Tin Whistle: May 2009

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Flamenco 2009

Just completed.... Elizabeths flamenco costume for her 2009 concert. We were asked to create a blue skirt and top with our own choice of fabric for the frill. I picked a gorgeous peacock blue delustered satin for the main part of the costume and added a frill in stunning fabric with peacock feathers on it. The top is copied off a dress Elizabeth already has... I am pretty pleased with how that turned out considering I just made it up as I went along. I used green ribbon for the bosice detail and shoulder straps. I WANTED to use lace, but just couldnt find a colour that was intense enough.

Happy birthday Lily

Lily's mum loves buying tin whistle stuff, so what do you give to lily when she has a birthday... a dress made by me of course :P I chose "Betty"(pattern 16) from Ottobre 6/2007. This is a dress I have admired for a long time and was just waiting for the right little girl to make it for.

Betty is fully lined, has 2 inverted pleats at the front, a zipper in the centre back and bias binding around the neck and arm holes... this made it a nice little dress to get stuck into making and it kept me occupied for several hours... perfect for a lazy Saturday when the kids were out riding their bikes with their Dad.
I used quilters cotton (amy butler mid westernmodern) for both layers. The pattern called for a heavier velour for the outer layer, but I decided Perth weather didnt warrant something so dramatic.

Action shot

Of George in the pants I posted up in the last entry.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

For my little man

He needed some PJ's and I decided to make him some more trousers as well.

This is the pattern I used for the PJ's, Butterick 4647. They were pretty straight forward I guess. The top worked out at least one size bigger than the pants, even though I used the size 3 pattern for both. I didnt love this pattern, but I didnt hate it either... They are just a reagular old PJ pattern.

The pants are "taku" (pattern 21) from Ottobre Spring 1/2009. I love this pattern and I have made it a few times now. The first time was in brown cord with the pockets in the same brown but with a contrast top stitching. The second time was using red tartan and no pockets. So this time I tried a 3rd 'look' using a gorgeous stone coloured pinwale corduroy (from spotlight) and the pockets in different coloured pinwale cords (I use corduroy so much that I have a scrap pile just of corduroys LOL)

I am taking a mini tin-whistle holiday and spending the month of June doing some personal sewing and some quilting. I am planning on stocking my store with the unsold items from the Kamaroi fair, but wont be doing any new stock or custom orders until July.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Tin whistle May 09

Hmmm my custom orders have been a bit slow this month as I have spent the last little while building up stock for the Kamaroi Fair. So once I have shown you my meagre offerings I will show you the things I bought at the recent Perth quilt and craft fair.

Tin whistle pram liner

Size 2 Dungaree's. I love these, a teal coloured corduroy with zebra feature fabric.

Size 2 striped corduroy dungaree's with puple polkadot contrast fabric

Size 1 dungaree's in Red cord with cherry feature fabric.

Basic corduroy pants with frilled cuff.

And from the quilt fair I purchased a jelly roll of raonbow batiks. I just have a thing for rainbows and have been keen to use some batiks in a quilt. I am planning a chinese coin quilt with this jelly roll.

I bought a few fat quarters in random reds/pinks/greens/yellows for Matilda Half-triangle-square quilt (Since this photo I have already cut them, pieced them into blocks and blogged about it here!)

I picked up a few VHC fat quarters to compliment parts of the range I have already collected. I think I have enough for a cot sized quilt and am beginning to mull over a design.

My big spurge... A quilt kit from The Quilters Barn. Its called "Ziggy" but its not up on their website yet. In fact the kit was so fresh they only had the quilt top on display and no instructions with the fabric. I have to wait for that to arrive in the post. Thats probably a good thing as I do have 2 other quilts to finish before I should think about starting this one. The fabrics do make my heart sing though, they are such a quirky, happy combination of prints.

For Hugh and Tim

If you recall I made my nephews some raglan sleeved Tee's last month, blogged here. Unfortunately, Hugh's one was too small, so it was passed onto Tim (with the "hugh" bit turned into a "hug") and Hugh got a newer, larger one.

My nephews also wanted some Aunty-made these jeans, but they had to wait a little longer for those. I got them to pick the feature fabric and the rest was up to me.
This is Timothy's pair... I used my tin whistle "explorer" pattern for these

A bit of Free hand decoration on each bum pocket.

Hugh's jeans are made from an Ottobre pattern; Highwater pants, pattern 35 from Ottobre 2/2005. I lengthened them to make them into full length jeans and added a contrast cuff in Hughs chosen feature fabric. I made this pattern earlier this year as part of a craft swap and enjoyed it so much I decided to try them again. You can see my earlier pair here. Dont they look different in Denim?!

As a final little touch for Hugh's jeans I raided my grandmothers button box for a button . My grandmother presented me with her button collection a couple of months ago... She spent all her married life hoarding buttons from clothes too worn out to use. All the buttons are still safely stored in a tobacco tin and kept closed with a piece of elastic (worth a photo in itself... see below). Hugh loves that his jeans are staying up with button that was once worn by one of his grandparents.

My grandmothers button box, full of all sorts of wonderful thrifted buttons.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

tin whistle hits Sydney

Thats right Sydney girls... this Sunday 24th May between 10am and 3pm tin whistle will be available for purchase at the Kamaroi School Fair. The lovely Sara of Willow and Moo
is holding a stall there and has kindly offered to stock tin whistle items for me!

Here are some sneak peeks of some stock I have sent over to Sara.

Progress on Matilda's Diamond quilt

I have spent the last month slowing collecting scraps and FQ's in reds/pinks/greens/yellows so I can keep working on Matilda's single bed size quilt. I had a really productive day today slicing 5" charms from all the collected fabric and them sewing them into half triangle square blocks. I need 330 of the 4.5" blocks and today the count was 200. Pictured above are 100 of them laid out in my chosen diamond pattern.