The Easter Bilby visits

As bunnies are a really terrible pest here in Australia, and the Wicked Fairy is very aware of this as his parents own a farm, we have agreed that the Easter Bilby (whose chocolate presence can be seen on supermarket shelves alongside his European brethren) will be visiting the Tiny Tyrant each year.

This year the Bilby brought a few handmade soy chocolate eggs and something else - bunny skittles, to practice "kick" at with a ball! I knew these skittles would be a hit before I even began them. My prototype was March's Toy Society item, and the Tyrant pounced on the toy and began gleefully carrying and tossing it about the moment it was done (he did the same thing with the purple hippo. It makes me almost sorry to give them away).

The bunnies are stuffed with a core of fabric scraps from the last three Toy Society projects, and rounded and softened with Hobbyfill. This makes them just a smidge heavier than they'd otherwise be, which makes them a little bit harder to knock over.
So the Tyrant's started placing his ball on the ground 15 centimetres away from the grouped skittles and then gleefullly kicking it - conveniently, he's then close enough to kick any skittles over that he managed to miss, without taking a step!

Toy Society drops

Although I've been running a bit late, I have managed to do roughly a toy a month for my Toy Society drops.

Because of the lateness, January and February's drops were both that wonderful hippo pattern I bought from 2 Little Banshees at Stitches & Craft last year. It's become a wonderfully soothing activity that comes together in more or less an evening (maybe two, for stuffing and fiddly bits like embroidery and button attachment). These two were drop number 974 and 984 respectively.

But in March I managed to sew something a bit different, and dropped it on the 1st April, just before Easter.

It's a little overexposed, as the Attack Toddler managed to get at my camera and change the settings the day before (and I was in a rush to get a shot before the drop, so didn't realise before taking the photos). This is an altered pattern from the book Softies. The original was a cat skittle, but a bunny felt much more seasonally appropriate!

Old sheets redux

Laundry bag for the back of the bathroom or bedroom door (both our baskets are pitifully small for the amount of dirty clothes that can accumulate during a week in the life of a Crafter, Miniaturist and Very Small Boy). Conveniently the right colour scheme to go with either our towels OR our bedclothes!

Reversible toddler wrap dresses

This has been my major preoccupation of the last month - hence the lack of updates. It's also something I've been holding off on, firstly because I knew documenting the project was going to be somewhat epic, and secondly because I didn't want people to stumble across their daughters' first birthday gifts online before they'd been gifted.




These are four fully reversible, crossover-back dresses/tunics - these pictures are the two sides of each dress. I patterned them myself, working out kinks as I went along, and I am unbelievably proud of them!

I got my measurements and basic outline from a button down the back tunic I got at a garage sale and made a mock-up out of old sheets. The lovely Mummy to one of the little girls who would be receiving let me borrow her daughter to check that my size and pattern was right (Thanks Tracey, and thankyou to my lovely patient model, Lucy!)

This is the first dress I then made (Lucy's Mummy likes to bake).

One side is printed cotton, with silver glitter decoration on some of the cupcakes. Unfortunately you cannot see this, because the weather here has been despicable lately, and thus the lighting is trashy. That, and I need more practice taking decent shots of my own handiwork.
The other side is pale purple polyester dug out from my stash (I bought several metres years and years ago!) which had a nice weight and matched the purple on the cotton. On the front of this side I hand-stitched a circle cut out with a cupcake.

The back two pieces cross over, and it's all sewn together like a simple Gordian Knot (perhaps I should call it a Gordian Knot dress?), which is what keeps the garment on. I'm possibly proudest of this detail, as it means there are no press-studs or zips to catch on sensitive skin or have to wrestle with whilst holding a squirmy child still. There's also no buttons for the small recipients to suck on and possibly choke.

Since two of the dresses are made from quite busy printed cottons they didn't get any sewn detail, but the last dress was made from red and neutral tone linen-cotton blend that had me salivating in the shop but is very plain.
I left the red as it was, since it's such a fantastic colour, and spiced up the neutral side with a little freehand embroidery in backstitch and running stitch. The more I do it, the more I'm enjoying exercising my embroiderer's needlework skills, these days!

Adventures in embroidery

I attempted to secure some stone coloured linen-cotton blend for Ethan a while back, but bought a shade lighter than he wanted, due to the crappy artificial store lighting. So I had three metres of this lovely fabric sitting around. Some of it went to make my son's piggy tunic, after which I had some almost rectangular off-cuts.

Being the environmentally conscious crafter I am, I set them aside for future crafting possibilities. And lo and behold - the other day I was taken by the sudden desire to pull out my embroidery threads and embroidery hoop and fiddle. And what more perfect fabric could I have for an impromptu sampler piece?

Once I was done with my freehand design I was casting about, wondering what to do when I hit upon the idea of making a small pocket out of my piece of fabric - again all by hand rather than machine, as my hand-sewing really does need to be better. In the course of sewing my pocket, I decided to make a pillow of rice from the cupboard and lavender (a Christmas present from my MiL) from more scraps - again, entirely by hand.

Upon seeing the result, my partner promptly christened it a "hot pocket", as it's about the size of a pocket in a pair of pants; perfect for travelling with, or for little aches like sore wrists, knees or to fit perfectly in the small of your back. I'm now working on some more!

Returning to Cards

Cardmaking is an old favourite of mine, in the list of crafty activities. Not as intimidating as full-on scrapbooking, portable and as simple or involved as you like, I really love making cards for my friends and relatives.
So it was really nice to find myself at a cardmaking workshop last weekend, led by Kellie, who's a demonstrator for Stampin' Up!. It was a tiny party of four (not including my baby son), and we had a lovely afternoon.

It was actually the first time I've ever been to an "official", pay-for-materials-provided-get-given-a-card-recipe style of Card Party. All my prior cardmaking get-togethers have been informal You-raid-my-stash-I'll-raid-yours type of thing. It was cool to learn a few new techniques, get some new ideas and 'professional' tips (and have access to the tools that make the difference sometimes). Even if I did veer "off-recipe" and use the materials provided in my own way, a few times.


The quality of my photographs for these cards is sadly lacking.
I'd figured out the best place and time of day for optimum lighting, at our last house. I knew the gymnastic routines required to get the necessary angles for Best Photographic Record versions. And I didn't have a small, newly-mobile child acting as a distraction.

So apologies - I will continue to experiment with my location, angles and lighting, to try to find the best case scenario for this home.