growing.

My “want to make” list, that is! The delightful Miss Bee offered me up a couple of patterns that she didn’t need anymore, that I was glad to take off her hands – the two very cute Make It Perfect patterns shown above. First on my list is the Uptown Girl jacket, and I managed some window shopping yesterday over at Bloom for the perfect cord for the outer, and found a cute flannel for the lining, thinking it would make it nice and snuggly for cold winter days. Until Bee suggested I *cough* read the description *cough* and it’s actually reversible. So I’m still pondering options on that one, and thinking about maybe adding a layer of flannel sandwiched inbetween? The winds here can be absolutely bitter, especially when it snows nearby, so I want something pretty insulated. Any thoughts?

The bag pattern is TOTALLY Carmel’s fault. As I’ve mentioned before, I have designed a bag for the bag challenge (and may or may not have gotten any further than that), but then Carmel is posting about Duckcloth having a closing down sale and linking the Melly and Me Sleepover bag, and really, at $10, how could I resist? It’ll be perfect for a hospital bag. And AJ was going to get one too, so we could keep each other on track. Until she blogged HER pattern purchase, and realised she’d bought the Amy Butler Weekender. Us and our grand ideas!! I haven’t started selecting fabric for this one yet, I’ll have to have a bit of a surf around, I’m thinking maybe a funky twill or cord? Not sure.

Now, all I need to do is find the mojo to tidy my studio so I can get to my sewing machine, and then I can get busy!

Another challenge!

To be honest, I’m not sure who to blame for this one. I think it was Bec, in conjunction with Car (c’mon, like THAT surprises anyone). Apparently a few of us thought we wanted a new bag, and so the EQ Bag Challenge/Sewalong was born. No deadlines or rules – just make a bag and encourage each other along. And that seemed easy enough, so being the challenge tart sociable type, I joined in, since I have been wanting to make a bag for Bear to take to drama lessons.

 

His lessons are directly after school, so he needs to take some afternoon tea, and sometimes has scripts and stuff that need to go back and forth, so I thought a dedicated little bag might be the go. Last week I got the chance to sit down and sketch out the design I’d come up with.

 

A simple little messenger style bag – the main pocket to hold a drink bottle and small container of afternoon tea, a separate flat pocket to hold scripts, a little zip pocket to pop his fees in (it’s a pay-by-the-week system), and then an appliqued flap to hold everything in. So I have the design, I have the measurements, the cutting guide and assembly guide all prepared, now just to raid the stash, and get stuck in!

Block of the Month. In theory.

It seemed like a good idea. Every month I’d get a pretty packet, and make up a block. How hard could it be to do one block in a month?

Yeah, famous last words. I now have 8 pretty packets sitting in my BOM drawer. At least, four of them, I have opened.

When I first signed up for the BOM, someone asked who was joining the Flickr group, and someone else (Becky, I think), asked what the point of a group of the same blocks would be. And I agreed. And then thought to myself, that I wanted my quilt to be a bit less formulaic, and a bit more me. The first block arrived, I looked at it, and I pondered. Should I reverse some colors? Or would that screw with the balance of the whole quilt. Block two arrived, and still no idea, and it was tucked away with block one. Then block three. I liked the block, but I most confess, as much as I love Vintage Modern as a whole, the large florals are my less favourite. And Block Three had a lot of those florals. And it was very red. I got to wondering, what would a small green flange around the middle look like?

And like that, I was set. A small addition, an embellishment to each block. Still the same blocks and same colors, just with a touch of “me” added. A couple of weeks after that, around the time block four arrived, I had an afternoon spare, so I pulled out the four packets, and cut all the pieces for all four blocks. And then put them back in the packet. I ended up taking them to camp, and got the first one finished there, and this last week, have managed another two.

Block One, at camp. Small green off-centre ruffle added to centre diamond.

Block Three, this week just gone. The one that started it all, with a 1/4″ flange around the centre.

