Masterchef final

Because of our 'close, personal' connection with Kate, our Bible study got together for a Masterchef night to watch the final. As soon as we found out Kate was in the final I organised for us to get together at one of our friends place.

They borrowed a projector from work so we could watch it on the big screen :). There was so much good food and lots of nerve wracking suspension. I have been experimenting with making sugar flowers a bit lately, these are some for my first attempts; little cherry blossom cup cakes. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

Because channel 10 decided to put another show on to break the final up into two different parts (agh!) we had a gingerbread house making activity - in honour of the gingerbread house Kate had to make that secured a place for her in the final. It was lots of fun - icing and marshmallows and choc chips flying everywhere.

My house had a little encouragement for Kate on the side :)

Then at the end Kate did it - she won! We couldn't quite believe it, lots of cheers and squeals could be heard. We were so happy for her, and can't wait to see what she does next.

Postcards

Experimenting with my new free motion embroidery foot. Having complete control of how the fabric moves takes a little to get use to, but is also completely liberating :)

Postcards; Free motion embroidery on felt. 13/4/10

A Purple Dolphin

This is a pattern I’ve wanted to try this pattern for a while. I found it in Homespun Vol 10, Issue 12, but Melly and Me now also sell it as an individual pattern.

I quite liked how it turned out. Especially as it was my first try of a softie. The only thing is that you have to read the instructions for cutting carefully because some pieces have a seam allowance on the pattern and some you have to sew on the line that is drawn on the pattern.
Adding the fins was a little tricky. I found it easier to sew with a zipper foot because of the bulk on one side of each seam.

This little dolphin is being put away for a special girl who is about to become a big sister any day now. She is as big a fan of purple as I am. I don’t know if it will be a little brother or sister so I can’t start sewing for the baby yet :).

Easter Boxes

For Easter this year I decided to go beyond the usual Easter egg basket thing, and made biscuit boxes, (let’s face it, it was an excuse to use my Tags, bags, boxes and more cartridge).

First I made really large biscuits using basic biscuit dough (or cookie dough, depending on what country you live in). The firmer the dough, the better (as you'll see later), it it starts to streach a lot when you roll it out stick the dough in the frige for an hour and try again. I made half of the dough chocolate by adding cocoa and another tablespoon of milk. So half of the dough was chocolate and half was vanilla.

I cut out little stars from the middle of each colours and switched the stars so that in the middle of the vanilla biscuit was a chocolate star and in the middle of the chocolate biscuit is the vanilla star. (You could do a similar trick by just adding food dye to half of dough)

Even if thestar and circle don’t quite meet on the baking tray the biscuits raise a little and meld together as they cook.

I then cut a little shaker box with a window (at 51/2 inch), then put them together.

Once I placed the biscuit inside I just tied ribbon around the edge. And added a gift tag.

Then, tada! Gorgeous little biscuit gift boxes :)

Tree

Our Sunday school decided to make artworks to give to Allowah, a hospital for children with disabilities.

I wanted to create an artwork that all the kids in our preschool class could contribute to, but would also look nice. So I got a canvas from a discount store and painted a background and a tree trunk on it. I then painted the kids hands and used their hand prints to create the leaves of the tree. I really like the effect.

I think you could use a similar idea to make a card; draw a simple tree trunk on cardboard and get children to make a green hand print above each.

Patterns

I have alot of patterns, they just seem to multiply when I'm not looking :).

Have you ever tried putting paper patterns back inside the envelope they come in once you've unfolded them? Impossible. Instead I have a time honoured system for storing them for easy access.

All the cut out pieces are slipped into clear zip lock bags, and I put them with all the instructions and bits into a large envelope. I then write the pattern number and a description of the pattern on the front at the top so I can see it quickly in the bottom draw of my filing cabinet.

I like it, it works great - except when it doesn't.

I had set aside some time to try out a pattern I have that I haven't made yet. But I seem to have put it somewhere else, which I can't find. The moral is that a system only works well if you follow it.

Ruffler

Quite a while ago I bought a ruffler for my machine. It's quite an intimidating piece of equipment, but defiantly worth the investment if you sew alot of gathered garments. It makes tiny gathers as you sew, which means you don't need to sew long stitches, pull the thread and then attach - saves so much time!

My ruffler attachment in action - impressive, isn't it?

