Richmond Primary School Fete

Our full page colour spread in the local rag!

With a week to go this seems like a good opportunity to wrap up discussions about my kids school fete. As you know I have been sewing and creating things for this event for MONTHS! This week I turned my attention to receiving the creations made by other parents and yesterday I had a group of school mums come over for a busy bee to price and package- we only made it about half way through the stuff. Gulp! Here I was worried that I wouldn't have a nice display of things to sell on fete day

In case you cant read the newspaper ad and you would like to come to the Fete the details are as follows:

Where Richmond Primary School, Windsor Rd, East Fremantle

When Sat 14th November

Time 10am to 4pm

Stuff for kids- pony rides, balloon creations, lucky dip, play dough sales, face painters, body art, bouncy castle, sumo suits, farm animals, jewellery making, giant chess, arty brella's gladiators,.

Stuff to buy- divine cakes and slices, scruptions strawberries, gourmet food and preserves, all things lemon, lolly shop, pucker powder, water-wise plants, fresh flowers, quality craft ;), kids clothes op shop, beads bangles and baubles, books and DVD's, Art by Richmond kids, and Mondo cookbook- created by Richmond families.

Stuff to eat- Richmond Cafe- selling rolls, salads and cafe cakes with barista on site ALL day

Mrs Macs, Peters icecream, sausage sizzle, slushies and popcorn, Fairy floss, hot corn.

I'd love Perth based readers to come on by :)

Here are some teasers of the gorgeous home made products I will be bundling up this week. Please note.. I have not made all these things myself!

Beaded jewellery and bookmarks

Completly random but gorgeous felt "teabags"
Table runners

Girly hair bands, ties and clips
And for the boys we put together a "marble" bag filled with random stuff boys like; plastic insects, string, marbles, matchbox cars etc etc.
Whimsy christmas dec's

Assorted teatowels

Kids apron/cookie cutter gift sets.

Dolly outfit

Glam aprons

Dress-ups; pirate bandana and patch

butterfly wings

velvet capes

Hmmm lets see, to the far left is a bundle of juggling balls, in the middle basket is the fanciest pencil rolls you have ever seen, they are being obscured by some gorgeous cupcake pin cushions. The right hand basket contains some glammed up dishwashing gloves.

little girls skirts

book bags

One of many womens handbags

One of the assorted babies quilts/blankets

Sorry about all the pics. It was really hard to leave stuff out. As it is I havent even touched on the clothing or the cards and gift tags!

Recycled outfit.

I made George these neat little shorts from a pair of my old jeans. I cut off the bottom half of each leg to use for the actual shorts. I used the jeans hem for the hem of my shorts and retained inside leg seam on the jeans but used it as the outside leg seam on my shorts (on a pair of jeans the inside leg seam is topstitched for durability. This makes it a bit more textured and interesting than the outside one so I decided to put it on show in my finished pair of shorts). I also ripped off one of the bum pockets and added it to the front leg of the shorts and then took the belt loops off jeans and stitched them onto the waistband of the shorts.

Elizabeth also made this little raglan t-shirt for George using some thrifted adults Tee's from my stash. Well I lie... she cut and stitched all of it but the ribbing around the neck... which I quickly attached with the overlocker. Normally I like to finish things off with toptstitching, but this time I just decided not to...

Comfy enough to sleep in.

Baby blanket with a difference.

Gosh I am on a bloggy roll now. Thus will be my 4th post in 24 hours!


Here is a really simple little pram blanket you can make up in a hurry (like the hour before you go and visit a new mum in hospital!). I have gone for a thoroughly modern look here because, lets face it, some mums just aren't into bunny's and cute stuff like that. I have used a piece of denim, a thrifted jeans pocket and some gorgeous and bright orange gerbra flannel fabric.

This blanket is quite small, only 20" x 30" and that makes it perfect as a little pram or bassinet blanket for those first couple of months. After that it could be used as a change mat! Obviously you can scale it up or down as required.

