"Ask for More"

bingo! on flickr

My sister is about to celebrate her birthday. She was really looking forward to having an exciting bingo call for her age, so I googled it tonight, and found out she is turning "dirty knee". Needless to say, she's devastated. I think she was after something charming like "two little ducks". Now she's lamenting the fact that she will be "dirty knee" for 365 days.

What's your bingo call?

Mushie Brooch Kit

How cute is this brooch?? I was lucky enough to win the Brooch Embroidery Kit of my choice over at Princess Kirstie Jane.
It's made using hand dyed wool felt, and the kit comes with everything you need to make the brooch (think: needle, threads, felt, fabric, metal brooch clip, very detailed instructions). All you need are some small pointy scissors.
I finished making mine up yesterday at Mother's Group - the girls all loved it! I also received a lovely compliment at the supermarket this morning. It has certainly brightened up my old grey cardi!

Sunday Stash...on a Monday (again!!)

The postie delivered this gorgeous parcel of fat quarters today, to my absolute delight! I originally found this fabric by searching for Spoonflower on Etsy. I scrolled through all the choices til I found this.

Oh my....

It's designed by the very talented (and generous) Laurie of Scarlet Fig. Please have a look at her etsy store for more delights.

I also picked up this sweet bird-in-a-cage fabric today from Cutting Edge Fabrics in Malvern. Pricey yet delicious.
Thanks again Tam for hosting!

Vintage Sheet Haul

Recently I took part in the Vintage Sheet Swap hosted by the very lovely Sheridan at Chaletgirl. She and her mum did such a fabulous job of sifting through the 700-odd vintage sheet fat quarters! This was my haul - I sent off 32 fat quarters myself, and received these beauties in return.

This would have to be my top 5 (today, at least!). I'm not sure I would have been able to share in these goodies had they been my sheets.
Thanks so much to Sheridan for all of that organising! I'm so pleased with my varied selection, and can't wait to find the right project for them. Here's the list of participants if you want to see who received what.

Too Hot To Handle

(must be why I'm single!)

I realised this morning that today is the last day Ollie will see his Teacher (carer?) at child care as she is leaving tomorrow.

Fortunately Ollie has already sussed that pink is her favourite colour, so it was time to raid my stash and make her a parting gift.

It was slim pickings as far as the pink was concerned, but I'm pretty happy with how the gift turned out.

As you can see, an oven mitt and pot-holder. I used a template from Denyse Schmidt Quilts for the mitt (with a few adjustments to make it more comfortable), and just made up a matching square for the pot-holder.

All fully lined and quilted. Now to find a drawing of Ollie's that I can magically turn into a farewell card....

Yet another...

I'm not sure if I blogged about it before (and too lazy to go check), but I made a flannel quilt for my dad - finished it on the weekend, with my mum's help. She was the binding wiz - so fast!
I had a marathon journey on Thursday through the suburbs of South east and eastern Melbourne hunting for some backing fabric. I drove 92kms! Finally I found some brushed cotton fabric at a reasonable price (the fabric is pictured below), and sandwiched the quilt together with some batting.

Friday I quilted - just straight and diagonal lines. Then off to my parents for the weekend, where mum and I hand sewed the binding in a couple of hours. I didn't get a picture of the finished quilt, I'll have to do that next time I'm up there.

Dad was begrudgingly thankful (to be expected - he can be a real grump), I was just pleased that he thanked me without prompting from mum! Now he can snuggle on the couch with his warm cosy quilt, while mum is snuggled on the other couch with her quilt!

I also received a generous gift from one of the winners of my recent giveaway! Thank you so much to Shay from Crafty Starfish, who sent me this delightful chenille pincushion, some cool buttons, and a few scented sachets. I was so excited to rip into this little parcel! So go check out her blog - apparently she'll be listing some chenille bedspreads on eBay soon - I'll certainly be trying to get my hands on one!

