Simple style

I have been flat out lately and haven't had time to think. For the last 2 weeks, my sewing room has been ocupado with visitors so unfortunately not much sewing has been done. I did however, sneak into the room to complete Chelsea's birthday party dress that I gave you a little peek of in this post. I will post about that in the next few days.

Chelsea received some wonderful gifts for her 3rd party, a lot of beautiful clothes among them. One of the pieces of clothing was a gorgeous dress. This dress has given me an idea. Chelsea love this dress and wants to wear it all the time and because I do wash her clothes, there are days when she can not wear it. Now I know that she has a wardrobe FULL of dresses, but never-the-less, I have decided to create a new version of the dress for her to wear on the washing days of the other. (Any excuse to make a dress hahahaha).

This is how it is starting out...

What a bargain find. I was meeting a friend outside Target today and there was a rack of clothes for sale out the front. I had a browse while waiting and found this orange t-shirt for $1.73!!!! It says 'boys' t-shirt but I think orange looks great on girls too. So this is part of the dress.

The second half (bottom half) of the dress is made from some black check fabric that I have had in my stash for a while. I am going to pleat it and attach it to the t-shirt.

So that's how the dress has started so far, stay tuned for the finished product and I will put up a photo of the inspiration dress as well. 

Hope you have all had a wonderful weekend and please enjoy your week ahead :-)

Motivational affirmations.

I love positive affirmations. I use them daily. I write them on sticky notes and place them all around the house. The most important ones are always next to my bed so I see them when I wake up. For me, affirmations centre and ground me and make my energy for the day a lot clearer. 

Yesterday I went with my sister and my niece to the factory outlet stores. They were visiting us from interstate and it is one of my sisters favourite places to go when she comes to stay. I have been to those shops a lot since we have lived in Melbourne and they always have the same shops within but this visit, there was a new outlet store. It was Kaisercraft! I love dabbling in nearly all crafts but there are a few that I am not very good at like scrap-booking and card making (which is what Kaisercraft sell). Anyway, while walking around Kaisercraft, I decided I might give paper craft another go. And because everything was so cheap, I just had too!

So I picked up these items and had a plan in my head...

A DIY hanging plaque - 3 pieces, some pretty scrap booking paper and some rub on motivation quotes.

I started by tracing around the plaques onto the pretty paper and then cut them out.

I then glued the pretty paper onto the plaques. I then found some coloured paper (cream, pink and red) that I had bought for the kids a long time ago, chose which quotes I wanted to use and then rubbed them onto the cream paper. I stuck the cream paper with the quote onto the pink paper and then onto the red paper and used some fancy squiggle scissors to cut it out. 

After that, I glued the quote onto the plaque, grabbed some lovely yellow ribbon to tie the plaques together and this is the final result.

It cost me under $12 and I completed it in one afternoon. These quotes definitely motivate me and make me smile. I love it!!

Until next time...

Jackpot!!!!!

OK Peeps... I have some very very exciting news...

I won the Jackpot! Hahahah the sewing jackpot that is. In fact, I have gone to sewing heaven. 

You see, here in Melbourne we have a wonderful FB site called 'Pay it forward'. It's where people post pictures of things they are wanting to give away...for FREE. So anyways, I have given away a few things on there. Just little things like Chelsea's baby carrier. A new mum will get lots of use out of it and saves her money on buying one. Also some play station games. We don't have a play station anymore and the games are so expensive to buy so I gave heaps of them away too. Anyhoo...so I was having a browse through the posts the other day and a lady had put up a post saying that she had heaps of Burda magazines from the 1960's and 70's. There were a few ladies who had put their names down for them but it was something that I wanted too so I put under the last persons comment "Long shot but next in line please" I even used a smiley face at the end. I never thought anything more about it because obviously any sewing enthusiast would LOVE them! Well, the first few ladies didn't want them so it came to my turn. I jumped at them...I was really excited about getting them and reading through some Burda magazines for some sewing inspiration and I was hoping that some of them still had all their patterns in them. I had plans the next day which put me out and about in the car so I arranged to pick them up on my travels. 

