Linen Belladone dress

I made another version of the Deer & Doe's Belladone Robe a while ago but have just gotten around to taking some photos of it. It's definitely my most successful one yet, and has been worn several times already.

I used a printed linen that I found at Spotlight and made the same changes as last time: grading up a size at the waist and hips and moving the bust darts down a bit. This time I didn't pipe the edges and I put the binding on the inside so it wasn't visible as I thought there was enough personality already in the print.

The back detail is definitely my favourite in this dress.

But the pockets were fun too. I used a cute little mini pom pom trim between the top skirt piece and pocket lining, sandwiching it between the two. I'm pretty fond of this little trim and have also used it as trim on a cushion cover recently.

I'm hoping this dress will take me through a few seasons. So far I've worn it in hot weather with thongs and floppy hat...

Hat: Amy Butler Blue Sky pattern

And as a tunic with jeans...

Scarf: No sew jersey scarf - my tutorial here

But I'm thinking it could also go well with a cardigan and boots when the weather cools down.

Cardigan: Metalicus

I have yet another Belladone on the go, but after that I think I'll give it a ret for a while - there are other patterns calling me ;-)

How about you, are you addicted to a particular sewing pattern at the moment?

 

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Rollie Pollies

This week I completed a project that ticked lots of boxes for me and left me feeling pretty satisfied, yay!

The starting point for this one was that we'd had 2 garbage bags full of those little bean bag beans hanging around in storage for ages and over time they'd gotten a few holes and leaked, arghh! Have you seen what a mess those pesky little white balls make? They get everywhere. But I didn't want to throw them out so I'd planned to make bean bag covers for them and encase them in fabric forever!

Sitting in my stash for ages has been Made's Rollie Pollie pattern, bought for this exact purpose. The pattern comes in 2 different sizes, and even though the small size is marked for children aged 1-2 and my kids are older (7, 5 & 3) I decided to make this size as I wanted them to be like little seats or poufs, portable and not taking up too much precious living room space, rather than big and slouchy.

I had intended to use the stripey fabric on the left for all of them but only had enough for one (I'd forgotten I'd previously made this duffel bag from some of it). So it was off to Ikea to choose some more. Big girl chose the ladybird fabric and I couldn't go past the lovely birdy design again. Then I ran out of beans after the first 2 so had to use some old stuffing from pillows... veering away again from my initial reason for making them! But of course I couldn't stop at two - I'd never hear the end of it!

The pattern includes instructions for making both the inner, to encase the beans, and then the removable outer with handle. I knew I'd need to have washable outers - these have had a lot of love and use in just this short time, but I must admit that by the time I was up to the third Rollie Pollie I was pretty over it and so the sewing was quite rushed. But they'll do fine.

And here's the other reason I wanted to make them pouf-like :-) Hope you have a relaxing, creative weekend!

Belatedly joining in on My Creative Space this week.

 

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Denim addict

I don't know about you, but I find it hard to go past a great roll of denim in a fabric store. You know the one: a good deep blue, dark but not too dark, good drape but still with enough body and perhaps a little stretch.

When I found this recently I immediately thought of this pattern (below) which I am, umm, quite familiar with now. Number 3 is made and being worn regularly, I'm hoping to get a good pic some time soon so I can blog it. Unlike number 2 which I think is a no-go unfortunately :-( I'm thinking a nice denim version with a little ease added (smaller seams maybe?) could work layered with a cardigan and leggings for autumn or a merino wool top, tights and boots for winter. And wouldn't the denim look great with a bright contrasting piping around the neckline, armholes and that great back feature!

But it would also be a great fabric for this one, Grainline studio's Moss skirt. I'm picturing this as a good little workhorse basic with leggings and flats for autumn or tights and boots for winter:

And maybe even this, Victory's Chloe dress (though it may be a little stiff for this pattern):

But also this one, the Sewaholic Thurlow trouser pattern, which I have been coveting since it came out and am surely going to cave in and buy soon (weak-willed, I know!). Especially after seeing this fabulous pair.

Ah denim, you look great in so many guises... So what do you think, which one should I try? Maybe I should just start with one and attempt to make myself a whole denim wardrobe, hee hee!

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Duck skirt

 On a trip to Spotlight a while ago my little girl stopped at a roll of corduroy printed with very bright ducks and begged me to make her a skirt with it. Even though it's not a print I'd normally buy, I figured she's a good sport when it comes to being dragged around a fabric shop (the curse of being the child of a sewing obsessed mother ;-), so I bought half a metre. But then it sat in my stash for a while as I couldn't quite get my head around just how I was going to approach those neon ducks!

