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Thanks so much to everyone who sent in a comment for my blogiversay giveaway - I’m so sorry it took me this long to get organised!  I would like to announce that the winner of the vintage wallpaper pack is… Vicki from Turkey Feathers.  Please send me your address Vicki so I can mail your pack out to you.

 

Here are the “Pretty Paper Packs” that I made up - of course, one is off to Vicki and the others will be going to my market stall.  If you would like one, please let me know in the comments.  They are US$10.  They may also appear at my online store soon too.

Look at what my friend Jess made, after hearing some ideas at my recent Brindabella session on op shop refashioning:

 

She took an op shop singlet top and sewed up the bottom, then added trim and decorations and now she has a shopping bag!  The bag even folds up into the denim pocket!  Go Jess! 

This afternoon we had a lovely time at our friends Nicole and Gerry, at a party to celebrate their Freya’s first birthday. It was so great, dressing up a little and having a few wines, chatting to new people and watching all the many kids racing around and making up games together. I guess we don’t get out to parties much these days!

You might remember the doll I made Freya when she was a tiny wee thing:

I liked the doll so much I even did a scrapbook layout about her, ages ago:

Speaking of which, yes it has been a hundred years since I have done any scrapping and I am really getting the urge to get right back into it. The scrapping desk is a bit crammed with junk right now but I am itching to clean it up and have a go soon.

Back to Freya: Well, I can’t believe it either, but she’s just turned one and so about 45 mins before we were due at the party (yes, we were late!) I decided to make her a little pillowcase dress for her first birthday.

I had a vintage thrifted pillowcase that I knew would be just perfect and so I added some rick rack and some bobble fringe. Isn’t it just the sweetest dress. I love how it turned out:

I also added one of the crochet yoyo button brooches that I made recently:

Happy Birthday Freya!

Yes, yes I know it’s been ages. Hello again. I will try to be less slack about posting from now on. Did you miss me? Did you even notice? (sniff sniff)

If it’s any consolation, I have a big dose of Blogger’s Guilt so I thought I had better get busy and take some photos of things that I have been doing lately.

First off, this is what happens when you go in to buy a zipper:

I know the photo is a bit out of focus, sorry about that, but with the slackness and all I just couldn’t be bothered to retake the photo. Sorry! These are four lovely knits that are going to become lovely fancy tees, you know - with the pleating and the frilly sleeves and all those trendy details.

I have also been getting very tired of my jeans and so close to falling off the Wardrobe Refashion wagon. I keep feeling the need to buy a new pair of skinny (ish) jeans but I know that I can make them so I am going to keep my discipline and not buy any. It helps that it is warming up and I know that I won’t be wearing jeans for all that much longer. I have been working on drafting a perfectly fitting pants pattern that I can then just change the length and leg width and use that for most of my pants. I have bravely tackled the hitherto too-scary fly zipper and found that it’s really pretty easy as long as you have good image-heavy instructions. In seam pockets were easy too. Photos to follow once I finish the pair I am working on - grey thrifted drill, slightly skinny-leg pants.

There has been major tidying and reorganising of the huge amounts of STUFF that keeps finding it’s way into my studio space. I bought some new white cubes. They are the ones on the right side behind the sewing machine, overlocker and coverstitch - the ones on the left have been there for ages and I can’t believe it took me so long to think of buying more of them. I also bought a couple of cupboards to stash yet more stuff. I had to buy a bunch of clear plastic storage boxes too and it was a big (and expensive) process - very exhausing actually - but the upshot is that now I can find (and get my hands on) pretty much everything. My labeller went into overdrive.

Not sure if it’s interesting (who am I kidding, of course it is!) but here are my new cupboards. There is a tall one and a short one, both of them flatpack kitchen cupboards from Bunnings. The cubes in the pic above are from Magnet Mart by the way.

Yes, I have a big pile of stuff to eBay so stay tuned for that. Forgetting that I am supposed to stop bringing more STUFF into this room, I keep finding good thrifty things. Look at this - a big plastic bag full of crocheted flowers. This is the bag after I have already used up a whole bunch of these. I am guessing that some lovely old lady made them and who knows, maybe she died and her family just didn’t appreciate them and gave them to their local Vinnies or Salvos. I’m glad I found them and can give them some more life. All of this for only $4.00.

I have been making yo-yos and adding a button in the centre and then a brooch back on the other side and lo, they turn into beautiful flower pins, to dress up an outfit or pin to a bag. I will be adding these to the shop sometime soon. Here are a few I prepared earlier. I think I still need to add something to them, perhaps some ribbon or ricrac.

Emma is going to a little friend’s birthday party tomorrow so I made this cute little bag for her to take along.

Here is the present wrapped up and ready to go. Complete with flower pin.

I hope the birthday girl likes it. And I hope you have enjoyed this little recap. I promise I will be a good blogger again now.

I forgot to tell you, dear readers, that last week I sold my doorstop old coverstitch machine (Brother 2340C) because quite frankly, we had never bonded.

I had fallen in love since the first time we met in the sewing forums online, but once I got her home, well… let’s just say things didn’t work out as planned. We had never gotten along despite my many attempts at reconciliation. To put it bluntly, she was very high maintenance. For a long time, I felt obliged to keep her around but with a heavy heart (and dollar signs in my eyes) I put her up for auction at ye olde eBay and had someone in Melbourne “Buy Her Now” within a day.

It wasn’t long before a younger, fitter model caught my eye - and she had to be mine.

So I have done a little practice sewing on her, read up on all the info I might need, and had some binders on the way. Today I thought I was ready to sew a tee with her. After all the alterations I did to Simplicity 4076 recently, I wanted to try it out in a more suitable fabric. I used a tshirting weight soft pink jersey and white rib binding at the neck and sleeves.

I somehow ended up cutting two front pieces (instead of one front piece on the fold) and I have no idea how that happened, but once I realised what I had done, I thought I had better do some topstitching (coverstitching) and call it a feature. I was very happy with how it turned out.

I also added a wide band at the bottom as a bit of an afterthought, but I am calling that a design feature as well! I have received some of the binders from the eBay guy but I am still waiting on a couple and the ones I have weren’t wide enough for what I wanted, so I applied the rib binding the usual way. First I sewed it on with my sewing machine and then wrapped it around the edge and then I used the coverstitch machine to topstitch it in place.

You might notice the blue lines on Pinny, above. After padding her out (tummy and bra) I added some tape lines to use as markers for my Centre Front (CF), Centre Back (CB), waistline, bust, hips and princess seams. I don’t remember where I read about this trick but it has been really useful for fitting and design.

I also did a little bit of refashioning for Emma today. She has a size 3 pair of jeans that are still in good condition and fit her well, except for being a bit too short now.

I bought this cute ruffle binding (with red ric rac, it killed me!) off eBay a while back and knew this was a perfect use for it. Emma loves these “new” fancy pants and she can’t wait to wear them tomorrow.

Quick and easy and we’ll get a bit more wear out of these now! More refashioning over here.