Completed - Reversible Winter Pinafore

Buttonholed. Buttoned. Taken in a little. Unpicked. Restitched, taking care to line up the seams properly this time. Hemmed. Wrapped. Delivered to the birthday girl. Well received. Yay!

Pleated pockets made using this tutorial

Heart shaped pocket all my idea!

Vintage self cover buttons from the Op Shop.

I *heart* Dandelion

Last week I received a lovely package in the mail from a very special friend. I was lucky enough to win two Lavender Hearts in Beck's giveaway, so imagine my surprise when I open my package to see all this!

Beck's own biodynamic garlic, two blocks of Lindt (my favourite!) and...

As well as the two Lavender Hearts, Beck also made me a chain of hearts (which I adore!) and a beautiful vintage button hairclip. Can you smell the lavender? It's heavenly!

I am one lucky girl! Thanks so much Beck for the beautiful gifts.

Be Still, My Beating Heart

Here it is, the amazing gift Mum gave me whilst I was staying with her on the weekend:

It's Kimono Silk. Real Kimono Silk from Japan.

 An ENTIRE ROLL, it's 38cm wide by about 18-20 metres long! Isn't it completely gorgeous?

Okay, be still my beating heart. So how did I come to be in posession of such awesome loveliness? Three years ago my uncle married a beautiful Japanese girl, and my mother travelled to Japan to be at the wedding. The bride's parents presented this roll of Kimono silk to Mum at the wedding as a gift from their family. She has had it ever since but had no idea what to do with it, so she has given it to me in the hope that I will make something beautiful with it. Of course I'm terrified to touch it, let alone take to it with scissors, but I do have a dream of it becoming a quilt someday, maybe with matching cushions and a tiny wall hanging?

If you know anything about Kimono Silk I want to hear from you! If you have any idea what I should do with this, or how it should be handled, I'm all ears! I should also say that I am fairly sure it's silk, but it doesn't actually say anywhere on the fabric or packaging.  I don't know anything more about it except for this Japanese mark which is stamped on the end of the roll and is also on a tiny piece of tape which held the tissue paper around the fabric. It may be a manufacturers mark, if anyone out there can read it and translate I'd love to know what it says.

Thanks Mum

My sleepover at Rancho Relaxo was wonderful.

We went out for lunch here. Delicious.

Then back to Mum's for 2 hours of relaxing in the spa with a refreshing drink and a good book:

Followed by a spot of relaxing in front of the fire, listening to some beautiful music, (and I was given a very very special gift by my mum which I will share with you tomorrow)

Then a gourmet meal of Rack of Lamb, Dutch Cream Potatoes pan fried with garlic and rosemary, and steamed beans and carrots.

Some more music and relaxing before heading off to my cosy little bed:

(with a nightcap)

And above my bed were the books of my childhood (and my mum's childhood), aren't they fab?

All topped off by a sleep in 'til 9am. Heavenly. Thanks Mum, it was exactly what I needed xx

Happy New Year...and hello Old Friend!

What a way to start the New Year - in the company of my faithful friend QuickUnpick.

So here I am, New Year's morning, madly trying to finish a very overdue gift, and I got the seam allowance wrong! Aargh. And of course I sewed the entire thing with a stitch length of 1 so as to very securely hold the vintage linen in place. My own fault really for mixing up my ambitions with my ability, and for arrogantly thinking such things as: "surely it won't be that complicated" and "patterns are for other people" and "who needs a tutorial?"

I sincerely hope your New Year is off to a better start than mine!

Christmas round up

We had a lovely Christmas, celebrating the day with close family, extended family and friends. There was gorgeous food and great wine, and of course some pressies!

I was very excited to receive this inspiring gift from a great friend:

And The Junior Crafter (8 years old) was beyond excited to receive this great present from her Nonna and Nonno:

It's a real one! Not a little kid's one, but an honest-to-goodness really truly proper sewing machine!

So we set to learning how to use the new machine. The junior crafter sewed a pincushion, all by herself:

(you can never have too many pins, right?)

which was an unquailfied success:

so I immediately requested she make another one for me:

And, voila! New pincushions for all the crafty girls in the house, beautifully weighted with rice in the bottom and hobbyfill in the top, and finished with the sweetest little hand stitching you've ever seen!

 

She even put my name on mine in pins.

The  Junior Crafter also received a couple of Spotlight vouchers for Christmas, so no doubt we'll be on a shopping trip in the next few days to stock up on supplies.

Hope your Christmas was merry and bright too!

Brown paper packages tied up with string...

these are a few of my favourite things.

Merry Christmas lovely bloggers :)

Christmas gift tags tutorial

This week we made our Christmas gift tags and they were a great success, so I thought I would share with you how we made them.

First, using Word (or a similar word processing program) type in your text. My text reads "Merry Christmas from the *surname here* family". Then cut and paste your text so it repeats across the width and length of the page. At the beginning of each line of text on the page delete a word or two so the text appears random across the whole page and the words do not line up exactly underneath each other.

Select any fancy font you like and change the font colour to red. I used Angelina font in 12 point.

Then print onto an A4 sheet of natural coloured paper.

Using a paper trimmer cut your A4 sheets into strips. I cut some sheets vertically into 4 strips, and some sheets horizontally into 5 or 6 strips - this way you will end up with some 'landscape' oriented tags and some 'portrait' oriented. Next, cut your strips into 'tag size' rectangles. I didn't measure at all and all the tags ended up being different sizes which I like as I was going for the rustic look. Feel free to measure if you want them all the same size!

Now, put the kids to work! Take one of your rectangular tags and cut off 2 of the corners, and punch a hole in the top. Then thread some Jute or twine through the hole.

Now using a date stamp and some black ink stamp the tags with "25 Dec 2009".

Done! Christmas Tags ready to go. And since you already have your family name printed on the tags, you can simply write the recipient's name on the tag with a black marker.

Happiness Kit

I recently received this thoughtful and cheery present from a dear friend at a time when I was feeling very down, and it was just the thing to brighten my day, so I thought I'd share it with you.

Happiness Kit

• Eraser - to make mistakes disappear
• Rubber bands - to stretch yourself to the limit
• Coin - so you never have to say you have no money
• String - to tie things together when they fall apart
• Button - to press in case of panic
• Rose - to remind you of the sweet things in life

Where would we be without sweet friends?