But it isn't something you just attach and instantly start sewing, it takes a bit of practise and patience to start making good gathers. I found an e-book on you can make this which is so useful! You have to register to download it, but registration is free, so if you have a ruffler and need a bit of help, or you are just interested in finding out if it's worth getting one I'd recommend you download the book and have a look. It's very comprehensive (30 pages!), with lots of pictures to illustrate and shows all these things you can do with a ruffler I never knew about (and weren't in the instructions that came when I bought it).

This is the pot

In my Creativity and Children tutorial this week we did clay. Clay is so therapeutic, I loved just kneading, rolling and moulding the clay. I played with it until we had 10 minutes left then I made a little bird.

We read a book called This is the pot that Juan built by Nancy Andrews-Goebel as a good way to introduce young children to the concept of using clay. It's got lovely bright illustrations. On one side it tells the story of making a clay pot using the traditional 'This is the house that Jack built" rhyme style. On the other side of the page it tells in more detail how Juan Quezada (a renowned Mexican potter) creates pots using traditional techniques.

I think children would find it very interesting (I did) and is a great way to inspire young artist.

Storage Issues

In my creative space at the moment is;

1. A bunch of embroidery threads I'm in the process of transferring to cards
2. Some vests I'm in the middle of (A new design I'm working on)
3. And pattern for hats which I keep meaning to sew

I'm getting ready to spend a few days with my parents where I won't have my sewing machine so I'm organising things I can do hand sewing on (like the vests).

Speaking of organising I finally decided I had to do something with my fabric. It was starting to overflow and get out of control. As my 'sewing' room is also my study, bed room and closet I really have to limit the amount of room that my sewing takes up. (If only I didn't need clothes, or uni text books - they take up the most space in my room!)

This is what my fabric use to be stored in (this is on a good day, when the fabric is not spilling over and miss matched as it normally is).

A good idea at the time, but actually not very easy to find the fabric I wanted and impossible to put fabric back without a mountain collapsing on top of me. And it really wasn't making the most of the area - so something else was needed.

I got a bunch of tubs from Spotlight; they are clear (but I still decided to label them, because I love labels) and not very deep. This is VERY important so that I can see from the top exactly what I have available in a certain colour. No more hunting underneath piles!

Dad put some shelves in and look - even with all my fabric neatly put away, half of my cupboard is empty! So hanging above it are designs which need some finishing touches (like buttons added), and next to it is a hanging thing with space for scraps (at the bottom) and buttons etc (all labeled) at the top.

It's so much better - I find a tidy area is much more inspiring (just don't look at my desk). For more creative space inspiration head over to Kootoyoo.

Creativity

I was reading in the Good Weekend (Saturday's Paper) a short snippet of an article about setting up an craft room. It was only a few paragraphs but my mind already started to dance and plan and dream; I wouldn’t call it a craft room. It would be a creative room, a room in a house in my future somewhere. A room to love in and live in.

It would have a place for my sewing machine so I can have it set up without having to lug it around when I’m doing projects. It would have my easel permanently set up, with a huge canvas always ready to be worked on. Paints of all the possible colours right there to grab. Every piece of my craft supplies would have a place of their own.

There would be a huge useful box for children to dive into and create with. They would have so many beautiful supplies to work with and it wouldn’t matter if they made a mess, because you could just shut the door. There would be shelves for my books and a CD player to play praise worthy music. There would be a beautiful comfy lounge for climbing onto when it rains and snuggling up with an old quilt and reading stories and watching the rain drip down the windows. (I forgot to mention that there was a wall of windows for looking out over the back yard). There would be no TV.

One wall would have a huge notice board for putting up postcards from friends, and beautiful pictures from magazines, and lovely verses I’ve written up. And another wall would hold artworks children have made.

I had just finished planning my room, when I remembered that I am trying to limit the ‘stuff’ I have in my life. I remembered that I want to live a life that is looking outward, serving God with all I do. Is dreaming a room just for my family and I to create in, is that serving God? I believe that all good things come from God, even my insatiable appetite to create beautiful things. But shouldn’t I be reining that in some how, using it for Gods kingdom? I don’t even know if I’ll be living in Australia; have a house in suburbia (oh, blah, I hope not). If I can afford a house with a room just for creativity shouldn’t the money be used in a better way?

So, somehow I managed to turn a fleeting 2 minute day dream into a guilt trip. It did look beautiful though, in those two minutes.

(photos courtesy of sxc)

Easter Show

Easter time in Sydney to mean always means The Sydney Royal Easter Show.

