicken korma curry from the Jamie Oliver Ministry of Food book (sorry, no pic) over the same weekend. I am not a brilliant cook, so this was quite an achievement for me. It ended up totally delicious and I would highly recommend this book to any starter cooks.

Three Wishes

Surprise! Yes, I'm still here and I apologise profusely to anyone who's been after an update from me. We've been through a few ups and downs which have kept us very busy. I am bursting to share this - we are pregnant with our second child - very excited about this, I can tell you! I am currently 16 weeks, and I just started to get my energy back the week of Boo's birthday which was a godsend as there was so much to do!

We wound up having four cakes for Boo's birthday -- she is seriously partied out!! :) She needed a cake for Day Care, a cake for Mothers Group, a cake with the family on her birthday and a cake for the party we had on the Saturday. Boo had taken an attachment to birthday cakes and candles at her niece's birthday in August and had started to learn the birthday song and practice blowing out the candle at the end. She did a brilliant job blowing out the candles on her cake(s)!



The most I have done in regards to sewing over the last few months is to have sewn a new zipper into one of our couch cushions. We did receive a lovely PASS IT ON parcel from Karen The package revealed a beautiful tunic top for Sarah to wear, along with an appliqued tshirt, a tissue holder and a set of fabric coasters. The colour combinations are fantastic, the stitching is perfect and the detail is absolutely amazing. The little whale buttons are just the cutest thing (see detail below). So a very big thankyou to Karen for such a wonderful treat! Boo insisted that she get to wear the top straight away, so over all her clothes it went!

Birthday Cake

I made this cake for my niece's 6th birthday.


And for the fun of it, here is my cutie:

A new cushion

From this:


To this:


I've wanted to make up a special cushion for ages. The patterned panel is a canvas material from Ikea, then there is a black corduruoy and a beige woolen flannel. This was all done in an afternoon! How wonderful to finally have a product with a start and end date :)

Do-ing

OK, I was going to go to the Craft Fair . Its a FABULOUS fair - my favourite in Melbourne. But at the last minute I decided I would be better of to spend the time working on some crafting/sewing using LAST year's fabric purchases rather then buy a whole heap of new fabric to sit and waste away in my cupboards. So the theme here is to get something done!

We have a few birthdays coming up and I've had the idea of making up some tshirts for the Mothers Group kids. To my great horror, I canNOT find my craft book within which I have stored all my GOOD IDEAS! No tears were shed, I just tried to think up some NEW ideas. I've wound up going very basic for these applique designs - just using pictures already within the fabric and a simple heart shape. In this photo they are not yet appliqued.. I will get to the sewing in the evening.



And just for a bit of fun, here is a piccie of the dissarray that is my dining table right now while doing all this creativity. To make these 3 simple tshirts, I had to go through this:

Pay It Forward Winners

Emma and Car, you are both winners in the Pay It Forward that I am participating in! So my promise to you is that I will create something hand-made which you will receive within 12 months of this date! Please contact me with your address details when you get a chance.

Beach

Boo and I recently took off to Qld for some much needed sunshine! These photos are in Hervey Bay where we also got to see some whales! Seeing the whales was such an amazing experience.

Sewing Update

I've been so sleep deprived of late that my last few baking posts have been the most creative pursuit that I've been able to concentrate on. Boo has been sick with a cough, then an ear infection and has been up in the night for about the last 4/5 weeks. She is all good this week and I've finally gotten some sleep which has been an absolute godsend.

The few times that I've attempted some sewing, I've seriously mucked up what I've been working on. One thing has been a cute little pinafore dress for the doll's I'm making. The dress required some buttonholes and I had to do 3 takes before I managed to get it right. Thank goodness that the clothing pieces are so small! Now I have to try and find some nice buttons that will coordinate with the other clothing before I can take a photo. The other item is the baby quilt that I've been making. I have *tried* but my quilting is so incredibly dodgy, I really think I have mucked the whole thing up. I am pretty sad about that. I don't know if it is *me* that is the problem or if there is something wrong with my machine. I have a feeling the material should just glide past the needle but my experiences have been horribly clunky... I suspect it is more my level of patience though!

The most exciting thing thats happened to me in a long while was when I was visiting a fabric shop a few weeks ago and encountered a filming session of the Australian "Project Runway". They allowed me to enter the store while they were filming. It was pretty exciting stuff to see the crews of people around each of the "stars". I was pretty strapped for time and really just wanted to get some interfacing and get out of there though! If I wind up in shot in the background, I hope I don't look too ungrateful! The store I was at was Rathdowne Remnants on Victoria St in Brunswick(?). Its about a block from AJ Fabrics on Lygon St. They have an array of fabrics - I particularly like the denim, corduruoy and suiting fabrics. They also have a small selection of quilting fabrics (very small - don't go just to see quilting fabrics!). The staff there are fantastic and the prices are really good. They stock a good selection of haberdashery which is heaps cheaper then SL.