Family time

Tomorrow morning, I am off to explore Singapore for a week with David and the kids. This is a picture of the pool at the resort we are going to stay in- they are more excited about the water slides than anything else we have planned!

I have shut down my store until I get back. I'll see you all in a week.

Skirt take 2

Here is skirt #2, made using a gorgeous lightweight cotton. I think this one looks lovely, but hey, who doesnt look great in black! The polkadots lend it the right bit of quirkiness, as well as being totally fashionable right now.

I still really love the other skirt, but i just dont think I'm brave enough to wear it.

I constructed the skirt a little bit differently this time. I made 5 tiers, instead of 3 in the other one (as an aside... I knew immediately that 3 tiers was wrong, which is why I added the extra frills to break up the large blocks of fabric. The frills make it too flamboyant for me to wear, but I dont like the skirt without the frills). Back to the polkadot skirt --->Notice also that there isn't any gathering in the first tier. A little trick I thought up to help the skirt hug the hips and be a little more flattering.

If you are about a size 12-14 and want to use my measurements the top (and second tier) are 46" in circumference, 3rd tier is 62" in circ, 4th tier is 75" and the bottom tier is 90" (ie double the circ of the top tier). Each tier is 8" wide (a number I stuck on because it was my waist-ankle measurement divided by 5).

With (non-matching!) tshirt in place.

Is it TOO much?

Ok So I made this maxi-skirt and I need HONEST opinions. Is it TOO much. This sort of style is everywhere in the shops... and vintage is 'in'. And so is sunny yellow. Is the combination of all three too much?

I keep thinking it is 'Little house on the prarie dress up' rather than ‘quirky vintage maxi-skirt’. What is it that makes it too much? Is it the yellow vintage/granny fabric, the frills, or is it the actual pattern?

Am I just unsure because I dont tend to wear much yellow? or really girly things? or it it just plain ugly? LOL.

I think maybe it’s the fabric… in which case I will try again with come BLACK POLKADOT fabric I have here.

Tin whistle 30% off sale

I'm going to Singapore next week for a family holiday.

To celebrate and get some more spending money (!) I thought I'd take 30% off all tin whistle in stock pram accessories.

Please use the code 'HOLIDAY" at checkout to redeem your discount.

Sale ends 25th September and excludes custom orders.

www.tinwhistle.bigcartel.com

Boy has he grown.

As I published my last post (of George in his new shorts) I realised that many blog readers will have watched George grow from a tiny baby into a big school-aged boy. I know I enjoy watching children grow in the blogs I have been reading for a long time- so I assume its the same for people who read this blog! I went back through my blog to see when he was 'introduced' and was surprised to find that my first blog entry was about something I made for him. That was in July 2007, which means I have clocked up 4 years blogging!

This is the photo of George in my first blog entry. He is 5 months old and sporting some pants that I knitted him. I loved those pants so much and he wore them a lot. They have been put away in his special box of baby things.


And just for a direct comparison I have stuck in the picture of George I used in my last blog post. In this photo he is 4 years and 10 months old, sporting a pair of shorts that was his favourite :)

While I am on the subject of photo's and not really talking about crafty projects. You will notice that I almost always take photo's with the kids standing or sitting on my dining table. This is because its a big table, so there is usually a clean spot on it, and the lighting is good in this part of the house. In the background you can usually see two black and white portraits. The top one is of Matilda and the bottom is of Elizabeth, both aged 2 years old. There is a similar portrait of George (aged 2) on a different part of the same wall. Each child had a professional photo shoot when they were two and I picked ONE photo (that was hard) and had it framed. When I blog surf I always perve at the background in photographs looking at furnishings and other decorator stuff, so again, I assuming my readers do that too I have decided to explain the background for you!

Too many shorts

I let George go through my stash and pick out fabric for summer shorts. I cut out 8 pairs, which is a bit crazy considering there are only 7 days of the week. Here are the first 4 pairs all sewn up and ready for some warm weather.