Then it hit me that I probably just need to break up the print. She's still at that age where elastic waists are pretty useful, so I thought I'd make a flat fronted, elastic backed design. Using an existing skirt that fits, I cut a basic A-line shape for the front panel, a wide rectangle for the back. Then I used a bit of scrap dark denim to cut out some large contrasting pockets and finished them off by topstitching them with a thick yellow thread to match some of the ducks on the print.


It turned out OK, I'm still not sold on the print but she likes it, and it keeps her warm in this cold weather (worn here with her jeans, being a ballet dancer ;-), so that's all that matters really I guess.

Do you ever use fabric you're not that keen on? Or do you refuse to?

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Just as an aside, I recently discovered the folk band The Unthanks (been around for years, but I've obviously been living under a rock!). And now I'm addicted to "The Testimony of Patience Kershaw", a beautiful song about a young girl working in the mines of northern England in the mid 1800's. A little reminder for me to be thankful for what I have and the times I live in, methinks.

Shibori workshop

Last weekend I was lucky enough to attend a fabulous workshop Dye-linquent Shibori workshop: dyeing and up-cycling garments along with Lamina, my fabulous fellow craft nut ;-) It was held at the Powerhouse Museum here in Sydney as part of their 'Craftpunk' series.

The workshop was held by the lovely women from Shibori, Karen and Pepa. Lamina and I were green with envy hearing about their backgrounds in textiles and their experience studying shibori in Japan. Ah, if only I was 20 again and could study anything I liked, textiles would surely be it...

We were shown how to make an indigo dye vat (amazing!) and then how to fold or tie fabric to make patterns "shibori". As the workshop was only 2 hours long we didn't get much time to try the dyeing, and the venue, not being a wet, ventilated space, was obviously not ideal, but the experience of learning about it and watching and talking to Karen and Pepa was very enjoyable.




 

I came away with a couple of pieces and an interest in both indigo dyeing and shibori, and am enjoying looking at all the detail and little features that the indigo dye brings out. Though the last thing I need at the moment is another craft hobby, particularly one that involves a large vat of incredibly smelly sludgy dye, just waiting to be nocked over by a small person ;-) Still, it was a great experience and I'm filing it away in that folder in my brain labelled "crafts to try one day" ;-)

I could become a workshop junkie at this rate and will certainly be on the lookout for future workshops.

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In unrelated goings on, my 4 year old daughter made this little scene today of her barbie giving birth. She didn't get why I laughed... if only it was as easy as Barbie makes it look! I sure didn't have that serene smile on my face!

Happy weekend everyone.

New cushions

I'm not sure if I've mentioned here before that we have a pretty small house. The rooms are reasonably generously sized in inner Sydney terms, but we really could use more of them (2 bedrooms, 5 people) and we're feeling the squeeze as the kids grow. But moving house is not an option at the moment. I remember my SIL saying to me a while ago "think like a European and make good use of your space". Good advice. So we've been making a few changes here and there lately, involving trips to Ikea (of course!), some carpentary and many trips to drop off unwanted stuff at the local charity shop.

As part of that we've changed the layout of our lounge room and I couldn't stand the look of our tatty old cushion covers so I finally got my act together and made a couple of new ones.



I had been saving some lovely off cuts from Cloth to use in a Lotta-style quilt (still not game enough to tackle that one!), but decided to use them for this worthy cause instead. Julie Patterson from Cloth is my favourite Australian textile designer, I just love the way she captures the beauty of Australia and she also uses lovely fabrics - textured linens, cottons and hemps. Each time I have been to her shop I have picked up a scrap pack and drooled over her fabrics by the metre and also her new bed linen range. If money was no object I would have her things dotted all over our house... Yes, I can picture it now... an architect designed simple holiday house somewhere out in the bush (bellbirds singing in the background), plenty of wood, steel and corrugated iron, minimally furnished and beautiful soft furnishings by Cloth, ahh! Anyway, enough of the daydreaming ;-)



In this one I used a piece of Julie's Currawong print, teamed with a couple of others in sympathetic colourways and backed with oatmeal coloured linen.


And for this 2nd simpler design I used a lovely piece of white print on oatmeal coloured linen, added in a vibrant orange strip and a textured chocolate brown cotton. I teamed it with a piece of grey linen, which I kept thinking must be wrong as I was mixing warm and cool tones but I love the contrast and thought I'd just go with what felt right.

I'm looking forward to another trip to Cloth to re-stock on the scrap packs for that mythical quilt ;-)

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In other unrelated goings-on, I met up for the first time this morning with a bloggy friend, the lovely Fran from Lovely Little Sweet Peas. It was so nice to meet another like-minded craft nut and blogger and talk craft, kids, Etsy and all things in between :-). Fran has a great Etsy shop selling her fab kids art satchels and has also been selling them to local shops. Good on you Fran. And thanks for spending time with me and my 2 crazy littlies!

