Perle 8 thread

15 balls of Perle 8 thread found in an op shop this afternoon.
Displayed on a spool holder found in the same store nearly 2 years ago.

The Sunshiney Quilt

Miss J celebrated her 14th birthday last week. I decided a week before to whip up a quilt for her. Thankfully, she was at her dad's for the week, so I had plenty of time to sew without her finding out!

I rang her to suss out her two favourite colours, and was very delighted to discover that they are orange and yellow - I've had a hankering to make an orange quilt for a while now. 
Based on the Easy Lap Quilt I made previously, this was another easy one to sew. I just raided the stash for all my yellows and oranges, cut long strips that were the width of my quilting ruler, laid them out on the floor (while Ollie was in childcare for the day), and sewed the quilt top together.The hardest part was finding a vintage sheet to match. I went op shopping after I finished the quilt top, and was fortunate enough to find this florally orange one. The oranges perfectly match those in the quilt top (so lucky, considering I didn't remember to take fabric swatches with me!), and I had only been to 3 or 4 op shops before finding it.
I took it up to my parents house for the Easter weekend, along with my sewing machine, and finished the stippling and binding up there. As always, my favourite part was taking it out of the dryer to find all of that crinkly goodness!

I couldn't wait until Miss J's birthday on Thursday to give it to her, so I handed it over on Wednesday night. She loved it (of course). 

I have visions (as I did with Ollie's quilt) of Miss J curling up under her sunny, happy quilt in the dark depths of her bedroom on a grumpy, hormonal day. I like to think that it will help lift her out of her grumpiness and make her smile!

One of the best parts of this quilt is that I used fabric from my stash, so the only money I had to spend on it when making it was for the binding, the batting, the vintage sheet, and the thread. Excellent work for someone who has not worked much this year, and is on a very tight budget!

FYI The quilt measures 150cm x 183cm

Sunday Stash - ballooning

I've been a terribly slack stasher so far this year. Hopefully this will make up for it!

This is a vintage pillowcase I picked up a couple of weeks ago from an Op Shop in Clayton (Vic). I have no plans for it yet, but I'm sure something will come up. Your suggestions are welcome!

Thanks to Tamara for continuing to host - go to her blog if you'd like to join in, or just to have a nosy at what people have in their stash (worth the look!).

Successful Op Shopping

I found this book (amongst other things...) in my favourite op shop today. It is in excellent condition, and only $2.25!

It was published some time in the 50's, so has lots of good tips on renovating garments, as well as adjusting patterns (eg. in length). You can also adjust for irregular figures (eg 'stooping figure with flat chest' or 'figure prominent in back' or 'figure with enlarged upperarm'). Hilarious!

A few weeks ago I bought this kitchen stool from an op-shop. 

After a couple of hours of working on it tonight, it now looks like this:
It was pretty easy, and looks soooo much better. 

I just pulled the old seat off, carefully unpicked all the vinyl, then used that to make my pattern pieces. I have used the Ladybug fabric made by Kristen and some natural coloured linen. I covered the fabric in iron-on vinyl (bought online from the US - so, so much cheaper than Spotlight) to make it more durable and easily washable. The hardest part was the piping - the plastic cord that was in the old seat was too short by about 6cm! I had nothing like it in my stash, so just had to make do without that 6cms.

New Stuff

The postie brought me some new shoes this week (bought new on ebay for less than half the price I'd be charged in Australia ),and also some more fabric for my stash.


I dropped into one of my favourite op shops today - very spur-of-the-moment, as I only had loose change in my purse. Perfect timing, as someone brought out a box of goodies that seemed to have my name on it!After 8 days of gastro in the house (my daughter and I; Ollie was thankfully spared), it has turned out to be a good week. Nothin' like new stuff to make you feel better!

Op Shopping

We have done heaps of op-shopping in the past week. This is one of my favourite buys of the week:

I have also found heaps of kids and teens books. I think I have purchased about 40 books just this week!

Ollie and I made a deal on Tuesday that if he slept in his cot all night (rather than waking in the night to come into my bed!), I would take him to a farm. Last night he finally did it, and the first thing he said to me after I got him out of bed this morning was "Ollie go to the farm?". So to Chesterfield Farm we went! Not the most picturesque farm we could have gone to, but Ollie had a great time feeding the goats and chasing the sheep (and being chased by sheep -  "No eat Ollie's back" he yelled at them as they followed us). Unfortunately I forgot my camera, so no pics!