Etsy Friday Finds

This morning's friday finds are an odd collection of things that I have stumbled across in my online travels this week.

Isn't this picture of a Galah just gorgeous! I love watercolour paintings. Check out the rest of Splodgepodge work, truely gorgeous.

Check out this Tailors Assistant. I am not too sure how practical it would be, but just the idea of it makes me smile!

Pillows like this Paint by Number Globe pillow really appeal to me.

Tori's Birthday is right around the corner and I think that something like this might get some use year after year. Carnival Bunting by Blue Moon Studios

I thought that this leather necklace was quite lovely by Love at First Blush.

Have you come across anything lovely this week? Let me know!

My Creative Space

The relocation of my sewing room is happening so slowly. Nicholas is sleeping a lot better since he was put on Losec for his reflux which means that I am getting more sleep and therefore functioning better during the day. But he is still quite a high-maintenance baby compared with his sister.

I've started to sort through my scraps of material into colour stories. If it is large enough to be turned into a hex it stays, else, it goes off to Kinder for their craft box.

I feel like a real quilter having colour scrap boxes and I wondered why I didn't do this task sooner! I'm looking forward to grabbing two colour boxes and knocking up a scrappy quilt from what I have got.

More creative spaces can be found over here!

Sesame Street Bag

It is important for me at the moment to find time to "switch off" from the kids and house, a task which I find hard as my mind is always going 100 miles an hour. Sleeping is not "switching off" but engrossing myself in an activity, whether it is baking or sewing provides me with enough focus to "switch off".

A friend asked me to do a custom bag for a present, so I took the opportunity to also knock this bag up for myself.

The fabric came from some old Sesame Street bean bag that my Mum passed onto me. I am not sure how the fabric will survive being on bags, so I am going to use this for the next few weeks and then wash it to see how the fabric survives. I was intending on selling this one, but I noticed a small imperfection in the fabric square that I used.

So providing the fabric stacks up, I have dreams for a few bags a quilt and some pouches.

Do you have any advice for working with vintage fabrics?

My Creative Space: Quilt Blocks

I managed to steal some time yesterday in my sewing space and I allowed myself the luxury of blocking some of the fabric that I got printed by Spoonflower. The iPhone picture is a bit dodgy ...

I am happy with most of the designs, but will probably tweek them a bit more to make them a bit more workable. I am going to make a little dolls quilt for Tori and see how the Spoonflower fabric washes up.

To see more creative spaces head over to the Our Creative Spaces blog.

Winter has set in

Winter has well and truely shown itself in Melbourne and we are all complaining about the cold and rain. Everyone except Nicholas, who seems to like it nice and cold at nights.

There hasn't been much happening on the crafting front. There is a layer of dust over my sewing machine, with half of my craft room moved into the study and the other half waiting to be packed up. Everytime I get into my space, someone screams and needs attention. So my crafty pursuits are limited to the afternoons when I am the only one home and I can completely engrose myself in sewing.

Nicholas seems to be much harder work than Victoria was, on many levels. We had a few good days of sleep and interaction and then the last two nights have been hell. And of course, also having a four year old means that you can't just catch up on sleep during the day!

I have found that chocolate agrivates the little man's gut, so I am on a chocolate-free diet (do you know how hard that is??). I think that this week's unsettling was the high tomato lasagna that we had two nights in a row. So back to boring meat and three veg tonight.

In other news I have started my Master of Education (Teacher Librarianship) at CSU. One subject at the moment, but professionally, this is the direction I want to head in. You can read about it over at my other blog.

Konstant Kaos fabric designs via Spoonflower

I'm very excited, my Spoonflower order arrived today. I ordered a fat quarter of one design and little fabric samples of the others.

I am normally so excited when receiving new fabric, but I got so much more of a buzz from these samples! I promptly visited my local quilting shop to show them off and buy some solids so that I can make some sample blocks to see if the designs work.

