A nice mention

Very excited to see my tea towels in The Age newspaper's Epicure (ie: foodie) supplement this week :) I love reading Epicure every week - definitely a highlight of Tuesday mornings and something that's oft fought over at our breakfast table - so it's quite a thrill to actually have my stuff in it. Yay!

Other than that, there's just a whole lot of making stuff going on around here ... the crazy season is most definitely upon us. I have finally made some more pot holders, six months after I made these (six months, really?! Sheesh that went quick). And yes, I love practical items, in case you can't tell! They have linen tape handles and a mix of two or three different fabrics, so very colourful. And they'll be with me on Saturday at the market (argh, Saturday's soon, gotta get back to work!)

A fury of bunting making

In a crafting fury (in a good way :), this week I felt inspired to finally make the bunting I'd been meaning to make for about a year. It's non-triangular (for some reason I wanted square, not sure why) but I like it so far.



In other crafting fury news, here are the latest elephants I've been making, one for a wee baby born very recently and the rest for the upcoming Sisters' Market I'm doing, called the Teeny Tiny kids' market, which is on Saturday November 7 at the Brunswick Town Hall (233 Sydney Road, Brunswick). Should be fun, and I'll have lots of lovely neighbours including Printspace, Metremaid, Lark and lots more.

Cushion mania

More market news (can you tell I'm living, breathing & sleeping market preparations?) - I have made a bunch of cushions, to assist with couch-lounging through this rather freezing winter.

There's a handful made with combinations of my fabrics -


And some featuring four of Volker Haug's lights (small and large cushions), from our wee collaboration -


And can you believe I am still chasing an Etsy Treasury spot? My plan to get one keeps on being foiled, sometimes by mere minutes. But I will persist, even if it means finding a whole new bunch of things to put in the Treasury (I'm sure all the things in my pretend Treasury will be sold before I actually get one!)

New bag!

I finally got to Thread Den last week (thanks for the invite, Tess!) for an evening of make-whatever-you-want and it was much fun. And making cupcakes to bring along was great - I can't get enough of baking at the moment. Aanyway, I decided to make a new bag, using roughly interpreted instructions from a super cute book and lovely Lara Cameron fabric that's been in my stash for a while. Forgot how fun it is to try new things (mental note: more new = more fun).





Have also been doing more button/badge making, which seems to be a new obsession. I've moved on from plastic to metal buttons, which are much easier and virtually negate the need for my tutorial. So my advice - go metal people, it's better. I might put some big badges that are made with my fabric in the shop soon...

Not a sausage dog...

..although definitely looks like it. Yep, just a regular dog that's kinda long, that's also now a softie.





It's screen printed with solid baby blue front, polka dot blue back on a cotton/linen base cloth and filled with 100% wool stuffing. Oh, and too much fun to make, especially when you've got other, less fun things you really should be doing.

Long weekend of sewing

The only thing I really did this past long weekend (besides eating delicious food and watching movies on the couch due to the wintery weather) was sew (oh, and work). It took me a lot longer to finish these than I thought it would, and there was a lot of unpicking and a bit of swearing (I wanted them to be perfect and that took a while - argh, zips!) but I got there in the end.


New cushions made with lovely new heavy weight cotton fabric from Skinny LaMinx, backed with a charcoal-grey cotton drill.

The fabric looked pretty good online and it really is fab - a lovely textured, natural-coloured heavy weight cotton with ink colours that are slightly muted, which I love (it's only fitting - Heather is a bit of a genius). And these are perfect for extended couch sitting.

It seems I'm not the only one who spent part of the long weekend sewing - look at these snaps Tess sent through of what she's made with some of my fabric (from a recent swap at CWC, which I'll have to talk more about soon).



Photos courtesy of Tess McCabe of Metremaid

I'd never thought of using my fabric for cushions but this looks great (and her green chair is uncannily similar to mine - spooky!)

Sew crazy

Have been sewing up a few housey things - pot holders and placemats - with my fabrics. Too much fun!

Quilting along

I haven't had much time for quilting since the initial burst of activity (isn't that how it always goes with quilts?) but got to work on it yesterday and was nearly driven mad by the binding (again, part of the process, from what I can gather). But I don't mind if it's not perfect, so I'll keep plugging away and making it up as I go along (tutorials and me are not friends due to my impatience, unfortunately!) Really need to get it finished so I have a lap rug to deal with the freezing Melbourne autumn. Brrr.

It's a cushion!

OK, finished my log cabin-type cushion ages ago but am only now getting around to taking a snap of it. It's very bright and colourful and doesn't fit in that well with the muted colours of our other cushions, but looks rather fancy atop a bed covered in white sheets/doona/pillow cases etc.

Brrrr need a log cabin cushion

It was sooo cold tonight and I stupidly went out with footless tights on, ie: bare ankles, and I had no beanie. This combined with a bicycle and speeding around & some rain = a lot of freezingness. So when I got home I decided I needed to turn the heater up and make a log cabin cushion cover (or something like a log cabin cushion cover - can't remember exactly what they're supposed to look like...) while eating Lindt dark chocolate.