Happiness is...

Thank you for your thoughtful comments on my last post. It sure is an interesting topic - essentially how people communicate online and what is appropriate. I guess there are insensitive people in our everyday communities, but the internet allows for more anonymity than in other situations, so those people feel free to let their negativity out. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" seems apt here.

Anyway, on to more cheerful things :-)

Happiness is: (or was for me last Saturday)

• Hopping in the car by myself and heading off for a couple of hours. I love being with my kids, but a couple of weeks without any time alone takes its toll - and one of those weeks was solo parenting, so it felt like a lot longer!

• Going fabric shopping (what else? ;-) for supplies for my eagerly awaited Minoru Jacket pattern

• Finding a fabric for the outer that I'm happy with, after doing about 20 laps of my favourite fabric shop The Remnant Warehouse



• The lovely and extremely helpful sales assistant showing me to the remnant zipper boxes (3 for $1!)

• Looking for inspiration for contrasting zipper and top stitch colour (a la Very Purple Person's lovely version) and finding a gorgeous chartreuse coloured silver metal toothed open-ended (double opening!) zipper (OK, now being excited about that is really nerdy, I know)

• Finally finding an excuse to purchase some gorgeous, long-time coveted fabric (Amy Butler's Laurel Dots in cilantro) - for the jacket lining. The background colour works beautifully with the zipper and top stitching thread and the pale blue should pick up beautifully on the subtle texture of the exterior fabric. Ahh, don't you love it when it all comes together :-)




• Happily watching the lovely sales assistant measure said beautiful fabric and hearing that it's the end of roll so I get even more for my money, which will allow me to use it for the sleeve lining too!

• Waiting to pay for my goodies and learning that I'd qualified for a $20 discount on my loyalty card. Woo hoo!

Now I just hope that my sewing skills and patience will allow me to do the pattern justice, and that the vision in my head actually turns out looking good! It's always a gamble.

When I told the Mr and kids about my exciting afternoon, there was a pause then the Mr said "mummy doesn't get out much". True, but funny (and nice) how little things can make me happy :-)


There's nothing wrong with a grown woman hugging her fabric... is there?!

Rare find

I begrudgingly popped in to Spotlight recently to look for some plain linen for making teatowels & pot holders to screenprint (linens at my favourite stores being too expensive/too thin/too just not right). The linen was still not quite what I wanted (why is it so hard to find?!), but looking around the dress fabrics, I suddenly felt like I'd stepped into an aladin's cave of great fabrics rather than a boring chain store.



Was it that I hadn't been fabric shopping for a while, or that I was on a caffeine high from the strong coffee I'd just had? Was I in the wrong store?? When I go to this chain store (the equivalent in the US seems to be Joann's?) it's normally just for some basics, some thread, a bit of stuffing for soft toys, that sort of thing. But I seriously could have bought home about 7 different great prints this visit. But I told myself I could just choose one * and narrowed it down to this beauty...



The docket says it's 'Japanese tana lawn, hydrangea'. And the colours - pale grey background with splashes of vivid purple, deep blue and yellow - perfect! The sales assistants (or 'ladybugs' as my boy calls them ;-) couldn't tell me the difference between lawn and voile - does anyone know?



Anyway, I adore it, even though I had a moment of "is it nanna or gorgeous?", not that it can't be both! I put that down to the hydrangea print. My paternal grandmother grew beautiful blue ones near her door.

I plan to make a version of my boring dress for those hideous days like last Monday when the temperature reaches the high 30's c and it feels like we're living in a furnace. Fingers crossed that the image in my mind comes out the same way.



* Lets just forget all about this post, shall we (ahem)? Ah well, 3 steps forward, 2 steps back ;-)

Last minute frenzied behaviour

True to form, I have done my usual panicky running around trying to get all sorts of things done before we head off for a short break.

For instance... that tunic seam that's been needing to be mended for weeks - it needs doing now!... the seedlings that have needed tending for days - let's do it now!... form to fill out... photos to take... what is it about going away that gets me running around like a headless chicken? Do you do this, or is it just me? It drives me bananas (and the Mr too, I'm guessing, but he's too polite to say ;-)



Needless to say I had several blog posts in mind this week but none of them saw the light of day... however I will leave you with some pics of a much covetted piece of Nani Iro fabric that arrived in the mail this morning, yay! I hunted high and low for it (it was last year's design so not readily available now) and felt like I'd won the lottery when I finally tracked it down on Etsy. Good old Etsy.