Another quilt in the works

This has been a WIP for about 3 years - I remember cutting all the pieces when Ollie was just a baby. I pulled it out yesterday to add some more blocks, after getting my hands on a couple more blue/red fabrics. They seemed to be everywhere 3 years ago, and near impossible to find now.

It still won't be as large as I had hoped - currently it is about 130cm by 155cm, but no doubt that will change a little when I sandwich it, quilt and bind it.
Looking at the photo now, I'm not happy with the joining of the 3rd and 4th rows, so I'll need to unpick that in the morning.

The pattern is from this book - from memory I think it's the Hop Skip Jump quilt pattern (but don't quote me at this ridiculous hour!

Spider-Ollie

Does whatever a spider does, apparently. If that means spiders roar like a lion. And jump on the bed.

(FYI the hoodie was purchased at Target this week. The zip goes all the way up to make the spidey mask)

Decisions, decisions....

Please excuse the crappy photos - I have a 3 1/2 year old hassling me to get him out of the house! 

This is my version of a Coin Quilt, using my collection of screen printed fabrics (plus a couple of Japanese prints). 

I think I prefer the natural coloured sashing to the charcoal....what do you think?
(the coin panels have been laid out on top of the natural and charcoal cloth - thus the untidy edges!)

Edit: It's decided! I can't stop looking at the natural, so tomorrow I start cutting! Thanks for all the votes :)

The Eddie Cap

Have you seen this around the traps? It's such a gorgeous cap, and relatively easy to make. The free online tutorial is available here at Mushroom Villagers (how cute are her kids!!).

I made this one using the same green stretch pinwale cord that I'd used in Ollie's robot pants the other day. There was just enough left over for a matching cap.
Despite measuring Ollie's head before making it, it turned out waaay too big - big enough to comfortably fit Miss J or myself.

Miss J suggesting putting some elastic into the band so that it fit Ollie. Now it fits him perfectly! And he loves it, too, which is always a bonus.

And the winners are....

...drum roll please....

Here are your random numbers:

7 8 1 

Timestamp: 2009-05-05 11:55:49 UTC

Congratulations to Kelly (comment number 1), Rachel (comment number 7) and Sienna (comment number 8). I'll email you shortly!

Lunch

Robot Pants

Inspired by this bag, I set out to make some Robot Pants for Ollie using a pattern from a Japanese sewing mag.

I'm fairly happy with how they turned out, considering the amount of time I spent on them (ie - heaps!). I thought they were going to be a bit too high waisted, so I trimmed the top before adding the elastic. Bad move. They are now low riders :(  And now he can't get his big bear-paw hands into the front pockets. Oh well, there are 6 pockets in total, so I'm sure he won't mind.
The pockets are lined in some Japanese robot fabric. I've appliqued a robot on the leg, much like I did with the scotty dog pants a while ago. 

I have piles of cord in my stash, so I'll make him a few more pairs. Might browse through Ottobre for some pockets variations and knee patches just to spice things up a little.

Don't forget to enter my giveaway for some fat quarters of vintage sheeting, and some other notions thrown in for fun! Ends tomorrow.

Sunday Stash...Vintage #2

More vintage sheets...

More stashers here. Thanks to Tamara for hosting.

A Giveaway in May

(not the quilts, they're over in my madeit shop. just thought you might want a look.)

summer fun quilt

spring fresh quilt

Against all (my own) expectations when I started this blog, I've made it to 200 posts! In honour of this, and as a thank you to all of my lovely readers, I'm having a little giveaway.

vintage sheets

I bought a heap of vintage sheets to partake in this swap, so I thought I could share the vintagey goodness. There will be three prizes, all consisting of a variety of vintage sheet fat quarters and some other vintage notions (think buttons, ric-rac etc).

vintage sheets

To enter, all you need to do is comment on this post. Easy, huh? Comments end at 3pm (EST) on Tuesday 5th May. I'll use the old random integer thing to choose 3 winners.