That's a shot of all the cut bits stuck next to each other...which looks rather unimpressive compared to the pillow's current status - all the bits sewn together...but you get the idea. The fabric is a combination of random polka dots and bits and pieces and then lots of fabric from Auntie Cookie, Lotta Jansdotter & stuff that I've screen printed. Can't wait to get it all sewn up tomorrow and fingers crossed it will look half as good as the brilliant ones Lisa Congdon has made.

It's Anzac Day, part II

What better way to spend the afternoon than trying to figure out how to make a much needed pin cushion, and one which you've decided must be square (thanks to this sticking in my mind from when I first saw it.)

It took a few shots to get it right (ie: actually square - well, almost square) but it seemed to work out OK in the end, and has been put to use already. And now it's dark outside and it's not even 6pm - darn the fact that the days are getting shorter.

Oh, and the fabric is a mix of a couple of brilliant Aunty Cookie designs, that just happen to be printed in the same colour ink and with the same basecloth (totally matching). The bottom is a woolen felt, a mottled grey (my fave, not that you can actually see it!).

It's Anzac Day

Finally finished a batch of elephants, here are the last two. Not a bad way to spend a public holiday morning, but now it's definitely time for a coffee.


And I got these the other day:

Saw them when in Tassie earlier this year (they're made from Tasmanian wood, I believe), but failed to buy them and have regretted it ever since. Fortunately Wilkins and Kent - which is a little closer to home - also stocks them. It'll be nice to knit with wooden needles, which I've never tried before. And, of course, the polka dots rock.

Land of softies

Had the urge to make some mini-softies yesterday, inspired by some Auntie Cookie fabric I got recently, and some old screen printing of mine that I found. Welcome to the land of mini softies, it looks like a fun place to be. These guys are small (think: pin cushion size), and backed with polka dotted fabric.

And this is Elephant #34, made from some lovely Japanese 'letters, numbers and keys' fabric from a recent fabric shopping expedition.

New & old

Elephant #32

Elephant #33

These are made with lovely Aunty Cookie fabric & polka dot ears (top) and delightful Lotta Jansdotta fabric (bottom) and I don't think they're going anywhere in a hurry as I want to keep them!

Now I need to get onto some orders, to be made with recent purchases from Patchwork on Central Park, just about the best shop ever.


And I recently found this tea towel I made, stashed away with a heap of other stuff. It serves as a good reminder that I need to get on to doing more screen printing. It's messy, yes, and things go wrong, yes, but it's darn fun. Now just need to find some good cotton, non-drill &/or linen fabric to print onto - no easy task, I'm sure, based on previous searches.

Pottering around

Finally got some of my pottery back with its final glaze. I like it it all its wonky glory and have already put it to use.


And I am happy to announce that after conking out a while back, my old and trusty sewing machine has been nursed back to life and given a good service. I'm happy with that - it means I don't, yet, have to venture into the world of new sewing machines, with there fancy menus and plasticness (mine is all metal and ox-like).

In celebration I figured it was time to venture into the world of patchworking, and below is what I came up with last week - a pot holder courtesy of the Lotta Jansdotter pattern from her Simple Sewing book. The best part was picking fabrics that work together - I used a heavy cotton for the main bit (blue and white), a lighter cotton (polka dots), a woolen felt (grey) and the hang tag is grey linen.

Elephant #31

Welcomed into the world this morning, and going to his new home this afternoon ... finally.



Will he be the last elephant made with one of various borrowed sewing machines, before I finally get my own? Possibly not, as sewing maching-buying is a rather involving (and overwhelming) task - where to start and stop? How many stitches could I possibly use? Which brand is better than the other? And do I really need a computer to sew? Argh!

Elephant #30

Finished another elephant this morning, and from my very rough calculations, it's #30. I love this fabric and found it hard to chop up (a beautiful soft thick cottton), but now that it's all done I'm quite happy with how she turned out. And she's on her way to her new home today!

Finally finished

These two have been hanging around looking forlorn (and somewhat flat) for quite a while, until I realised tonight that they have homes to go to, and they need to get there quick. They look much happier now.

Blossom Bunny

There's nothing like the arrival of a friend's baby to inspire a bit of sewing. So thanks for that Scarlett, and hope you like this Blossum Bunny I made for you. I surely do. (Pattern from Softies, a book I got for Christmas). Lots of hand sewing and learning of new stitches (Hello, French knot, you are my new friend) and very fun to make.

Hearts for Mikes & Mirabel

Finally got some time to make hearts for Mikes' Hearts for Mirabel campaign-thingo when my inherited sewing machine (which is rather old and can be seen here) decided to stop working :( I wanted to make some sort of mobile of hearts, but that won't be happening as hand sewing takes a lot longer than the machine kind, as I discovered. Oh well, these are it then. On the back is a black and white spotted fabric and the front is, funnily enough, hearts from a kinda charming and very sturdy Ikea cotton fabric.



And there are a heap more hearts over here, made by the 105 members (and rising) of the I Heart Mirabel Flickr group set up by Pip at Mikes. Woo hoo.