Block Four, this past week also. I added corners to the centre block in Red Snickerdoodle, and at the last minute, also reversed the direction of the green flying geese so they were pointing in instead of out. And so glad I did. Love love love this block!

Three down, five to go. Block two will be next, as it’s cut out, and then we’ll see how the mojo goes. At least I know I’m not the only one behind on the blocks!

 

{flogging my blogging today over at With Some Grace for FYBF}

pocket money {+ tutorial}

Our little boys both get pocket money. We don’t link it to chores (at this age), and they get a set amount per week. We are trying to teach them how to wisely deal with money. We require that some goes into their piggy bank (pay yourself first!), some goes as their givings for Sunday School (give back what He has given to us), the big boy has an amount to go to school banking (long term savings/rainy day funds) and a certain portion is discretionary spending. They can choose if they put it in their money box and save up for something big, or they can have it for during the week. Most of the time, it goes in the money box, and they have both managed to save a decent amount and buy themselves some Lego. It’s so sweet seeing the pride and excitement on their face as they clutch the box to their chest, pass it up for scanning, and slowly pull the money from their pocket and pass it over, and then carry it home themselves.

But even with most of the discretionary amount in the money box, that still leaves some coins loose until Sunday school time. I’ve been meaning to make them up a little something for ages. I thought, as well, if they were going to be looking after their money, maybe they could have their library cards in the little wallet as well. (DISCLAIMER – they don’t cart the wallets everywhere, nor are they for play. They hold money and live in their bedside table until they need to take it somewhere). And so I whipped up a pair of little wallets, with a small coin pouch, and a spot for a library card, or maybe even a gift card. They are velcroed shut for security, while still being easy for small hands to open.

{tutorial for PERSONAL USE ONLY. Please do not use this tutorial to make products to sell}

REQUIREMENTS:

Piece of fabric – 15.5″ x 4.5″

Velcro – 3.5″

Zipper – I used a 5″, but anything longer than 4.5″ works just as well.

METHOD:
Cut 2.5″ off on short end. If you have a preference to which part of your strip is the outside, and which is the inside (for example, if you have pieced your strip), this is from the end that will become the inside.

Sew in your zip, and top stitch in place, making sure both pieces of fabric line up at the sides.

Fold the newly zip-inclusive strip in half, wrong sides together. Taking the folded edge, fold it again to form a 1.5″ ‘pocket’, and pin through all but the bottom layer.

Unfold the long strip (leaving the short pinned fold in place. Attach one side of the velcro, approx. 5″ from other end (I used the fuzzy part of the Velcro for this part).

Open the zip halfway {IMPORTANT}, then fold the whole thing in half, right sides together. The fold should line up roughly with the previously pinned short fold. Pin as you prefer, and sew all three sides. For mine, I chose to pin top, middle, bottom, plus on the opening side of the zip, pinned the zip tape in place. I wanted to be sure those layers and that zip weren’t moving anywhere!

Clip all four corners, open the zip the rest of way, and turn inside out through the open zip, poking the corners to get them nice and crisp. Pin both sides together about half way between the top of the fold, and the zip, to hold everything flat and in place.

Stitch a line 2 3/8″ from the folded edge (the left in the photo above). This line will become the fold line of your wallet. Pin above the zip in the same way, and stitch 2 3/8″ from the previously stitched line. Pin the other half of the velcro above the second row of stitching – on the far right of the photo above – and on the same side at the zip & fold. Sew in place.

And that, as they say, is that! The perfect size for a few coins, and a library card. The small boys are very impressed, and feel very grown up with their new wallets. I hope you’ve found this tutorial useful, and if you use it, I’d love it if you link here in the comments so I can come check out your creations!

