A little bit of Kaos: July 2011

Sunday, 31 July 2011

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?

Thursday, 21 July 2011

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.

Wednesday, 20 July 2011

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.

Friday, 15 July 2011

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.

Friday, 8 July 2011

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?

Monday, 4 July 2011

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.