Little did I know what was waiting for me. 

I arrived at the address I had been given and started walking up to the door, when a lady from a car that had just pulled up outside the house asked me who I was. She turned out to be the sister. She kindly let me in and lead me through what was her late mum's house. Walked into a room and OMG!! The Burda magazines she spoke of were not just a few that I had thought in my head, but boxes of them :) Arrggh I was excited, I started carting them to the boot of my car when the sister (who had just finished talking to the lady on the phone) turned around and said that "all those boxes over there" and pointed to another mountain of boxes, "are patterns, you can have those too". What!! really!! So I started racing them to the car just in case she changed her mind. So I loaded up the car, we have a station wagon and I had to even put stuff on the back seats! Then she told me that I should just take all the craft folders that were there as well. Wahoo!! 10 trips to the car later and what an amazing adventure I had. I could not thank her enough or her sister when I spoke to her on FB afterwards. The whole drive home I was buzzing with ideas and visualizing myself going through everything and drooling over all the gorgeous clothes I can make now :)

Want a pic of just how much I received??

and...

When I got home I started going through my haul and I came across lots of loose bits of paper, recipes, soft toy patterns (lots of those actually) all from the 1960's. Among these papers were these lovely cut out dolls. My daughter is going to love it!

So now comes the hard parts. 1) Sorting it all out into some sort of order and 2) deciding what I should make first, ooh the hundreds of possibilities :-)

I cannot believe my good luck. I am definitely in line for big things this year and I think this is just the start, on the right track for me.

Until next time and have a good night... :)

Helping Premmies

Over 6 years ago, I gave birth to twin boys prematurely. They were born at 29 weeks. 

Back then, there was no Facebook with support groups where you could enlist the advice of lots of other people who had 'been there, done that'. Thankfully these days those wonderful groups do exist and I am lucky enough to be part of one. It is a premmie support group. 

Not only do we support one and other, we also go above and beyond and make up beautiful little packs for new mums of premmie babies. These packs consist of 3 singlets, 3 sleepsuits, 3 outfits, 1 crochet blanket, 2 sensor blankets, 3 hats and a pair of mittens and booties. All of these items are size 00000/prem and donated or handmade. I joined the group and told my story and then saw that they were desperately low on stock for the packs so I piped up and said I could sew! I then became the chief sewer of the sensor blankets.

To begin with, I had no idea what they even were but soon got educated after lots of questions. They are used when premmies are in humidicribs. Mum and baby have one each. Mum puts hers down her top to collect her scent and baby hugs its one and then they swap. So important and so sweet!

So basically the sensor blankets are super easy to make. It's a double sided 30cmx30cm square. I make one side flannelette fabric and the other a soft cotton. Trouble is, I have so many to make and just not enough hours in the day. I have made over 30 so far but still have lots to make to keep in stock.

Here's a look at some so far...

Coming up soon is my little princesses 3rd birthday!!

Here is a sneak peak of the dress I am making her...

Hope you have all had a lovely weekend and until next time...

The 'Paige' Skirt

As a new Army wife, I have made a lot of Army wife friends. I have really enjoyed getting to know them and have became really good lifelong friends with a few of them. One in particular I see daily and not only do we have a fantastic friendship, our 6 children (she has 3 too) are also wonderful friends. However, I don't think I was ever prepared to watch my friend say goodbye to her husband for 6 months as he deployed to Afghanistan. 

Anyways, I remember when the school holidays started, my friend said to me that her daughter (7) needed some new clothes as she seems to have grown so much since last summer. With her not having hubby around, I thought it would be nice to make her girls some clothes, I know that I dread taking 3 kids to the shops on the best of days by myself! The first thing I made was a skirt for her 7 year old. I had some beautiful Japanese Cotton material with some cute little pandas on it and I knew that she would love it. I whipped up the skirt and forgot to photograph it to show you all...oopsy! But, my friend sent me a text/pic message the other day with her wearing it and a message saying that she had picked out her daughters clothes for the day but she put the bottoms back and put her skirt on. I think that was the third day in a row that she had worn it so I think she likes it :) Here's the blurry iPhone pic...

