These became.....these!

So....here's some fabric. We've got plain black drill, ikea drill prints, and a crazy old curtain.

They became.....

these!

This is a favourite dress/tunic of mine that I've made a couple of times from one of my patterns in my collection. It's a Simplicity from 1976, and is such a handy dress - the pockets fit HEAPS of things and don't bulge out (I wear my tunic for installing shows, it fits a hammer, tape, nails etc and doesn't complain!)
I've never made it without the shoulder frills before, but I think the neckline is a winner here coupled with the slightly extended shoulder line. We decided to go contrast loco with this one.
These garments were both swaps with jewellers. I'm very happy with my swaps and will have to put up pictures of them. Swapping is great!! We're planning some earring trades soon :)

The other graphic fabric is........on it's way to getting made. Had to have a bit of a think about how to go about the construction of it. Hopefully will get it started this week.

saturday sewing (another view)

Darkcloud got this up first, but then she's all about the organisation :)

This was such a fun day - I hadn't had a sewing day with her since November (way too long ago) and I really needed the company to have the strength to finish this project!

I was putting together an insulated roman blind for the living room window. I had the top finished earlier in this year, but I actually started it.....in 2003. I feel pretty sheepish about that. It was originally going to be a doona cover, so was going to be queen sized. A couple of things hampered the project, one, I cut all the triangles out without adding seam allowance on them, so instead of the three different sized squares forming perfect bigger rectangles....it was a hodge podge. I didn't realise this until I had cut hundreds of triangles and sewn together most of them into squares. That disheartened me enough to put it away for a couple of years. In my defence, it was quite a while ago, and I definitely put seam allowance on everything now!

It was from a Kaffe Fasset pattern, I can't remember which book, but mine actually is louder than his - if that's possible (if you know his work, you'll be amazed).

Another thing that stopped the project from finishing, is that I realised, well, it's fabric that has a white background, and if it's a doona cover, it will basically get really dirty and muddy looking really fast (on account of sootcovered glassblowing husband). So I needed to find a place for it where it wouldn't get feet on it - a window!

Hopefully it'll be up by next weekend *fingers crossed*.

Oh, and the insulation is a pure wool blanket I picked up from an op shop for $1!

what I did during the renovating part 2

I know, very remiss of me, but time is really rushing past and I'm amazed how the days just slip away. It seems hard to do one thing, let alone several things, let alone finish random projects, but I'm getting back on that horse again, so hopefully the next couple of days will be full of posts!

While they were doing this:

Which Tom reckons it looks like they're miners down a pit...

I was doing these:

Onion dispenser bags! (except I only had one onion left, so oranges got to model, though you could have it as an orange dispenser)

Onions need to have air around them, and be in kinda the dark, but since our potato cupboard is frequently used to grow experimental new lifeforms (for the purpose of art of course) they can't really co-habit.

I was going through a 'how cool is flyscreen as a material' stage, and made up these. It's just a rectangle of flyscreen (plastic) some bias binding, some elastic and a bit of re-enforcing for the strap, I used scraps of leather I had lying around. The only trick is not to make them too long, because the onions get pretty heavy on the strap (my first one was over a metre, held more than 3k of onions, and didn't have re-enforcing on the strap...was a bit of an overkill...)

I made a normal sized one, and a slightly narrower one, for shallots possibly or picklers....take your pick, it's fun to dispense as well. These were for Helen, for her fantastic rendering work and DIY know-how. I've got a bit spare, so will be using up my excess with more bags soon!

We then sat down to Gremolata Osso Buco Pie with cheesy Polenta topping.
The grey render has now been professionally plastered over by a glassy friend as we figured it'd be much easier to get it done by someone who knows what they're doing then us cursing and making a mess of it. Now we just have to wait one more week and then painting - finally!

JamFactory Glass Pregnancies

yep, posing in front of a furnace.  

this is my latest frock, a bit different to everyone else's maternity gear, but I still say I'm going to swan around in purpose built dresses!  This one is made from curtains I found at a jumble sale I went to with Darkcloud in March.  Wasn't trying to collect more fabric, but just thought it would be fabulous with the pattern.  Will get a pic of the dress with the pattern soon (once I find where I put the pattern again).

