Matching Pegs

We are very proud of Amelia, who received her new Blue Belt on Tuesday evening, after her grading last Saturday.  She has shown great discipline in learning her patterns and moves (Taekwondo).

She didn’t even seem to be particularly stressed by the panel of 6 judges, and the crowd of about 150 people watching as she went through her paces with the other kids in her group, (that’s her on the right).

Blue was certainly on her mind this week.

This is the little scene that I found on my cutting table the other day.  You can be sure that there is a whole story that goes along with this set up – probably involving a broken arm for teddy, if the bandage is any indication.  Amelia makes good use of my fabric scraps and all the little creatures that I have made – especially my two Monster Chefs – to create little stories.  It amuses her for whole hours at a time.  I am so in awe of her imagination, I hope she never grows out of it.

and all the Christmas bunting is up.

The Angel is presiding over the kitchen,

and all the ornaments are on the tree.  Now I just have to hang the wreath on the front door, and finish the Christmas baking and present sewing.  The carols and Christmas songs are on high rotation, and I am officially in the mood for Christmas.

The Tooth Fairy lives at our house.  She is delightful, mischievous, and awfully cute.

She performed in the Christmas concert.

I don’t really understand what the Tooth Fairy is doing in a Christmas Concert, but it doesn’t really matter.

She was born to be on the stage.

When I saw this fabric, I knew that it was just what I had been looking for, for a project I was itching to try.  I fell in love with the combination of the crisp, candy-cane colours and the light, floaty texture, (the fabric is a cotton voile).

As I feed my crafty-blog addiction, there are so many tutorials that I bookmark, as possible projects to try.  This one fell into the rare category of clever tutorials that I wanted to try as soon as possible.  So I did.

It was Lara’s skirt that inspired me, but I must admit that the name of the tutorial can give the wrong impression. It is called the “Tablecloth skirt” which makes it sound like it has been made using a tablecloth, which does happen, but not in this case (if you google “Tablecloth Skirt” you will mostly find this type of garment).  It is not actually referring to the choice of fabric either, although my choice can certainly qualify as “tableclothy”.

It refers to the shape, which is boxy, I think the shape is better described as being like a fitted sheet with no elastic on the edge.  If the bed was square and you cut a hole in the centre, for your waistband, then that is the shape exactly.  Above you can see me holding the opposite corners of the square.  Usually I am scared off from making things with checks or plaid, because you have to attempt to match the pattern at the seams.  What I loved about this was that not-matching the pattern makes it more interesting, as it makes the unusual shape more apparent.

In this photo you can see that the folds can fall a little unevenly, unless you take care to distribute them evenly along the waistband, and fix then there, which I have since done.  When I wore this yesterday, for the first time, I received many complements, mainly I think, because it is a little different from the skirts that are in the shops at the moment.

If you would like to try making this skirt, follow this tutorial.  I altered the dimensions, so here are my skirt’s vital statistics… I used exactly 2.5 m (2.73 yards) of fabric.  The centre square measures 42″ square.  The four side-rectangles measure 42″ x 16″.  I used a seam allowance of 1/2″.  I’m not telling you the waistband measurements, but make sure that it is cut to your hip measurement, so that you can get it on!  I’m 5’7″ – so alter your other measurements according to your height, and how long you want the sides of the “box” to be (I wanted mine to be a fair bit longer than the original tutorial).

Give it a go – it is really fun and easy!

Back in October, I whipped up this cushion as a birthday gift for my sister Alison, whose birthday is early in November.  I used scraps from the quilt that Mum and I made her last year.  Amelia (Daughter number one) used the remaining scraps to start piecing a bag.  The two projects were so similar, that I surreptitiously used a picture of the cushion in the post about Amelia’s sewing efforts.  I have been waiting for ages to share a picture of the whole cushion here, because until today, I had not managed to catch up with Alison to give it to her.

I completed the cushion with an invisible zip along one of the short sides, and the cushion insert is a lovely feather and down one from IKEA – plump and squishy.

The cushion is so bright, and in such a different palette, to that of the decor in my house, that I found it quite a challenge to photograph.  I eventually found a few props that went with it quite well (see the photo at the top of the post).  The geraniums are two different types from my garden – both grown from cuttings, so I have no idea what they are called.  The canvas is an abstract painting that I add layers to occasionally.  This photo (directly above) is one I took with some Lego that happened to be on display at the time.  In the background are parts of Amelia’s “Medieval Market Village” and in the foreground are two of the mini-figures we have collected, who I thought went well with the oriental Koi on the cushion.  I didn’t think that photo was quite what I was trying to achieve, but it did make me smile.

