Thursday 21 December 2017

Garden surprise

Hanging the washing out this morning, I was amazed to see this beautuful flower on the cactus plant.

The cactus was about 40 cm tall  when I moved it from the succulent trough nearly 2 years ago, to make way for the side fence to be replaced. I never got around to moving it back, and it has doubled in size since then.
It must be very happy in its new spot, because it now has 1 large flower, and 2 more big buds!
And how impressive is this flower!

Sunday 17 December 2017

Christmas gift ideas

Selling off my craft stall stock - anyone looking for some last minute Christmas gifts?
I have these 9 handbags, all have internal pocket ( some are zipped) and key tag clip, $40 each.

3 rope bowls left- 2 stitched in brown, one in fluro green thread. $10 each.

Printed calico bags $5 each.

Paint your own bead kits $4 each.

Assorted fabric buckets - great for pot plants ( put in a plastic bag 1st), inside drawers, for storing kids' bits & pieces $5 each.

Fabric brooches $2 each.

Comment/ email/ pm/ phone me!!!

Friday 8 December 2017

Op shop fabric finds

I had a few spare minutes on my way home today to duck into the Christ Church op shop in Essendon. I haven't been there for months, and only had about 10 minutes there today, as I was on my way to drop some donations off to Caroline Chisolm, a little further down the road.

I had a quick look through the dvd's and cd's, and found the soundtrack to  Star Wars 1 " The Phantom Menace". Score! ( pun intended!)
Then I remembered they have a fabric section - and look what I found - a great range of  quilting pieces, including some fat quarters, and a couple of nearly metre long pieces. A lovely selection of spots, stripes, small floral prints and some fun prints like the dressmaker model print ( top right). 

Friday 24 November 2017

Melbourne Stitches & Craft Show

Had a lovely day out at the Stitches & Craft Show yesterday - or as my good friend Linda  called it, her "Little Britain day out with my carer"!!!! ( which just goes to show a broken ankle can only slow you down so much!).
It was super quiet which made it easy to move around & see everything, but I did feel sorry for the stall holders who would surely be expecting a much larger crowd. We sat in on 2 free pop up " listen & learn" sessions at Pauline's Quilters World- quilt as you go, and "precision patchwork" which were both quite interesting.  I really liked their nifty binding gadgets, and bought one of the small ones to use to press bias binding in half ( which I often make & use for sleeve & neck binding on tops)- should be easy to use and save my fingers from getting burned!
I also bought some ribbon, the Star Wars ribbon will add a bit of zing to a denim apron I have promised to make for my son ( but the trim will be a surprise).
And after looking at mini irons at  every craft show for the last  few years, I finally bought one! Should be much easier to use for craft than my big heavy iron, especially in my tiny sewing space!

Saturday 18 November 2017

New sewing patterns

Always worth having a look at the craft section in Savers. Found these new ( uncut!) sewing patterns today for $1.99 each, always looking for new tshirt/ top patterns! Mind you it will be January before I have time to try any of them!

I had to laugh at the description of the picture on the Butterick pattern ( top in the photo above)  - all about top A,B,C D E and then " Purchased bottom" .... duh! It's a DRAWING!  And a drawing of only part of the legs!

The top pattern - simplicity- has shorts, pants & skirt WITH POCKETS!! Yay!

Wednesday 8 November 2017

Upcoming craft & community events

School fete Sunday 19 Nov
Etsy market in Coburg 25 Nov

Coburg Makers & Shakers market 12 Nov
Coburg West school centenary.

And the Merlynston market is on Nov 26 10-3 Bain Reserve.

Tuesday 7 November 2017

October round up

Not much sewing/ crafting going on here lately, so here is a bit of a catch up of photos from recent weeks.
Lovely yellow roses from my Dad's backyard - even the fallen petals are pretty, they look like a potpurri mix!

I knitted this cowl a month or so back for my niece but gave it to her before I took a photo-
A sneak preview of my current project- hope to finish it later today maybe!

Sunday 22 October 2017

Somewhere over the rainbow...

It has been a week or two of rainbows lately! After making and wearing my first rainbow heart brooch, and making more for the market last week, I have had lots of comments & requests for more!
They are time consuming enough to make - picking up each bead with tweezers- let alone having to pick the yellow and orange beads out from the big multi mix jar of ikea beads! So I ended up ordering some more colours ( since Spotlight seem to sell only a handful of colours- they have had them on special twice now with virtually no stock on the shelves).

While making some more hearts, I had a play around with the multicoloured beads, and made a " granny square" brooch- 
Then on Saturday, there was  a rainbow/ grafitti colour cake!

Monday 16 October 2017

Sewing books Spotted at Savers

I was quite suprised to see these 2 "Marfy" design books- complete with pull out pattern sheets, at Savers last weekend-


And this book about Shibouri looked interesting-
I also found a book of sewing tips for  overlockers ( I bought that one!).

Sunday 8 October 2017

Baking for "back to school"

Cheesy corn muffins, orange polenta biscuits, and blueberry muffins.
Lunchbox snacks sorted for the week!

Friday 6 October 2017

Cutting strips

I sorted some of my fabrics recently and put a lot of pieces into a box marked " for a quilt"- mainly smallish prints & solid colour pieces. This week I have finally got around to sorting the colours and giving the rotary cutter and cutting mat a thorough work out!
As much as I love knitting blankets and giving them as gifts, they do take several months to knit! Whereas I figure if I already have a heap of strips  cut out, I can sew up a simple baby quilt or cushion cover in less than a week. That is the plan anyway!

Strips cut so far & sorted by colour- all bright rainbow colours! 

Working on the layout- bright colours in the middle, with green strips on the sides, inspired by the " staggering strips baby quilt" from the book " Sewing in a straight line".

Thursday 28 September 2017

Quick craft fix

I found this sun visor when tidying the spare room the other day ( making room for 3 cousins to have a sleepover!)I think it came from a fundraiser event or conference sometime, can't remember! 

But since the weather is warming up, I thought it might come in handy on a sunny day, plus it is nice & compact to carry around. But it was advertising an insurance company! 

I quite like the purple colour, just needed to hide the logo.
A quick rummage through my fat quarters stash and sewing tools stash yielded my Dr Who 1/4, and some double sided iron on tape - finally tried the stuff I found at Daiso, worked a treat with the help of some baking paper and my non stick ironing sheet!

 I couldn't resist a scrap of dalek ribbon to cover the logo on the back!

Sunday 24 September 2017

It's HAMA time!

I bought a Hama beads kit years ago when the boys were in primary school.  I found that having an activity to do on a playdate after kinder or school worked well, especially when it was a friend visiting for the first time.  Some kids are more easy to entertain than others!

Decorating cup cakes or cutting out biscuit shapes- the kids could then go & play, & come back to decorate the biccies- was always a hit. Or even something as simple as a good variety of bubble blowers worked well- outside in the backyard of course!

The hama beads proved a bit more tricky, so we used them more with just us! We had fun making Star Wars  decorations for the Christmas tree last year, and I made a heap of minecraft creeper badges for a handmade party bag for Tigerboy's 9th birthday ( gosh was it really that long ago?!)

Between spotlight, Ikea, op shops and an on line craft store, I have quite a collection of hama beads and frames 
Which came in handy recently when I decided to make some rainbow heart brooches- I got a bit carried away and made a dozen!