(1) Cut two pieces of fabric 20"x 30" in diameter. Cut one piece from denim (new or thrifted) and one from a flannel (brushed cotton) fabric of your choice. I like something with orange tones- because it co-ordinates goes the best with the orange topstitching thread you often see in denim jeans.

(2) steal a bum-pocket from a pair of jeans you no longer want.

(3) pin and then stitch the jeans pocket into place on the right side of the denim fabric. I placed mine in the bottom right corner to it was out of the way of little fingers, and so it would be visible when the top of the blanket gets turned down. Use orange thread to stitch the jeans in place.

(4) with right sides together pin the denim to the backing flannel fabric. Make sure you smooth out both pieces of fabric before you pin... you dont want any bubbles or puckers in the finished blanket.

(5) Using a 1/2" seam allowance stitch around the perimieter of the quilt... leaving a small gap in the stitching so you can turn the blanket right sides out.

(6) Clip the seam allowance from the corners of the blanket and then turn the blanket right sides out. Use a knitting needle (or other pointy device) to really push out the corners of the blanket to make them nice and crisp and square. Press the seams.

(7) Topstitch all the way around the blanket a few milimetres from the the edge, making sure you catch both layers of fabric where you left the gap in the stitching to turn the blanket through. Totstitch again about 1/2" inside the first row of topstitching.

Made By Rae Spring Ruffle Top... sort of.

Funny story. Yesterday I had a Kitchen Tea to attend. When the invitation arrived a few weeks ago I only gave it a cursory glance to make sure I was available at the stipulated date and time. So it was only, when, a couple of hours before the event did I realise that there was, in fact, a dress code.... "Pretty in Pink". and I dont have any thing pink. Its cool, I think, I dont have to be a party pooper... The lovely Made By Rae has a gorgeous Spring Ruffle Top turorial that I have ALWAYS wanted to try. It looks easy and would look lovely in a pink floral. I didnt actually have time to track down the tutorial and give it a looksie before I started sewing, but I had read it when she first published it 6 moths ago. What could go wrong?!

Hmmmm well in 45 minute time frame I gave myself I got something wearable (just... if I breathed in), but only with a little jacket over the top. I wasnt game enough to photopgrah it. It did have good bones though, so after I got home from the party I reworked it slightly- let out the seams in the bust, neatened the hem (hmmm well really I DID a hem LOL)- and am now happy enough to show you some pics.

Considering I was working without reference to the Tute I think my finished product has the same overall 'Look' as Rae's original. I completely forgot that there was a separate contrast band in the bodice (I used self-made bias binding instead) and I have done 3 larger pleats instead of Rae's 6 smaller ones. I also forgot that Rae's top is 6 inches wider at the hem than it is at the bust (even before the pleats are added)- so I had to shape the side seams a bit to give me a waistline. I also added some ties to the sideseams, just because I like ties in the back- helps give definition to the waist.

Fete sewing

I havent been blogging much lately... but I have been sewing! Lots and lots actually. Its stuff for the fete at my kids school. Here is just a sample of what I have been doing this week- all of the fabric comes from my stash and I am donating the finished product to the school to sell at the fete. The plan was to use fabric that I didnt want anymore anyway, but I find that my sense of craft-pride means I cant settle for this fabric when there is something perfect just staring at me from my 'favourites' pile.

I have just about finished making some little dolly nappies to match the dolly tops (AKA premmie smocks) I made a few weeks ago. Just need to add velcro and elastic to the last two pink nappies and I can tick "dolls clothes" off my list.

A Cabbage Patch doll came wandering into the sewing room so I got her to model one of the outfits for me.

Thought I may as well use up the last bit of hot pink fabric to make a simple baby blanket- teaming it up with a cute cotton print and some ric rac.

