A final sneaky peek

I'm terrible at surprises. Especially terrible when I'm so excited about something I'm making.

But, I've promised myself that this will be the final sneaky peek of my Feather Your Nest exhibiton piece.

My original idea didn't work (ie. it looked like crap and made no sense once put together), so I've changed it, and fingers crossed, it will all work out.

Now I just need to work out whether I've made enough feathers...

Sunday Snippets

I'm letting the pictures tell the story of the week today.


Sunday Snippets with Tinniegirl

Day Tripping

I took a day trip to Woodend today to check out Abbe's beautiful new Craft Retreat.

My quickly snapped photos don't do it justice!

It was so warm and cosy inside (just what was needed on an 8 degree day).

There's plenty of space to chill....

Big comfy beds with lovely handmade quilts....

... and somewhere to relax in style.

But of course, the most popular room today was the huge craft space.

The Open Weekend continues tomorrow (Sunday 15th) - you can visit between 10AM and 5PM.  Just contact Abbe via these details. It's a really easy weekend drive from Melbourne.

My Creative Space

Night time iPhone photo is the best I could do this week!

So this is what I've been up to creatively this week. Snuggling up in bed at night with my sketchbook, drawing patterns, and thinking about fabric. I'm ever so slightly obsessed with it at the moment.

If only I was successful enough to keep funding more designs, I'd be ever so happy.

'Til then, I'll keep dreaming...

More creative spaces....

Feathered

 Oh wow, how time is literally flying by at the moment... feathers and all!

I'm still madly stitching feathers for the upcoming Feather Your Nest Exhibition at Gleaners Inc, but I've set a few aside to make the very first teeny tiny batch of Embroidered Feather Brooches.

I tested out the first prototype sample a couple of weeks ago and I've been wearing it ever since.

Here's Frances modelling to give you an idea of the size... these one's are in my shop.

I'm sending my poor little sewing machine off to the Day Spa thisafternoon. I'll miss her while she's gone. Thank goodness I have a spare machine, just in case of a sewing emergency.

The Lisette Passport Dress

I've been itching to make the Lisette Passport Dress ever since the finish of the Continental Sew-Along.

I just so happened to take a trip to Spotty on Friday and found the Lisette Cotton Sateen on the clearance table for $5 per metre (must have been divine intervention).

The Passport is a bit more tricky, as it has a side zipper, and front and back darts and pleats.

I decided upon the Size 16 (as that's the size I should have cut for the Continental) and cut out all of my fabric Friday night.

I've never made a dress with darts before, so I must admit that I was ever so slightly confused!

Thankfully, I remembered to try the bodice and the skirt on, separately, before I attached them together, or finished any of the side seams with the overlocker.

Turns out that the size 16 was too small...

I had to reduce the side seams to 1/4 inch, and completely remove the rear bodice darts, and the rear skirt pleats to make it fit.

But, thankfully after lots of stops and starts, I actually managed to finish it.

Here's a closer look at the finished front darts and front pleats. I'm not quite sure that I finished the darts properly as per the instructions. I'd show the back darts and pleats but there aren't any!

Oh, and of course I had to add the obligatory pocket on the opposite side to the zipper!

It's freezing today but I teamed it with my Flox tights and a cardi and wore it to work (I did actually have shoes on too).

I'll definitely make this dress again, but next time, I'll re-draft the bodice to combine the 16 (at the top) and the 18 (at the bottom), with a size 18 skirt, and reduce the size of the armholes underneath the arm as they're a bit gapey.

I think I only ended up using 1.5 metres of fabric so it's not a bad investment!

The Retreat Woodend

Forgive me for this blatant piece of advertising, but trust me, I'm doing it for your own good...

You see, I can't actually enter the giveaway, because I can't leave Melbourne for the weekend.

But, I'm quite sure that there are plenty of crafters out there who would love to win a weekend away valued at $950 with 9 of their crafty friends at The Retreat Woodend.

Pop on over to Copper Patch for all the details.

*International and Interstate peeps who can't make it to The Retreat can still enter to win a $100 fabric voucher from The Fat Quarter Shop.

Sunday Snippets

Stitching

Photoshopping

Intragamming

Cloud Watching

Rolling

Op Shopping

Dressmaking

Playing Sunday Snippets with Tinniegirl

My Creative Space

Well there hasn't been any action on the sewing machine this week, but I've managed to spend most evenings playing around with photoshop instead.

Everywhere I look at the moment, I see hexagons. Lots of the quilters are sewing along with their hexagons and tagging them with #HexyMF. I had no clue what the tag meant until I asked Bron.

I'm not a quilter, and I'm most definitely not a hand stitcher, so I'm playing with hexagons in my own way instead.

What I would really love to do is to print my own hexie fabric and make myself a hexie dress.

What do you think?

More creative spaces....

New goodies for Gleaners Inc

I've just been to visit the very lovely Liz at Gleaners Inc

I dropped off some new Sunnies/Specs Pouches made with vintage pretties from the stash.

Liz wrote a very good post yesterday about shopping local and supporting Australian designers. Food for thought!

Here's one I made started earlier

It's quite astounding how time can pass by and you don't notice that something was missing until you accidentally find it.

After buying a new (larger) floor rug on Saturday, I realised that I was going to have to move the living area furniture slightly. Can you picture me huffing and puffing and pushing and shoving trying to move heavy couches (torture)?

Unfortunately, once the first piece of furniture was moved, I was horrified at how dirty the floor was underneath.... which meant that each and every single piece of furniture had to be moved so I could sweep and mop underneath (insert much more huffing and puffing and lots of forehead slapping).

Anyway, once I cleared the various baskets of junk from the top of my blanket box, I thought I'd open the lid and see what was inside.

One very old unfinished lap quilt....

I couldn't quite remember when I actually started this one, but it was way back before I even started to blog (or knew anything about quilting).

As you can tell by looking at it, none of these fabrics are quilting fabrics. There's cotton drill, vintage sheeting, cotton voile, curtain fabric with blockout backing etc...

The colour in the red drill bled into the other fabrics in the wash, and there's uneven shrinkage all over the place.

Just did a search through the archives and found this image of the blocks lying on top of my kitchen bench from September 2007. I took a photo at the time so that I could remember the placement, before sewing them together.

Now that it's getting close to five years old, I'm thinking that it might be high time to add some binding and finish it off.

But, what colour and what pattern? Plain, spots, stripes?

Sunday Snippets

After yesterday's Cloud Outage, I woke up thismorning to find Instagram restored (phew), so the world didn't end after all (double phew).

I was so worried! How would I play Sunday Snippets if Instagram was gone forevermore?

There was lots of spreadsheeting and tea drinking this week...

.... and a bit of indulging.

Everything tastes better in vintage orange pyrex.

Oh, and yesterday I went shopping for a new rug.

Although I loved the one on the right, I decided on the more practical (and less cream coloured) option. I'm hoping that my tootsies will be much warmer once it arrives.

Sunday Snippets with Tinniegirl