Red Instead BLOG

Archive for March, 2007

tea for two in a spotty pot

Friday, March 23, 2007 @ 8:59 pm
Filed under ceramic painting

Hi! Are you a new or recent visitor to my blog? I hope you stick around and have a bit of a read. To make it easier to keep up to date with new content, please subscribe to my RSS feed. Of course, feedback is always appreciated and leaving a comment is a great way for me to come and check out your site.

Next Tuesday I am teaching a class to my group, the Brindabella Women’s Group, on ceramic painting. This is something I first tried before Christmas and painted a few things for presents for family and friends.

In the next few days, I need to make a few samples for the class - and show off here on the blog of course. Here is a cute little tea set I worked on today.

I particularly enjoyed the scribbling and messy crosses on this set. I just used a Pebeo Porcelaine black pen after the orange was dry - easy!

I will be making a few more different sets over the next few days and then they will be up for sale in my online store at the end of next week. Let me know if you want me to reserve something for you.

Tea, anyone?

Permalink Comments

Visited 4267 times

fascinating headwear

Thursday, March 22, 2007 @ 10:31 pm
Filed under sewing, stuff n nonsense

A fascinator hat is a small headpiece usually mounted on a base, comb or headband worn jauntily to the front or side.

On Tuesday, as usual, I went to the Brindabella Women’s Group (a community group here in Canberra set up for women at home with children to meet and do some creative adult pursuits while their kids play in supervised care nearby) and this week the session was making fascinators.

Each week we have a set topic, often craft-related, and this session was the introductory session with our Artist in Residence for the year, a milliner called Christine Waring who is teaching us some millinery in preparation for our Community Project for this year which is Blue Hat Day - a week set up to highlight depression.

So a group of us learnt all about fascinators and how to make them. We were all a little nervous, having not done this sort of thing before but once we got going it was a lot of fun. Everyone turned out some wonderful designs and our milliner told us that similar fascinators would sell for around $250 in Sydney or Melbourne.

The main material was sinamay, which is derived from plant fibres and gives a stiffness to the fascinator. The sinamay comes in a range of colours and is cut into long strips on the bias - then we stretched and rolled it and formed it into curls and swirls. We had a selection of feathers, silk flowers, and other bits and pieces to decorate our creations.

Once we were happy with the design, we handsewed the pieces together and used glue in some places and then sewed the completed fascinator to a hair comb. I have a wedding to go to in a few weeks so I may just get an opportunity to wear mine someone fancy, if I have the courage.

It was a very interesting and creative session and we look forward to our next session with Christine, where we will be working on a larger-scale hat project.

Permalink Comments (5)

Visited 6933 times

behold…

Wednesday, March 21, 2007 @ 11:18 pm
Filed under fabric, sewing, stamping

behold… a tissue holder!

There are many more tissue holders at flickr - this one was made with the wonderful assistance of this tutorial and using fabrics that I hand stamped. Which reminds me, my big bottle of Bubble Jet Set arrived in today’s mail so I will soon be making some nice digital fabric prints - like the very nice ones over here.

Permalink Comments

Visited 6223 times

dolly quilts

Tuesday, March 20, 2007 @ 10:42 pm
Filed under quilting, sewing

Tonight while watching NCIS and Numbers I finished up some handsewing. A year ago I scoffed at handsewing, now I happily do it. I was sewing the quilt binding for two little dolly quilts. Emma loves to drape pretty much anything over her dolls as blankets so I guess that she was telling me to make some more dolly blankets already!

These might be small (the one on the left is approximately A4 paper sized) but they are so cute.

And they are my first ever quilts. I LOVE THEM!

After I finished them, I sat and looked at them for ages, smilling and thinking how clever I was. I went all dreamy-eyed - no wait, that was me looking at Gibbs and then Don Epps. Oh, and my little cute quilts.

I know, I really should have ensured they were exactly square before binding but the dolls won’t mind.

The “wonky” patch placement and freestyle quilting was intentional, even if the not-very-square part was a little mistake. No matter, I am very proud of myself and I know Emma and her dolls will LOVE their new little blankies.

I think they look quite cool and graphic here without their borders. Eh, maybe that’s just me.

Thanks so much to Amitie Fabrics for sending me the Heather Bailey Freshcut squares - did you know that if you have a blog you can sign up to join the Amitie Blog VIP Club and they will send you little packages of fabric every so often! How nice are they? This time around they are having a little contest - so Amitie, please consider these my entry!