I can take or leave the show bags, I don't like rides, the cars in the arena are not my cup of tea (the best was the year that they acted out The Man From Snowy River) and baby animals are cute but so much more fun when you have little people with you.

No, I go to the show for the arts and crafts. I love wandering the alsits and looking in the cases to see what talented people have created. It's one of the few places where the old fashioned handicrafts are appreciated in a mainstream place.

Here are a few of my favourites;

Arn't the tiny butterflies so sweet?

You'll only really appreciate this if you are Aussie, but it made me smile

Ooo - a tropical wedding cake! I think they need a few more frangipani's :)

And I have saved my favourite for last. Isn't it beautiful? A gorgeous hand embroidered dress, hat and shoes. I could see a little girl wearing it at her baptism.

You may have already found these

Just wanted to share with you 2 sites that I have come across recently and absolutely love.


First up, librivox.org. Generally books that were published more than 95 years ago or whose author has been deceased for 70 or more years are in the public domain. This means that there is no copyright on them and they can be reproduced without permission. Librivox does free recordings of public domain books so you can download a free (really-truely FREE) audio file of that book (and don't have to worry about copyright or breaking the law).

They are all read by volunteers so I can't vouch for the quality of all the recordings, I have just finished listening to this copy of Pride and Prejudice which I enjoyed immensely (besides the obvious American accent. I always feel that Jane Austen should be read in the most proper English accent. And it's pronounced Bhing-leigh, not Bing-Lee, but as I said, it's free so I won't complain).

There are many other classics on there. I'm considering volunteering to read Seven Little Australians (So it's read in an Australian accent -grin-).



The other find is sewmamasew.com. Its basically a sewing blog attached to a fabric store; at the moment they are doing 30 days of hand made gifts. So every day of November they have searched the blogosphere to find great sewing tutorials for us to try. There's also older articles about girls and boys clothes. My list of things I want to sew has quadrupled since I discovered this site. I just finished a bag like these ones from a tutorial I found on the day they had purse/bag tutorials.


Go over and poke around, I grantee you'll be inspired.

Lunch with Aunty Ness

Today I had a bit of spare time so I went and had lunch with Aunty Ness. I love my Aunty Ness, she is actually my great aunty - my Dad's aunty. She's 91 and her mind is just as active as ever. She is a bit frail, losing her hearing and sight but we still have such great conversations. We are true kindred spirits, Aunty Ness loves art, craft and writing. Her house is full of her beautiful paints of autumn leaves and old houses. She use to sew lots of cute little dolls. We have many conversations discussing the development of the stories that we are both writing.

She always loves me to come over and tell her whats going on in my life and loves it when I bring over a piece of craft I'm working on.

Aunty Ness has very strong views on certain subjects. I'll spare you her slightly prejudice opinions on a few things. Today we had a great talk about how fashion has become very unfeminine, which is something I have very strong views on as well. Being an artist, Aunty Ness tells me how all the different styles lead the eye and which is most flattering to the female form. Most things in style at the moment are not very flattering. I know that already, especially if you are struggling with your weight.

Lately I've stopped looking through the catalogues we get in the mail and keep with a simple style I trust; dainty tailored blouses and simple shirts, simple skirts and dresses. I feel so much prettier in them, they are modest and beautifully flattering.

The one thing that would make times with Aunty Ness so much better would be if she shared my faith. I always feel an aching sadness when I leave. I wish I had more courage to talk with Aunty Ness about it. I know other people in our family have, and the few times we've had spiritual conversations it's obvious she just doesn't seem to understand her need for grace. If you could pray for her, I'd appreciate it.

A bit crafty

I was going to post about how the jacaranda's are flowering, but I can't find the photos I took last year of the jacaranda tree near our old house anywhere. I hope I haven't deleted them.

Going through all my photos I came across these of T-shirts I made (okay, decorated) for a family that I nannied last year.

The green one was for the oldest a girl who is 9. I stenciled on the swirls and then cut the butterfly out of some pretty fabric I had around home. I then used fusible webbing to attach it to the shirt and blanket stitched around it.

For the middle child, a boy who was 7, I found a picture of a skateboarder on the internet, made a stencil and screen printed it. He loved it, he was always giving me heart attacks showing me the latest trick he had mastered on his skateboard.

And finally the baby. Cos the family have Scottish heritage I chose a little Scottie dog. I then sewed on the red ribbon (simple straight stitch) to add a bit of colour.

I wish I could show you the pic of them wearing their shirts but I don't have their Mum's permission so I'd better not. Just trust me that they looked Adorable!