Do you work hard to get your “props” right for photography?

I am lucky enough to be an Aunty to 13 nieces and nephews.  Early next year, there will be two more.  One of these will be different to all the others though, because this will be the first niece or nephew to be born on my side of the family.  My twin brother Julian, and his partner Liz are expecting a baby in March.  I thought it was high time I started sewing!

I purchased some cotton gauze (which also gets called muslin here – a name that means different things in different countries) to make into light-weight baby wraps, (for a summer baby) being careful to chose colours that I thought were fairly gender neutral.

In order to cut them “square” I decided to “true up” by pulling a thread out.  In one corner, the thread started at the top of the cut that the store had made, but by the time it reached the other corner, it was much further down, as you can see in the photo above.  Once I had pulled the thread as a guide, I cut along the line.  I did this for the two sides that didn’t have selvages.

Now that I had perfectly straight, true-to-grain edges, I spray-starched them for easier sewing.  All that was left was to iron over the edges twice (1/4″ each time) and finish them with a fancy stitch.  I used a variegated pastel thread on the yellow gauze and a kingfisher-blue thread on the aqua gauze.

Now I am off to plan some baby quilts…

What do you usually sew for baby gifts?

I’ve been waiting quite a while for this baby to bloom, tending it carefully.  My Mother has quite the touch with orchids, some of which were her Mother’s, so I was pretty relieved when this one, which she gave into my care, started to flower.

It usually lives on my kitchen windowsill, where, unsurprisingly, the flowers have grown to face out the window.  I can’t just turn the pot, because in all the other directions, it sticks out to much to fit on the sill, so occasionally I am going to put the pot on my table where the blooms can face me.

For the past two days we have had a pair of very special avian visitors in our garden, Yellow-Tailed Black-Cockatoos.

In all my 37 years as a resident of the North-East-Melbourne-suburbs, I have never had one of these in my garden, so I was pretty excited.  It is tricky to tell from the shot, but these birds are really big, much bigger than the Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos, or Corellas that we are used to.

This one is definitely a male, as indicated by the pink ring around his eye and the darker beak, and I believe (although I didn’t get as close) that the first one pictured is a female (white beak and no pink-ring around her eye).

The male was very busy, noisily eating the seed pods on our Hakea tree, while the female diligently kept a lookout.

It is visitors like these that make me feel so lucky to live in an area of the suburbs that still has quite a lot of native trees.  They really did make my day.

What fauna do you welcome to your garden?

It is time again to get cracking on the end-of-school-year gifts for the teachers.

I have been tweaking an old favourite, my “Thank-you for the Teacher” embroidery.  Amelia has done a little of the embroidery of “herself” (in the glasses).

This year I took one of the “random kids” out of the design, and added Miss Michaela (in the hair ribbons).  She is pretty happy with it.

Rory requested a little tweaking to his hairstyle.  The one in the hoop is last year’s design (which is for Amelia’s teacher – I started it months ago).  The one below is the updated version.  I have a feeling that the embroideries for Rory and Michaela’s teachers will be only partially completed – perhaps just the hair, eyes, accessories and words.  Otherwise I can’t see myself finishing in time.

Are you, or your kids making anything by hand for the teachers this year?

For the last few months Amelia has been using a lot of her spare time to knit, and now her work has come to fruition.  This is the wonderful Teddy that she knitted by herself under the guidance of her class teacher at school, who hosts a knitting club.

I, for one, am terribly impressed.  I happen to think it looks more like a Kitty, but that just adds to it’s charm.

Rory has also been busy, at school, making this dragon.  He designed, painted and stuffed it, and his Art teacher sewed it up for him on her sewing machine.

I think it goes really well in his room.

I have actually been making things too, but they fall into the “secret squirrel” category, due to our proximity to Christmas.  Hopefully I can show you one or two things soon.

What have your kids been making lately?

We are just back from a lovely family holiday here.

It wasn’t really long enough, but we did manage to swim, canoe, play tennis and …

jump on the Jumping Pillow.

I didn’t sew a stitch, and that was just fine.

Where has your best family holiday been?