Tonight I decided to make her 6 year old sister a skirt as well. My plan is to make them a skirt each and a pair of shorts each. Her other daughter is 1 and has a lot of Chelsea's outgrown clothes so I won't make her any at this stage. 

For the second skirt, I found this material in my stash. I bought it a long time ago from Spotlight. The little white petals are a slightly raised puffy paint. Its gorgeous...

and I teamed it up with this lace that I bought for 50c from Vinnie's today.

I made a basic skirt with an elastic waist, not just for her ease and comfort but also because they are quick and easy to make :) 

This is how it turned out and I now call it my 'Paige' skirt. Any guesses as to what my friends 6 year old's name is??

I'm sure she will love it. Now to get onto their shorts. I can't believe that I had my sewing machine pack away for almost a year, my passion is ignited once again!!! I have so many exciting projects running around in my head that I'm looking forward to getting stuck into.

Until next time...

It's me...it's really me!!!

I'M BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Arggg how exciting!

After nearly a year which included a move interstate, becoming an army wife and getting a dog, I finally got the good ol' sewing machine out and off I go!!

I had forgotten.......

Forgotten how damn much I love to sew!! Plain and simple. The spark has been re-sparked and I can't wait to get stuck in and create so much.

Anyways, its late so I better get to bed but I can't wait to show you what I have been working on in the last week  :)

Till next time....

100 Projects: #3 - Haahoo!! + Tutorial

Chelsea's favourite show is 'In The Night Garden'. She has loved this show since before she was 1. Her best friend in the world is her 'Upsy Daisy' doll - which is a character of the show. She once lost her Upsy doll, what an ordeal. You can read about that story on my other blog here.

Anyways, Chelsea is turning 2 soon. Her actual birthday is at the start of February but because Nick is heading away to the Army for 3 months on Monday, we have brought her birthday forward to this weekend. She won't even know, she'll just be excited about cake and presents.

Since I wanted to make her at least one gift for her birthday, I decided to make her a Haahoo (other characters from the show). As you can see from the pic above, there are 5 of them. I made the first one for her.

Here is how it turned out....

Here is a quick tutorial for anyone out there who has an 'In the night garden' obsessed child like me.

What you will need:

- Fabric. I got mine from spotlight and it's called 'Rainbow Dots' by Sugar and Spice.

- Toy fill/stuffing

- Felt for the eyes and mouth (or you could use fabric)

- Pins and a needle

- Sewing Machine, thread etc - your usual sewing stuff

- This Template (Body, eyes and mouth). I enlarged it, printed it out over 4 pages, taped it together then cut it out.

What I did:

1. Cut out 2 main body pieces using the template, 1 front and 1 back. Then I cut out the eyes and a mouth using felt. I cut out 2 black eyes, 2 white eyes slightly smaller to give black frame and then 2 pupils. If you wanted to, you could just cut out 2 white eyes and 2 pupils and stitch around the white with black thread. Up to you!

2. (Optional) As a personal touch, I wanted to add some embroidery on the back. We call Chelsea "Chel Belle" most of the time so I embroidered that onto matching fabric.

I cut around the words in a heart shape and then stuck it on the 'back' body piece and did an applique stitch around it.

3. I then moved to the 'Front' body piece and attached the eyes and mouth. I did an applique stitch around those as well. I use this stitch because it keeps the edges secured down.

4. With the main body pieces complete, I placed them together (right sides facing) and sewed around the outside. I used a 1/4" seam allowance and made sure I left a gap open to turn and stuff.

5. I then turned in the right way and ironed all the seams flat.

6. Once ironed, I opened the gap and stuffed it full of toy stuffing. Once stuffed, I hand stitched up the opening with invisible thread.

There you have it. One Haahoo. I am sure Chelsea is going to love it. She found a picture I printed for the template and carried it around for the day. Can't wait to see her face when she opens it.

This is my first ever tutorial so if there are some things that don't make sense, please let me know :)

Hope you have all had a lovely day, we went to the beach again which was nice. Thank you for reading!!