Stacks of bucket hats. I generate lots of denim/cord scraps through making tin whistle dungaree's and this was a great way to them use. I matched the plain denim or cord up with a fun cotton print. The hats are reversible so its the best of both worlds!
Bags... I cant claim all the credit for these as the big bag- along with the half a dozen smaller bags stuffed inside-were the result of a busy-bee I organised with 3 other school mums. We made 8 bags in about 4 hours!

This is a project waiting to get done. See the little strawberry? Its a shopping bag that gets stuffed inside a "strawberry shell". I bought it at my local supermarket a couple of weeks ago because I thought it was so cute. When I got it home I looked at how they made it and it lookes dead easy. So I bought all the ingredients and I am totally going to give it a try!

I'm trying to do a bucket load of aprons. I used the Sew Liberated Emmeline Apron and the Amy Butler Domestic Goddess Apron as design inspiration for these.
Here is a zoomed out photo to show of one of the completed aprons. They are single layer, gathered bodice with A-line skirt. I have used a rolled hem stitch to hem the sides and bottom of the apron- matching the thread colour to the fabric used in the waistband and ties. Its a very simple construction which makes it great for production-line sewing or if you are trying to be frugal with fabrics, but it still has that glam-apron look. Julia Childs eat your heart out! This fabric is perfect for Aprons and I teamed it up with a bit of dontated lace trim.

Gift bow

Saw it here and instructions are here. I made mine in about 5 minutes using an old piece of wallpaper. They are seriously easy!

Canteen bandana pants.

I've always had a little soft spot for things made out of Bandana's. On Oct 30 this year it is National Bandana day here in Australia. Bandana day is a major fundraising event for Canteen, which is a support organisation for young people living with cancer. The Canteen bandana's can be easily sourced through supermarkets. I picked mine up at the checkout while I was paying for some groceries. Below is a mini-turorial on how I made up my bandana's into some cute pants for George. I havent gone into much details, because there really are heaps of in depth ones on the net, for example:

Shorts
Dress
Skirt
Halter-neck top


The two Bandana's I picked up at the supermarket. Not only am I helping a great charity but at $3 each they will make a pair of super cheap pants!
I decided to use an proper shaped pattern when cutting out my shorts. This is because I wanted the shorts to fit nicely, have the correct rise etc. That said, I didnt fuss over perfection here. I simply took a some pattern pieces that I had previously used to make pants for George (in this case Taku pants from Ottobre 2009) and made them work for the size of the Bandana. I left a gap between the pieces because I wanted them a bit wider in the leg to suit a loungey/bandana pants look. In this case the pattern pieces are too long
I cut out the fabric as a single piece and used a scrap to cut out two pockets. Note that I have used the hem of the bandana on the top edge of the pocket, waistband and hem of pant leg. This saves hemming/finishing these edges during pant construction.

Press in the edges of the pockets
And sew into place. I position them so the top of the pocket is roughly in line with the crocth of the pants and centred between the front and back crotch. Of course, if you wanted to save time you could easily leave the pockets off. I love fun/bright pants, especially on boys, but have a *thing* about them looking like pajama pants. I'll do anything to make them look pantish. Pockets take them into pants territory.

Once pockets are on stitch the front, back and inner-leg seams. Add elastic to the waist using your preferred method.

I think its a good idea to add tags to the back waistband of the pants- this helps kids put their home-made pants on the right way round. If you dont have your own woven tags its really cute to make them out of fabric scraps. In this pic you can see the method I used to add elastic to the waistband. I used my sewing machine to stitch a circle of elastic to the inside waistband of the pants, then I turned the waistband over once and topstitched through the all the layers.

George wearing the pants.

Another trick to take your "they look like pajama's" into pants-territory is to team the pants up with a collared shirt. Here I have used a knit polo shirt.