{linked with The Rustic Pig for Creatively Tuesdays, Ninth St Notions FOR I Made It! Monday, and Skip to My Lou for Made by You Monday}

kindling

It seems that I can be subtle as a sledgehammer at times. “Hey Kylie, do you have a kindle? I’m thinking of getting one…”, I asked, oh so innocently on Facebook. And she was kind enough to give me a lovely well thought out answer. Then a little message appeared in my inbox. “Hey, are you really thinking of a kindle, or are you being secret squirrel?”. Yes. Indeed. It appears Car knows me too well! Thankfully, Kylie was none the wiser, and with a day or two left before camp, I got cracking on a kindle cover, using this tutorial. I found myself topstitching it the night before camp while chatting to Bee, and ended up handwheeling the corners, with 6 layers of interfacing, two layers of batting and 6 layers of fabric, my poor little machine was struggling!!

 

I think the topstitching wasn’t as close to the edge as it should be, because the interior pocket is just a fraction too small for the kindle to fit in, but Kylie was very forgiving, and said she likely wouldn’t take it out of the little triangle holders anyway!

 

First day of holidays here today, and we are all systems slow. Pancakes for breakfast. A jammie day for the smalls. A movie. A bit of craft. Some baking, and a spot of sewing for mama. Just whata  holiday should be. Five days until the big jolly man arrives and I am far from organised. But today I am taking time out and celebrating my babies being here with me, happy and healthy. Too many mamas this week can’t say the same. Counting my blessings and cherishing moments that count.

how many quilts can a quilter quilt, when the quilter needs to quilt?

It was one of those “oh drats” moments, really. A last minute invitation to afternoon tea saw me adding “make a mug rug” to my Friday to-do list, and somehow it was 2.15 before I reached that part of my list. With 45 minutes until I needed to leave, I grabbed some fabric and started cutting. 35 minutes later, I had a mug rug.

{please excuse the instagram photo, that’s how much of a rush I was in!}

I did simple echo quilting inside the pink pinwheels, and then FMQed feathers down each side panel, before machining down a fold over binding. Which, admittedly, had far more puckers in it than I would normally allow through, but I’m hoping my grandmother appreciated the thought more than the accuracy (or lack thereof).

Monday is poking me in the ribs, and pushing me onwards to get more done. The last full week of school sees a full diary and a long to-do list. Hopefully a night of relaxing and crafting tonight before the real storm of the second half of the week hits. The sooner these holidays come the better! Have a lovely Monday everyone.

finally, we have a hat!

It seemed like a good idea at the time. One hat, one month. How hard could it be? And so I signed up to be part of Carmel’s hat sewalong. I downloaded the Oliver+S bucket hat pattern. And there it languished until around the 20th of the month, when I had a sudden “oh drats” moment when I realised we were due to go on holidays very shortly. So I printed the pattern. And yet, I still seemed to lack impetus. A week or so later, a lazy four days prior to holidays, I wandered down to the fabric store and bought fabric for six hats. And there ended the month, and the official deadline for the challenge. Fail. But still, I hooked in, and soon the various pieces for all six hats festooned my cutting table. The pressure was suddenly on. Six hats. Three days. Could I do it?

Um. No. All six crowns and linings were sewn. Two brims were assembled. But there wasn’t actually a whole hat in usable condition. We used various existing hats for the holiday, and the hat pieces were shoved unceremoniously aside in favour of the dolls quilt.

Until the heat wave hit, and I realised a certain little girl had grown out of her hats. With a trip to the farm planned for the weekend, it was bumped up to “urgent” and so I sewed during rest time instead of tackling the mountain of folding that has taken over my lounge.

I had to machine the crown lining into place, instead of hand stitching, and there are a few puckers in it, but overall, I’m happy with it. And Butterfly is refusing to take it off, so that has to be considered the most important measure of success, don’t you think?