New Craft Space

My sewing or craft room is on the move. From the lovely spacious front room into the study which is half the size.

My current room is a patchwork of bookcases and storage units grabbed from other rooms in all sorts of colours. But every crafter longs for a nice organised space for their addiction. Materials nicely on display or stacked in tubs.

via

White isn't necessarily my furniture 'colour of choice' for my living area, but white bookcases look better when filled with coloured fabrics and can make a smaller space look larger.

via

I found this gorgeous idea of customising the fronts of these draws in this Ikea desk, BUT at the $1290AUD price tag for the unit, I might have to give it a miss!

I'm currently playing with ideas on how to store my fat quarters that are currently organised by colour and stacked vertically on bookcase shelves. Nice in theory, but I have found that when I pulled out a fat quarter it would disturb the neatly organised pile and then I would have to stack and sort the quarters once more. So I am looking for a more practical solution where I can remove colour collections and then I can put them back on the bookcase.

via Ikea

So I have been looking for CD or DVD Storage boxes as a way of storing my fat quarters. I can imagine that the rainbow of colours would look good in white boxes such as the ones above from Ikea. Alternatively, these plastic boxes from Officeworks might do the trick. The decision will probably come down to cost.

How do you store your fat quarters?

Hottie Exhibition Opening Night

Last Friday night I stole a few moment to head on down to Opendrawer in Camberwell to the Hottie Challenge Exhibition opening Night. Not sure what I was more excited about, the exhibition or the fact that I got to take my Morris Minor for a decent run since she got new brakes.

Picture taken by Beky, her post on the exhibition is here.

It was very exciting, my first involvement in an exhibition and for such a worthy cause. I got a real buzz out of seeing my hottie hanging on a wall beside other Hotties that were created by other fabulous Melbourne crafters. Reflecting back, it was such a battle to get it finished, stealing chunks of time at weird times of the day.

I had quite a number of friends who turned up to celebrate and support the group of Hotties and some friends who also got involved and created a Hottie themselves.

There were lots of memorable Hotties, some with some obvious themes, and others were purely technical with some beautiful embroidery, knitting or crochet on show.

The TV Hottie (above) was done particularly well and sold quite quickly.

The George Clooney Hottie was lovely and Cathi's hottie (above, left) was so sweet.

I am hoping to get down to take a closer look again at the Hotties and the techniques that people have used. Truely inspiring! I believe that there is a coffee shop a few doors down that has some great cake and coffee.

A big thank-you to Curlypops for organising a group entry and for also featuring my Hottie on her blog the other day. There are more pictures over at the Flickr pool for this exhibition.

Etsy Friday Finds

There are some lovely things out there at the moment ...

Vintage Typewriter Key Pendant by IvieRidge

Art Nouveau Ring by Spoonier

Skull Dangle Earrings by BellaLili

Preserved Spider Web by dollybirddesign

Streampunk Dragon ring by chinookhugs

Hope that you enjoy my selection!

Hottie Challenge Exhibition July 1 - 24 2011

This friday marks the opening of the "Hottie Challenge" exhibition and I am looking forward to getting out of the house and talking about non-baby and kid stuff!

The purpose of the exhibition is to raise money for the Margaret Pratt Foundation ...

The Margaret Pratt Foundation Heart Lung Transplant Trust is a registered charity whose aim is to encourage, develop and maintain Australia’s world class expertise in the field of organ transplantation by supporting research that addresses the problems faced by children and adults after heart and lung transplant.

How can you help? Head along to the exhibition and either ..

a) buy one of the many Hotties for $50 or
b) vote for your favourite Hottie by putting money in the dedicated money box for each Hottie

Open Draw is open:

Monday, Wednesday and Friday 10am – 5.00pm
Thursday 10am – 7pm
Saturday and Sunday 10am – 4pm
Closed Tuesdays

Head on over to the Opendraw web site and forward the pamphlet to all your work collegues and lets see if we can raise lots of money for a worthy cause.