"Oh excuse me, my phone is ringing"

"Hello... You want to know what in heck is printed on my pants?.... I'll ask Mum... Apparently they are these things called boomboxes. In the olden days people used them to listen to music! They look so old fashioned!"

just for fun

I thought I would walk into my sewing room and snap some photo's of whats going on in there right now, how I organise it and how (un)tidy it looks on a typical day. I didnt do any tidying up before hand... I just went straight in and snapped some photo's. At the moment my sewing time is being divided 3 ways; tin whistle sewing (currently on hold), personal sewing, and sewing for my kids school fete. The Fete is in a month, and I am the craft stall co-ordinator, so I am giving it 100% of my sewing time from mid-Oct until Fete day.

View from door- sewing table and cutting table, ironing board behind. This is a nice little work area where I can sit at my sewing machine and have my fabric pieces arranged on the table to my left. I have the cutting table poking into the middle of the room like this because I like to be able to walk around it when I am cutting out fabrics, especially fabrics for quilting.

Behind the work tables is my main storage area. This shelving is from the Expedit range from Ikea (the two units cost me around $300).
To the left when you walk in the door is a sofa bed (the room doubles up as a guest room). Most of the time the sofa is used a place to store WIP's. In the picture you can see some black fete aprons cut out ready to be hemmed, a partially complete tin whistle order on the back of the sofa and a completed bag waiting to be picked up. I also have some donated scrappy fabric off the left. George is in the foreground having a whinge! In the smaller of the Expedit shelves I store haberhashery and patterns and other miec. sewing things. In this pic you can see thread on the top of the shelv, below that is my snap press and orange containers housing the resin snaps. Below that are two wicker baskets (one is pulled out leaving an empty space) that contain fabric scraps (boy and girl scraps). The 4th shelf contains some patterns and machine manuals and stationary.

Ikea also do doors and drawers for the Expedit range, so I installed a couple of the drawers to house ribbons, buttons, velcro, elastic etc. The Blue boxes, also from Ikea and designed to fit neatly into the Expidet holes, contain all my patterns. Two rows of the paper patterns (burda, simplicity etc) can fit in each box side by side and bigger patterns and magazines can fit in on their side. So I have found this is quite a tidy way to store the patterns but still be able to flick through them easily to search for a particular pattern. I keep adult/home decor patterns on the left and childrens patterns on the right. On top of the shelf is my (mostly depleted) supply of cotton wadding. I still havent found a good place to store this! Mostly it just ends up getting moved from Sofa to shelf to sofa etc. This is where all of my fabric gets stored. I had a tidy up a few weeks ago so its looking pretty neat at the moment (although still far from perfect!).

In the top row of shelves I keep (1 and 2) smaller pieces of quilters cotton (fat qurter or smaller), subsorted into boys/girls colours, long skinny pieces/square pieces (3) scrappy pieces of denim/corduroy (good for hats and pockets) and (4) contains a small supply of flanellette.

The second row contains all my 1+ yard cuts of quilters cotton, sorted into (1) pinks/reds (2) blues/yellows (3) greens/browns (4) stripes/brights

The third row contains (1 and 2) corduroy, (3) denim and (4) thrifted fabrics

The bottom row contains ( 1 and 2) knits, (3) thrifted knits (4) polar fleece.

This is where I store WIPS (seperate drawer for Fete, tin whistle, quilting and personal projects). There is also a drawer full of knitting supplies- it hasnt been opened in a while!

Another view of my sewing work area. I used trestle tables because when we have guests over I need to remove them to be able to fold out the bed! Currently on the go is a whole lot of hemming of the black aprons, but I momentarily got distracted and make up a cube using MMiller "first sight fabric". Up the back of the table is a fairy skirt (pale pink tule) my kids pulled out of the dressup box yesterday. When I saw it I was reminded of a tulle remnant I had stashed away and I realised it was perfect for a fete dressup. Next to my sewing machine I have a plastic organiser thinging full of things I use every day, bobbins, pins, scissors, seam rippers, pens, rotary blades etc etc.

