little has gone a bit froofy.

Just a little bit. Not a lot. But my latest project is quite a departure from the usual bold colours and sharp graphic prints that I so love. Today I went . . . flowery and lacey. Hmm.

It started, if I’m honest, in 2004, when I bought a small amount of floral material from whatever that super-fantastic fabric warehouse is called on Sar St in Thorndon, Wngtn. As with many, many of my fabric purchases over the years, it got put away carefully and occasionally met with the light of day when I got it out to, you know, stroke it. (Please Note: ALL FABRIC PEOPLE DO THIS, I’M NOT CRAZY.) Part of getting ready for the new baby’s arrival involves trying to use up as much of my stash as possible in order to make enough room for a whole ‘nother person to live at our house, ergo: Pretty Floral Fabric That Makes Me Go “Squeeeee” – your time has cometh at last!!

I put on my big girl pants, got brave, found my shears and started cutting. Happily, today’s project also afforded me the opportunity to use another special little something that had been squirrelled away; my precious friend Natalie of Poppy and Bee had kindly given me a length of beee-aaaa-uuuu-tiful hand made cotton lace that she’d come across on her travels. After I wore it around as a scarf for a while I thought I’d better do as promised and make something with it!

someone, somewhere at some point worked re-heally hard on this! Thank you, someone. x

l i t t l e “lady lace” skirt – August 5th 2012

She’s a simple wee thing, but with handwork that gorgeous, do you really want to do too much to distract?? Sizes 1, 2 and 3 will be available for purchase on my table at Oh, For Crafts’ Sake from tomorrow.

J xx

Yet another use for paper doilies!

I’m super lucky to have a handy husband. He’s been known to knock up fences, decks, and dog kennels without breaking a sweat, and once when a visiting friend commented on my new herb planter we all got a surprise when he presented her with one to take home before we’d even finished our cups of tea. So when I started selling at markets and said I was after a tall rack with arms for displaying kid’s clothes, he said “no problem”. Ten minutes at the hardware store and half an hour outside with various power tools and there it was! A custom made clothes rack which is easy to take apart so that I can lug it around markets and in and out of the car with ease.

Lately though I’ve been feeling like it needed something to catch the eye of the passers-by, something that could be removed so that I could still take it apart at the end of the day. In the ten minutes between finishing sewing and Little coming home from his playdate I made some wee labels and was utterly taken with them! I thought I’d share.

The foundation of the disc is foam board, cadged from an office cleanout years ago that has been sitting waiting to be repurposed. It’s light and easy to cut with a craft knife so it fitted the bill perfectly. After cutting a circle out of it, I then cut a circle of fabric 3cm larger to cover it with, and another 2cm smaller to put on the back to hide my ATROCIOUS glue-gunning skills.

 

double sided tape holds the backing on steady to glue, once the front has been glued on "neatly". Ha ha.

 

 

if you don't have a love/hate relationship with your gluegun, you're doing it wrong.

All that was left to do after this was to stick the paper doily to the front of the disc; at $2 for a pack of 60, it doesn’t get much more economical than that. I used a normal gluestick for this, partially because the paper doilies are super dainty and thin and partly because there is only so much hot glue one’s fingers should have to be subjected to per sitting.

all finished, on location and looking lovely at the Birkenhead Artisan Market

 

After I had made these, I started thinking about how cute and easy they would be to use as wall decorations too – different colours and sizes and fabrics, with doilies or without, appliqued motifs, hand painted, the options are endless. I think I might make some more to sell and see what happens at next months’ markets . . . there’ll need to be some serious brushing up on the art of glue-gunning first though!

 

j xx

I heart hearts.

You know those days where nothing really specifically seems to go wrong, but nothing really goes right either? I had one yesterday. The day where you rely a little too much on the good old Monsters Inc dvd to entertain a hot, sticky, grumpy child, the project you’re working on just doesn’t quite come out how you planned (chevron plackets and tired eyes DO NOT MIX WELL), and your diet of a mocha-latte and a handful of choc chip biscuits comes back to bite you mid-afternoon in the form of a massive sugar hangover.

Advice from friends after a lengthy facebook vent pointed out that I needed to put down the scissors, stop freaking out and give in to the blues, at least for the rest of the day, but I knew that to be able to sleep soundly I needed at least ONE thing to go satisfactorily. So -ironic as it is – I did what most crafters do when they feel upset, annoyed or otherwise wonky: I made stuff.

So after the wee one went to bed and with nary a thought towards margins, costings, or target markets, I collected up some of my favourite things (felt, polka dots and variegated yarn), and one of my favourite stitches (blanket), made a cuppa, put the cricket on, and just let whatever wanted to come out happen. What eventually happened was a string of felt heart bunting!

As uncharacteristically pink as this is for me, it makes me smile – thus serving its purpose! Will it come with me to market next week, with a few friends?? Possibly. I feel a week of puff-bunting coming on.

Lomo Wednesday.

In our house, the television dosn’t work on Wednesdays. It’s easier to explain to a toddler that it’s broken once a week than to go into a convoluted, one-sided “discussion” on why he can’t watch Monsters Inc.

It’s really more for my sake anyway, as Isac isn’t really fussed on tv – like all small boys he’d rather be outside getting grubby, and more power to him. Every day I tell myself I’m going to knuckle down and get some serious sewing done during naptime, and every day I get waylaid by something else; at least on Wednesdays it’s usually more productive than watching Dr Phil! Today I have taught myself how to fake a Lomo.

Lomography is a style of photography which, thanks to its explosive cult following, we’ll all be well familiar with by now. It’s the over-saturated, vignetted product of Russian made cameras from the early 1980s. You can find out more about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomography

Rather than track down and shell out for an original or replica Lomo camera (I hear you can even get an ap for your iPad/iPhone now which will do it all for you!), I found a really user-friendly guide to converting your digital photos using Photoshop. I’ve already forgotten more than the average bear about Photoshop from my tech days, but even I could follow this one. Hallelujah!

http://www.digital-photography-school.com/how-to-make-digital-photos-look-like-lomo-photography

First in the experimentation line was a pic of a wee dress I made on Sunday. I don’t know about you, but over Christmas our house was covered in homemade bunting (which I have only just, very begrudgingly I might add, taken down), and man, don’t I just love this stuff. It seems to be on my mind all the time, possibly because it’s so easy to make you can do it with your eyes closed. So when I found myself cutting and sewing up a run of  l i t t l e sweatshirting dresses for the upcoming market season that were in need of something special, bunting was the obvious choice! Perhaps these are all destined for the Manawatu/Wellington region however, as we seem to be losing some flags . . . Voila! The Fly Away Dress was born!

j xx

I sold a dress today.

This dress, to be exact. There’s something wonderful about people shopping for your clothes online while you spend the morning in the sun with your family at the carnival. Isac had his face painted for the first time! He was a tiger.