When the husband is away . . .

I will play!!

Shan has gone away on a houseboat for a couple of nights, so I don't have to be quite so concerned about keeping the house clean which in turn means SEWING TIME!!!! It has been quite a while since I have been able to have some creative time and from 7pm onwards I am back to assignment writing, but I have had a pretty productive day.

I whipped up a quick shirt for Em first thing (no pics of it yet) and then cut up an ill fated attempt of a dress for myself and used this tute to make a pretty summer dress for Em. If I were to make it again I'd make both the bodice and skirt a little longer, but I am fairly happy with it :) I could not get the crazy chicken to stand still, so I got a crazy dance photo!! LOL

I also found a tute on one of my fave blogs Blueprints for a cute little toddler bag. My girls are always walking around with backpacks full of goodies going to the shops/school/on a treasure hunt and I thought that these would make cute gifts for some of my neices so I rummaged through some of my bits and pieces and found a pillow case and an old pair of jeans I could donate to the cause and made one up to see how easy it would be. I don't have a need for one in those colours, so I'm putting it up on madeit.com.au.


I find I have so many ideas but I never get around to them because I spend any free time I have thinking of even more ideas or procrastinating!!! Today has been so great because there is no pressure to be cleaned up by a certain time and I have achieved so much !! I LOVE SEWING!!!

Who you callin' Dummy???

I have a hard time making clothes for me that actually fit. Lets just say my 1920's Ese Jane Dressmaker's Dummy has never had children!! So what is a girl to do?? Make a lifesize version of herself of course!! So by following this tute and purchasing gummed paper tape from here I enlisted the help of my sister and we got to it.

In all it took about 3hrs, but we also had to include about half an hour extra after I passed out. Oops! (Note to anyone trying this, you don't have to remain perfectly still, make sure you move your arms and legs as much as possible or you too will come crashing down and bust open your hard work!!)

In the early pics you'll also see that I did originally have little capped sleeves to see where my shoulder actually sits, but the pain got too much after not moving them that we had to cut them off VERY quickly!! But I think this will be fine.
I must say, it is very confronting to see yourself in 3D for the first time. All those little (or not so little now that you can see them properly!) things that you thought "That looks alright" don't neccessarily look alright!! Although my sister didn't see anything out of the ordinary, obviously, because that is how I actually look!! My brother in law kept telling me "stop playing with your tits!" and " Would you like some alone time??" because once it was off I couldn't stop looking at it and playing with it to try and get it smooth.

It now lives over my ese jane and is currently wearing one of my bras, which strangely enough, it fills out perfectly!! Now off to spotlight for some grown up fabric . . . :D

Flowergirls' dresses

Just thought i'd update and put up the pics of Em 'practicing' in her flowergirls dress (ie; me making sure that the sockings wouldn't show through the open back, that the jacket was the right size over the dress etc) I am so stoked with how they turned out :)

Other things I have been up to!

Goodness! Three posts in one day!

We are still waiting for our no-dig garden to be delivered (grr) after 7 weeks when it should have been a 3-4 week delivery time . . . apparently they will call us today . . . I won't hold my breath! They were quick enough to take our money though . . . hmmm

But I do have a whole heap of seedlings ready to go in though!! The only thing that hasn't sprouted is my ox heart tomatoes. I might try thm direct in the garden when it is up.

I have also been doing some other sewing with the hopes of earning a little play money. I haven't sold anything yet, but I am using up my quite large stash of material, so I'm not outlaying anything to give it a go.

You can find my stuff at madeit.com.au

Other things I have been up to: Wedding Sewing

I have promised a couple of times to update this with other things I have been doing, but have been a bit slack - sorry!!

Namely, I have been sewing!! With BIL and SILs wedding in 4 weeks, I was put in charge of making the flower girls dresses. The first attempts was HORRIBLE and is here forth known as the potato sack dress. It was FAR too wide and didn't sit right at all.
So that one was out (might fit her as a swing top when she is 12?? lol) so on we went. A blog I follow (and adore) has a corset dress tute. I have made a top from it before for Ashlyn's 5th Birthday but hadn't done a dress. I managed to score some cathedral satin on clearance from Spotlight and whipped up a practice one. I used an existing top as guidance for the top and a circle skirt for the bottom. We have a winner!!! After showing the bride-to-be she was hooked too, so we now have 2 of those dresses in red with ivory straps that I made up on the weekend.