We are posing in order of due dates, first to go is on the right.

Trying to get the stash down.

I was in a segment a couple of years ago on an ABC program called The Collectors.  It featured my paper sewing pattern collection, at that time I had about 900 of them, ranging from the 1950s to the 1970s.  I love the styles from those three decades, any patterns I've got from the 80's are because they're funny, strange, or have a shape that was missing in the collection, but mostly for laughs.  (sorry 80's fashion fans)

I now have over 1600, that increase is almost solely due to all the wonderful viewers of that show, passing on their patterns (and fabric, and knitting patterns, wools, beads, buttons etc) to me (so they would be treasured, used and free up their cupboards no doubt!)  The down side of that generosity is that I've spent the last two years replying to letters, sorting through patterns I want to keep, multiple trips to op shops to pass on the ones I don't want.

The hoarder in me loved it, because every new parcel could be full of amazing treasures.  BUT I only have one room for my studio, so that soon overflowed into the hallway, and into the spare room, and boxes piled up and well, I didn't exactly know what I had anymore and couldn't lay my hands on anything! 

So, I think I've spent the last eight months or so trying to organise what I've got into some semblance of order and make my studio nice to work in, rather than feel like I'm going to drown in fabric due to all the teetering boxes!  

Many thanks to Dark Cloud for helping me, ordering storage and generally holding my hand when my eyes started to pop out of my head, or I got distracted by all the cool things I'd rediscovered.

What I've set myself to do is as well as finishing things I've already started, is to not buy anymore fabric (which I used to buy in lieu of shoes, clothes, books, anything anyone else buys for a whim really...) but to use what I've got.  I recently found a stack of curtains from the 60's in one of my boxes, and voila!My first beanbag! 

I did this because I've never had a beanbag before (deprived childhood indeed), I had a pattern, my husband wanted one and one of my studio mates (more about that later) decided that our studio really needed some beanbags (conducive to creativity I guess).  So this one will live at ours, and I've got enough material for two more, although one will have black stripes I think.

The beanbag is sitting on a rag rug crocheted by a great friend of mine who has been such an inspiration for me since she was my kindy teacher (there is a bit of an age gap, I'm younger than her youngest).  And she's always made such cool stuff over such a range of media!  I'm happy to finally have a space to place it in, as we now have a lounge room, before it was a non functional dining room/office/printing area, which just didn't work because it was trying to be too many things.

And a new couch - a friend said that buying a couch definitely means I'm now a grownup. 

how about that?

well here goes.....

I've been thinking about doing this for sometime, and have blatantly copied my friend, and friend's friends with regards to using this space as a way to talk about projects, share with other people, and in my case, use it as a motivating tool to finish said projects!

Also, it was my birthday yesterday, and I feel that birthdays are a second chance at starting the year anew, because often NYE comes around and there's not enough time to write that big list (which I love doing) of all the things you're going to do/change in the following year.  Often because you're on holidays/have relatives staying, ate too much, or are preparing crazily for two exhibitions and being morning sick (like I  was at the start of the year).

So, that's the intro, now for some projects!   I have been making this Charles Rennie Mackintosh inspired patchwork for quite a while now....(at least three years, possibly more).  I had the top and central structure designed right from the start, but ran into a snag when I didn't have enough pink to do what I wanted to do with the remaining bits.  So I put it away to stew for a goodly amount of time, and pulled it out last year to finish it, as it was designed to be a roman blind for my sewing studio, and in it's place was a wool blanket curtain that wasn't wide enough and wasn't very pretty to look at or insulated.

I finished it last year, but needed help putting it up, so it sat for another couple of months until my parents came a visiting with a burning desire to be helpful.  So thanks Dad (and Mum for distracting me from what my dad and husband were brainstorming (we went and played cards)). 

So here it is:  chocolate, carmel, cream and four types of pink corduroy, playing around with grainlines and nap.  I'm still not sure of the ricrac, but my roses needed stems, and well, I think it's kind of funny having this type of work with lurid green zigzag braid.

And here's what it (kind of) looks like backlit, I like window pane patchwork, the seams make lovely lines.

I'm happy with finally having the blind up and finished, and am planning the next two - hopefully they won't take as long!