aussie aussie aussie…

A week or so ago, it was Education Week, and part of that was a dress-up book parade, with the theme of Champions. Brilliant, a box, a horse head and he could be Black Caviar. Yeah, no. A swimmer he wants, and try as I might to talk him into a tracksuit and some medals, no, it has to be swimmers. Except it’s August and FREEZING. So we come up with an ingenious plan. I’ll sew him some leggings. The top half, down to his knee will be black, like the knee-length trunks the swimmers wear, the bottom half, a skin colour, so it looks like he’s wearing trunks, but he won’t turn blue, and mummy won’t be reported to DOCS for negligence. The trunks made, I turned my attention to the jacket. Unfortunately, living rural does have it’s downsides, in this case, only one fabric shop, and that one stocking neither yellow, nor dark green fleece,so fluorescent green it was. If the Rio 2016 team comes out in fluoro green, I’m claiming credit. I drafted up a basic jacket shape, added a stand up collar and then got busy with some free motion embroidery. First up was “AUSTRALIA” on the back, and then to make the front look more official, I sketched a very rough coat of arms on some curtain fabric and stitch stitch stitched away! Some cardboard and gold paint, a pair of goggles, and one little swimmer was happy as Larry. Only problem now is he wants to wear the jacket constantly….

 

I’m finally starting Boy2′s quilt today. Butterfly has been perched up beside me, pulling out the strips as I cut them and happily playing with the growing pile. She’s supposed to be napping but 10 minutes asleep on my xhesr seems to be all she wants today. This day could get very interesting very quickly. C’mon baby girl, it’s Monday and mama wants to sew. Let’s play nicely, hey?

nice try.

Like the toyroom, the boy’s bedroom can be a bit of disaster area. Despite having a perfectly adequate area to play, they love to drag their toys into their bedroom to play. And leave them there. They love to read a book before bed. Which falls to the floor, and gets left there. Drawers get emptied in search of the perfect top (seriously, boys, you are not teenage girls. Just pick a darn t-shirt), the discarded clothes on the ground. And left there. And of course, jammies, that get taken off upstairs next to the heater, when asked to be taken back and PUT ON YOUR BED PLEASE BOYS, get chucked on the ground, generally just far enough inside the door to say they are in the bedroom. And left there.

;

So, I thought, I ‘ll make some jammie bags. We’ll pop them on the end of their beds, and at least their jammies have somewhere to live. No excuses, right? Yeah. Well. Guess what now lives on the floor NEXT to the pyjamas it was supposed to storing?

;

;

It’s Friday, and of course we are crazy busy trying to get organised for the weekend. I’m hoping to do some quilting this weekend, Boy2 wants an extra quilt for his bed, and the weather is FREEZING at the minute, so that’s top of the list. I might try and scam half hour in the sun with my ripple blanket I’m slowly hooking through. And I want to style a shoot and blog some photos of my very exciting new fabric collection!! I can not WAIT to show you this, it’s been a fun project, and a wonderful collaboration, so hopefully Monday on that one. I want to write, Lauren & Paul’s story is hovering at the edge of my mind, so I might try and squeeze that in too somewhere. A spot of entertaining, some games and quality time with the smalls, and all too soon it will be Monday again! But let’s not wish it away, it’s Friday, two whole days lay before us, and to make them count, I need to make today count. Computer is closing in three, two, one….

rolling rolling rolling

This pencil roll was a little side project I was puttering along with last week, in amongst everything else. It came about after I got a message via Facebook, asking if I made the rolls to sell, by a lovely UK lady who’d found my blog, and a post where I’d made pencil rolls using this fabric previously. I bought this fabric around 4 years ago, and it has made an apron for my mother in law, two, now, three, pencil rolls, and a little sewing kit for a friend. I think I’ve just about exhausted my supply of this fabric!!

 

We’ve had a lovely weekend, hanging out, a bit of sewing on a bag, some embroidery for a new little project (which I’ll share tomorrow), and getting the garden ready for spring, interspersed with some Olympic watching – Bear has declared he is going to the Olympics to swim “because I like swimming, and if you want to watch me, you can just turn on the television, and there I’ll be!”. Keep an eye out in 2024, and when my boy is up on the podium, remember, you heard it here first!! Monday is shaping up nicely, the sun is shining, and truly, it’s too nice to be trapped indoors, so I’ll stick to short and sweet today! Have an awesome Monday x