Now to my gripe (I'm sure you knew there was one coming!!) The wedding is in 4 weeks. I have met the other flower girl once (not a big deal) and have asked for her measurements for the past 3 weeks! I was sent through some measurements and I had to ask for some others. I called sent her a message saying I need these measurements today (Saturday) or I might not have time to do the dresses . . . it got to 6pm and I still hadn't heard from her, so I messaged again and they were about to be going out to her Dad's place (where the other flower girl lives) which was an hour away. I asked if she could please just call ahead and get the measurements because I really needed them. Heard nothing and she was not answering her phone. It got to 8pm and I had still heard nothing! So I called again and apparently she was just about to call me. I asked for the little girls height . . . they gave me shoulder to floor, waist to 'just below the knee', no back measurements or anything else and she had since gone out - GRR!! So I have pretty much winged it! At lease with the back being lace up it is adjustable. I have made it about 3cm longer than what I think it should be, because it is easy to make it shorter - but longer - not likely!!!

I'll leave you with one final image . . . me telling Em it was time to take the dress off. . . not a happy camper!!

Hooray for sewing mojo!!

What is the best thing for getting your sewing mojo back?? Moving near your sister who only just been bitten by the sewing bug!!! Although a big chunk of my time was originally spent fixing things (if I never have to replace elastic in another itti I'll be a happy girl!!) but I have also made extra PJ pants and a nice warm fleece jacket for Em :D I used a sz 4 pattern but it was still quite short (and the arms were HUGE) I plan on making it again with a few modifications. It is See and Sew pattern # 3947
The pattern called for a 30cm separating zip, but the smallest I could find was 40cm so I used buttons instead.
I'll use a zipper on the next one.

Long time no blog . . .

Been having some personal problems lately, so not much blogging going on . . . hopefully getting back on the right track now . . .

I can't believe it is one month to go until Christmas!! My immediate family celebrates on Christmas Eve, Nn's mum's side Christmas day and his Dad's side Boxing Day!! What a run around!! And then we are going away for about a week in between Christmas and New year to arrive back in time for Bec's 30th!!

My plan was to make pretty much everyone's pressies this year but it just isn't going to happen :( Not enough hours in the day! I did have something in mind for Bec's older girls, but NN has gone and bought them MP3 players . . . so there goes that idae!! They will still gt some home made hair clips though . . . In a 4 week peroid, we have one set of twin nieces turning 1, another 1st b'day, Christmas, Bec's 30th and another set of twin nieces 2nd b'day!! EEK!!! There is 6 nieces, 4 nephews and 2 other friends little girls, plus our two!! Lots to do!!!

In other news, Zoe is now crawling!! Everything is going so quickly it is scary!!

On a totally different note, but before I go, we got our electricity bill and it is down 3 kw/day - and that was with only starting to pay attention halfway through the first month of the quarter (and being very bad in the first part!! oops!!) My goal this quarter is 15kw/day - hopefully better!!

My sewing mojo has returned!!

Helped along by the fact that I have found that you can buy a separate bobbin winder - mine on the machine had broken and they wanted a fortune just to LOOK at it!!I went to spotlight for something quite particular yesterday (which they didn't have) and came away with some really nice material :)

I also picked up some really cheap patterns on Oztion this morning - so I am looking forward to getting started :D Today I am re-sorting my material so that it is easier to access and tomorrow I should be underway!

We also had our first home grown product in our dinner last night :D We had Mongolian Lamb Wraps, using shallots and lettuce from our pots - YAY!! Nn won and we pulled out the snow peas :( but planted capsicum and tomatoes in their place. The capsicum is already fruiting (3 at various stages of growth atm) and I noticed the first flower on the tomato yesterday. I did sneak one snow pea into a pot though, so hopefully it will keep going for me lol