I try and keep the area around the machines fairly clear. In fact apart from my machines there is only a little retro styled radio on the work surface. The pin up board behind contains allsorts, but mainly copies of patterns I use alot, and quilt designs I have scrawled out bits of paper.

Underneath my work table I have a red rubbish bin for scraps of fabric I dont want to keep. The plastic drawers contain tin whistle stationary.

I stick empty cotton reels on the windor sill. For some reason I get a real sense of acheivement when I look at them. All that sewing! When I cant jam any mor eon I take them up to the school and donate them to the kindy.
On top of my big Expidet shelf I have 2 half completed quilts, the hungry caterpillar one on the left and the batik one on the right.

This is a tub of stuff I have created for the fete over the last few months.

Well loved Crazy Lady.

This is a quilt I made back in Feb 07. It was my 3rd quilt and I decided to try something a little scrappy with a crazy quilt feel to it. I didnt have much of a stash back then, only having just got back into sewing, so, ironically, most of the fabrics were bought new for the project! I pieced most of the top down at my sisters farm and took this picture of the completed top when it was done.

I called the quilt crazy lady because I loved this fabric so much.

For some reason I forgot to take photo's of the quilt when it was complete, so I cant show you nicely photographed shots of the whole quilt, or the binding and backing. However, since the quilt stayed in the family I have heaps of incidental photo's it being used as a play blanket for my son, George.

Now I already liked this quilt a lot, but there is another reason why it has become extra special. Around when my son was 18 months of age the quilt ceased to be merely a blanket... it became his security blanket! I was so chuffed that he would latch on to a special mama-made item as his special blankie. Well once I got over being horrified at seeing it dragged through dirt/grass, and used to wipe away snot, tears and even vomit etc etc. But, really, whats better than a well loved quilt???? A quilt that is so well loved it's worn out! Right?! Here are some pics of George with his "ruggy".

After a while I decided that it was annoying having to carry around such a large ruggy and, one day, when it got lost on a walk and I had to back track 40 minutes to find it (thank god!) I took the brave step of SLICING THE QUILT IN HALF to create two smaller pieces. But I am very ashamed to say that in the year and a half since the slash job, I have never gotten around to fixing up the binding. Here are some more recent pics of ruggy, you can make out the slashed up edges and loose threads in them.

Slowly over time the quilt has gotten more and more worn out; the raw edge has frayed slightly, the binding is wearing through on the edges and the fabrics themselves have faded and gotten a bit threadbare. I took these pics a couple of days ago for this blog entry.

George got a little indignant that I was taking photo's of his ruggy and came and snatched it off the table.

Deciding to blog about the quilt has spurred me to action and over the last couple of days I have removed the old (wornout) binding and replaced it using fabric from my stash. George is very pleased with his new "bixed-up" ruggy and now it has many more years of loving left in it.

Thanks for visiting my blog! Please browse around and have a look at some of my other crafty creations.

Yikes

Its been almost a month since I last posted. I do have some good excuses... I promise. Late September I was away on a family holiday, the first day of which my camera had an unfortunate rendezvous with the ocean and, subsequently, met an untimely death. When we returned it was straight into school holidays, which always results in a virtual craft standstill at tin whistle HQ. But even if I had crafted I had no way of bringing you pictures anyway! With the insurance claim on the old salty camera now finally sorted out I thought I would do a catch up post and pop up some pics I snapped in the sewing room just 5 minutes ago.

Ok so I lied! I have done a few projects over the school holdiays- just little projects that dont take much time away from the kids. These are all donations to the craft stall at my kids school fete, which is coming up in a months time.

Scrappy-pieced door stopper- I have done a dozen of these.

Pot trivet/holders. A friend said I should FMQ in a few swear words into it too

- but I wasnt game enough!

I made up some of the premmie smocks to sell as dolls clothes. It feels wasteful making this pattern up for dollies instead of little babies, but if they dont sell I can donate them to the childrens hospital.
While I am here I will blog a couple of pics I have received back from customers.

