Belated Christmas Sewing

This week I'm racing to finish my first ever batch of bunting - a project I've been swearing I'll work out 'soon' for many months - for a friends' little boy. His whole room is done in primary colours, so the bunting will be too, to match. I bought myself some pinking shears (so I don't have to sew the edges of my flags) and I'm so pleased at finding this Cars themed ribbon, to go with his playmat and bed sheets.
He and his Mum will be moving soon, so I don't think I'll get to see it strung up, but hopefully when they're re-settled I'll be able to ask for a picture.

Bug Softie

I've been a bit slack with the blogging lately, and that's partially because I've been a bit slack with the sewing. To break my sewing drought I decided I needed to add to the Softies I would be sending away for Mirabel (because one is pathetic) and I wanted to do something fun, that wouldn't break my brain. So I picked up the Blinking Flights bug pattern and some scraps of bright, cheerful fabric. It only took me two nights to whip up this island bug.
(Why are my creations always just that bit wonky? Let's pretend, and say it was their Creatrix deliberately imbuing them with some of herself, shall we?)

I'm not really a pattern follower, more what I call "A Hack and Slash Seamster", but the pattern plus knowing what the end result should look like made this a super easy softie to make. I didn't trim the seams round the curve of the head, as advised, and I think it shows, unfortunately, and the antennae were actually quite tricky, because they're so slim and require quite a precise control of your machine. But otherwise, this was a really easy, FUN pattern to make (and I felt very inspired by the bright colours and fabrics used by their original creator).

I'm now also kind of in love with the main, flower print fabric I used, and want to make myself a clothing item from it - and I think I've found the perfect pattern.

Peg Bag

I've been promising myself for months that I'd make my family a peg bag.
When we moved into our current home I was heavily pregnant, it was the end of summer, and stinking hot. The two Hills Hoists at the back of our block came complete with pegs, that stayed on the lines all day every day. Over the year or so that we've been here, the unrelenting sun, rain and frost has taken its toll. The plastic has degraded and every day I find more tiny, bright shards of peg death on the ground.

So I finally bit the bullet, googled 'peg bag pattern' and decided to make a simple version of the simplest pattern I could find (Easy Gratification, your home is Here).

More involved heads than mine decided to ditch a large pile of "Medieval" tabards from my local groups' loaner pile some months ago, possibly because they all appear to be made for someone over six feet tall with the constitution of a rake. Somehow, I ended up with the pile. One of these came in very handy when I needed fabric for this project!



Every fabric I touch needs to be embroidered, these days! The bird is a slightly altered freebie pattern I got from Badbird and the word is just one of the free fonts I got on my copy of Windows.
I'm slowly making my little word that much prettier.

Beautiful, Inspiring Boys' Clothes, courtesy of flickr

1. Wild West Overalls, 2. flow shirt, 3. For Oskar's birthday, 4. 2 new shirts, 5. Elephants in a row, 6. VIntage Inspired Sunsuit/Romper, 7. Zombies- BlueLS- rockNroll, 8. kwik sew 2545, 9. Dog jacket and matching pants

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

"E" is for Elephant

My girlfriend fell pregnant very shortly after my own son was conceived. Since she lives West of Sydney and I'm south, we're both in kind of black holes so far as the transport situation is concerned. So I was really excited to get to meet her and her beautiful little boy in the city, today!

I made him a little present that I whipped up in the last two or three nights.
First is a pair of wide-legged yoga pants - the outside is made from a delicious dark green up-cycled old sheet that my Mother Outlaw donated to me a while back (I'm so plotting a pixie outfit for my boy sometime soon!). I'm also starting to get into the swing of the rib-knit I used for the waistband. It's fun stuff and not as hard as I thought.

But because the recipient is a delicate little petal and needs 100% cotton clothes for his poor chafed skin, I rummaged through my stash for a lining and came up with pale yellow cotton flannel. It's made the pants thicker and warmer than I originally envisioned, but hopefully it will mean they can be winter and autumn pants rather than the spring I was going for! My little boy decided that second shot needed to be helped by his doll. Since photographic styling is not my strong suit, I took his suggestion.

The second part of his project is this sweet little door hanger - I spotted the "E" at a local shop - they only had Es! Which was serendipitous, since my gift is for an Elliott.
I almost cried, cutting up the rainbow ribbon - I pounced on it months back and haven't had the heart to open it till now. And then I cut my pieces too generously and have all these tag-ends I don't want to get rid of.
The elephant was inspired by the beautiful layette decor Tecelinha keeps posting to one of my flickr groups, and this fabulous Ganesha image at Wikipedia.

Happy Mother's Day!

This is my first Mother's Day ever. My baby boy just squeaked by the date, last year.
So what goodies did I receive for this special day? I got a nasty cold. That's pretty much it.

My Mum will be receiving mail with something OTHER than cold germs though (lucky thing).

Last time I was visiting, I noticed her using a very faded Coca-Cola pot-holder for her hot things. Since being ill has left me somewhat short on time, I wanted a fairly quick and easy project I could whip up for her, and this was perfect. The inside stuffing is a couple of layers of old towels - my MiL gave me a whole bag of them a year ago, and I am slowly making my way through them!
The outside is two different pieces of fabric, scraps from some of the major projects I've been working on lately (more on those in a few weeks). I found the wooden spoon with colander holes for noodles at the local ALDI (Mum loves making pasta dishes), and we're done.

Pink & Yellow Prefold Nappies

I have just this very minute finished ironing some prefolds that I have made for friends who are expecting.



I've never used them, nor seen one in person, so after googling and examining a bunch of different tutorials I dove in.

I pulled out some of the flannel sitting around in my stash, which just happened to be pink and yellow (that being what was on sale). Found some REALLY cute cotton print that matched the colours. Pulled out some old towels donated to me by my MIL, and acquired a couple of microfiber car towels (that 'pull' the moisture away) for the padded panel.
Baby-To-Be has no determined gender, so hopefully I won't get too much guff about the pink if it ends up threatening to shrivel baby's penis by its abstract femininity or somesuch.



I have no idea if what I've ended up with are newborn or toddler size, I cannot draw a straight line to save my life, and that has sadly translated into sewing. So they're somewhat wonky (for that authentic "handmade!" look), very adorable and delicious, my first prefolds!
Now to find some instructions on how to fold them, to include a printout of for the Parents-To-Be.