Summer singlet

Another Ottobre 303 tshirt. This time sleveless. I cut it the length indicated in the pattern and then added a wide tube to the bottom to finsh the waist edge and add some length to it. I grabed this fabric at a local store where is was on sale for $10/m! Bargain.

More tiedye

Eeek I haven't blogged in almost 2 weeks. Not sure what happened but I just got busy and never found time to download, sort, edit, and blog my photo's. Anyway here are a bunch of catch up posts. I thought about doing one mega catch up post, but there are a few different projects to blog about and I like to put them in separate posts.

First up, last weekend we had a little friend over for a sleepover with the promise that we would do some more tiedying. Ever since the last time I've wanted to do it again and so have the kids. They love their tiedye shirts.

This time we had only 4 kids tshirts (one for each kid) and were hoping for lots of really intense colour because we didn't have to make the dye go so far. At the last minute I grabbed a yard of quilters cotton and a bought a pair of cotton boxer shorts.

Elizabeth (above) and her friend went for the classic spiral tiedye pattern and they were really happy.

This is what I did with the yard of white quilters cotton. I tried out a pleated pattern. I didn't take enough care to keep the colours separate in this project and it ended up a bit too murky and muted for my taste.

This is Georges tshirt. I'm a bit partial to the classic bulls eye pattern using a simple 'rainbow' order for the colours.

Matilda decide to try out a mirror image pleat. It worked out well, bu probably is my least favourite 'style' of tiedye.

Here is DH's new undies! Sorry ladies, no modelled shots of these LOL. I also did a mirror image pleat tie on these, but stuck with simple rainbow stripes.

Funny story... the day after we finished the tidying DH took his new jocks in his sports bag to soccer. Matilda went along too and during the game, proudly took out the undies to show all the other kids the tiedying we had done! I suppose putting pictures of them up on this blog isnt much better!

Pirates?

I really shouldn't be thinking about another quilt, let along actually playing around with piecing one. Now that I am a substantial way through Matilda's quilt, George is starting to ask when I will begin making his. Apparently he wants a pirate quilt. Only problem is that most pirate fabric doesn't really appeal to me. Its all a bit too dark and gloomy. I want bright colours not black and brown!

So that got me thinking... What sort of quilt do I want to make? What do I want to try out? What patterns out there have tickled my fancy? Can I combine that with a pirate theme?

In May this year I participated in a group quilt called Houses for Helen. The quilt was gifted to the lovely Helen for her 40th birthday. Here is the quilt top to give you an idea of what the quilt was all about. Participants had to make small wonky houses on white homespun and send them to Helen's sister, who pulled it all together to create a fabulous modern 'village' quilt.

Here are some of the wonky houses (and tree's) that I made for Helen's quilt. I figured I may as well put them in this post since I have never blogged them!

I LOVED making the improv wonky houses and really like the simplicity and starkness of the quilt. Ever since then I've wanted to make my own wonky houses or 'village' quilt, as they are sometimes called.

So can I pull of a improv/wonky pirate ocean quilt? I'm thinking lots and lots of wonky pirate ships (like below), islands with palm tree's, a sea monster or two, a shark? Maybe some soldiers? I think I would have to build it on a solid blue fabric, rather than white... but having played around today and made this wonky pirate ship I think it can be done and it will look GREAT!

PS... I got inspiration for this block from here

Aqua pop top done

I've just loaded the second book in the Outlander series onto my Ipod (as an audibook obviously) and spent the first 4 hours of the story finishing off Matilda's aqua pop quilt top.

Loving the way my points matched up nicely (although with a simple patch quilt I wouldnt expect any less) and with my little trusty chart I didnt have any problems keeping the blocks in order as I sewed them together.

The audiobook for Dragonfly in Amber is about 36hours long! so I have plenty of sewing pleasures left before I have to hunt around for another book.