Fabric Flowers III

I followed the frayed flower tutorial but folded my fabric in half to get a nicer edge.. so, not frayed at all.


I bought the Burda EASY 9885 pattern which was used in the Get Creative article to make the following fabulous dress:

The dress on the pattern has used a unflattering see-through fabric and buttons which really don't do it justice.. I'm so amazed by the Get Creative article and how if you select the right fabric and make slight alterations, you can turn a dowdy dress pattern into something amazing. I can't wait to have a go at this myself.

The cutest little fabric box

Today's project was making a fabric box. I followed the tutorial from All Buttoned Up.



I put it to good use storing sewing notions as suggested by ABU:

Fabric Flowers Mark II

Today I am making rounded flower petals from the fantastic Pink Paper Peppermints tutorial.

This is my flower. I'm un-decided on the final colourway - thoughts are welcome.








For many more flowery ideas, check out the whole 31 days of flowers thread

Fabric

My fabric from Pink Chalk Fabrics arrived on Friday! I got the fabric during a great sale they were having - I wish I could have got more, its so gorgeous. I also got an Ottobre magazine - I love the thought of having all those patterns at my fingertips and its got some great photos of the outfits inside.

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 :)