Ottobre Kerttu Tunic

Matilda's little friend is about to turn 7 so I decided to pull out my Ottobre patterns and make her a birthday gift from one of those. I chose the Kerttu tunic, pattern 14 from Ottobre 1/2009.

Matilda's little friend is a tall girl, about the same size as Elizabeth, so I used Elizabeths measurements when drafting off the pattern. And since this meant the tunic would also fit Elizabeth I decided I may as well make her one too!

I got Matilda to pick out the fabrics for her friends dress, a blue polkadot with a pink paisley floral.

Pocket detail

Elizabeth chose the ones for hers- Good old Farmers Market with some Amy Butler Mid Western Modern. Elizabeths tunic is about 2-3 inches shorter than the pattern dictated because I didnt quite have enough of the cherry fabric. To compensate I did a smaller hem at the bottom, and made the o the honeycomb panel is slightly longer.

George decided he had to have a turn modelling the dress too.

This dress is a simple and sweet cut and quite simple to construct. Some of the details take a bit of time (the heart-shaped pocket and the drawstring casing and drawstring) but arent difficult in themselves. Because of this the pattern is quite suitable for a beginner sewer. As long as they are patient they will get a dress that is a little bit more special and interesting.

Hats, hats, hats... and shorts

I gave the lazydayz bucket hat pattern by Made it Perfect a really good work out over the weekend, making 5 bucket hats. One each for 3 of my nephews and for George.

Angus chose tan corduroy with fish on reverse.

Sam has a soft spot for pink, which he teamed up with a Juicy Jungle stripe

Henry picked another fabric from the Juicy Jungle range and matched it up with Orange corduroy.
Georges hat (being modelled by Matilda) is a teal corduroy with a retro style monkey fabric.

I managed to snap a pic of George in it later on.
Also made George a couple of pairs of summer shorts.

Still loving "Traffic Jam" so, despite having a pair of shorts in the cream colourway last summer, he had to have another pair in the turquoise in the next size up.

I also made Georges little buddy, Oliver, a pair for his 3rd birthday.

much better

I unpicked them all and started again. Much better yes?

After making 8 of the batik blocks I decided to put the batiks aside and work on my Very Hungry Caterpillar quilt. It has been lying idle for almost 6 weeks while I pondered the borders (and got distracted by other sewing). I had to add another little bit to the top so make it cot size and decided on 2 simple borders, one 1" wide (blue stripe) and the other will be 5". I dont have enough of any one VHC left for the 5" border so I have decided to buy the required amount. I have plenty of V.H.C fabrics to piece a border together but I really think it needs a border in a plain, solid fabric (thats my excuse to shop and I am sticking to it! LOL).

Something different- rainbow batiks

I bought a jelly roll of hand dyed rainbow batiks back in April at the quilt fair and was planning on making a coin quilt with it, I wasnt 100% set on that and have been waiting for a quilt design to spring at me. The other day I was checking out Two little Banshee's blog and came across this and thought it could work ok. Only problem is that I didnt really look at the block or colour layout before I turned off the computer and got started. As a result I think I have created a completely different block and colour layout. I think I have created a half-log cabin block, where as I was supposed to do a bento-block????

I am not feeling 100% confident about this quilt- I think its because its batiks, which is a bit out of my comfort zone. I am feeling a really strong desire to add a natural coloured sashing between all the blocks to "sophisticate" it up and stop being so hippy. Am I doing my batiks a disservice?? Using some sashing means I can stretch out what would be a lap-quilt into something single bed size with 3 kids I find single bed quilts a lot more useful than the lap/cot size ones.

This is the first time I have actually cut up ALL the quilt fabric at the start and organised it into containers! Most of my past quilts have been scrappy/random piecing so there was no need to cut and sort all in one go.

25% off winter sale

I am making way for spring/summer gear so I have discounted my winter items by 25%. This discount is only available through my online store....

tin whistle online store