Now I just need to find the perfect summer dress pattern for it. Any suggestions welcome.



OK, there's time to squeeze in just a few more things before we head off ;-) See you some time next week, have a great weekend!

Falling off the wagon

Oh dear. It's a mere 4 weeks since I posted about stash-busting and yesterday I fell off the wagon by purchasing some fabric. I didn't go out to buy fabric, I wasn't even in a fabric shop, but somehow I found some and couldn't say no. Does anyone know if there's a fabric equivalent to AA? Coz if there is, I need it!!



From the moment my friend and I walked into the Corban & Blair sale yesterday and I saw this gorgeous piece of animal print fabric, I knew it was coming home with me. No questions, no justifications, I was just not putting it down. Tragic.

$5, 2 x 2 metres, great print, good quality fabric. It's too late to start trying to justify my fall from grace. It's done, washed and ideas are forming in my head as to what I can make with it. Definitely a kids messenger bag or two.



I also got a lovely birdy brooch to add to my little collection ($2).



And this great roll of numerous sheets of printed paper (another $2).

Oh well, I'm human. I'm going to try to make it up to myself by using the fabric quite quickly (mm hmm) and also making a doona cover for the girls' bedroom out of the stash - that should reduce the bulk a bit ;-) And next time I'm tempted I'll try to stop myself!

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By the way, I've hatched an idea for a giveaway to celebrate my recent blogiversary, I just need to get the pics together. I'm hoping to do a post on it tomorrow or Wednesday - hope you are going to like it.

Stash bustin'

Tidying my stash recently I realised that I've really got to reduce it. I'm always thinking that, lets face it, but this time I mean it (I do, I do, trust me ;-) One day we are going to have to move out of our 2 bedroom house and I don't want to take more than 4 plastic tubs of fabric and associated bits with us. At the moment it's bursting out of 5 (probably would be 6 but I don't want to admit it!). So that's about a third I want to clear.



Trying to work out strategies to get there I decided I needed a plan. Here we go:

1 • No more fabric buying! No excuses, and no thrifting either - it all adds up to volume!
2 • Put together a list of clothes and household items we need that I can make. Plenty of times I've made yet another something cute for the kids when really they just need plain leggings or something, or the oven mitts are threadbare.
3 • Don't be precious about fabric choice - if it's not entirely perfect, use it anyway. Near enough is good enough here!
4 • If there's any fabric lurking around that I don't particularly like, donate it to charity.
5 • Go through the scraps tub (yes, there's one whole tub devoted to this) and weed out any bits too small or useless looking.
6 • Finish projects lying around, or if I don't want to make them anymore, throw them out!
7 • No more pattern buying for now. As much as I'd love to (there's a Chinese jacket I'd love to make for winter), I have at least 3 patterns laying around that I haven't even tried yet.

To motivate me to actually carry this out I'm going to put a new "Stash bustin' tally" over there on the right. I'm hoping to see it grow in the next few months and report back each time I add something to it.



I'm quite excited about no. 2 - making the list of useful things to sew. It appeals to my organised side to reduce the stash and fulfill a need. Actually I do have a finished project that does exactly that, which prompted this post. I'll post it tomorrow. That way I'll feel like I'm on my way ;-)

Do you have any tips on stash busting for me? I'd love to hear.

No-sew jersey scarf

If you've been following my blog posts lately it probably seems like all I've been doing is sewing, sewing, sewing, which is partly true, but this project was happily sewing-free, a nice change.

This project I've had in mind for a while now - to make a scarf from jersey fabric with cut and knotted ends. My incentive to actually do it was my newly chopped boy-short haircut, and therefore my newly breezy neck area! I love the feel of jersey and thought a scarf made from it would be useful on our slightly chilly days, which are still happening, interspersed with freakishly hot days! So there's no putting away the cool weather clothes yet when every day is like weather bingo.



I used a piece of mid grey, fine, soft jersey from my stash. When I bought it I planned to make a top with it but had since decided against it... anyway, it's gone to good use as a scarf now.



To construct it basically I cut a length of the fabric about 30cm wide, from selvedge to selvedge, then cut both ends into strips about 25cm long. Each strip was tied in a knot at the top, then each 2 tied at intervals down, if you know what I mean (see pics below). I finished with tied knots at the bottom of each strip. As jersey is a knit fabric the edges don't really fray so they don't have to be finished in any way (hence the 'no-sew').



It's pretty wonky and far from perfect (I was too impatient to measure anything) but I like it anyway, and can see myself throwing it on at any opportunity in future.


And a bit of black nail polish helps banish those 'frumpy mum' feeling days :-)