Day 13:: Frocktober - Vintage Is Calling Me

The sun was shining. The birds were singing. This morning I rose early to go meet my sister and check out the markets together before she started work. 

Plus I went to look at the new range of Liberty Art Fabrics that have just landed in store at Calico + Ivy. Holy toledo - they are beautiful. Of course they are. They're Liberty. But the heavier weight means there's a whole new world opened up in crafty projects. (See my snap below of Kate's installation.) Ahoy!

Another day, another dress, hey?

Today's outfit:
- Country Road cardigan
- vintage dress that I've only ever managed to wear twice since owning it for about eight years (big fail on my part)
- belt, Mum's
- necklace - Alexandra Blak
- Donna Sgro tights
- Country Road flats (because CR are the only company that make shoes big enough for me - sad story)

If you're mighty interested in sponsoring me, I'd be mighty interested in having you as a sponsor. All money goes towards research for ovarian cancer screening. Currently there is none.

(Photo taken by my sister at Calico + Ivy, Balmain. If you've not been before (to Balmain or Perth), whether you're crafty or not, you should take a look, it's an enchanting store full of fabrics, yarns, giftware, amazing books and incredible hand made jewellery). 

Send Teegs To Mexico

Being part of the blogging community, you get to know really awesome people. Like you. And you. And you dear reader.


AND like Tegan. I 'met' Tegan of Ink & Spindle fame - gosh, must be at least four years ago. She is vivacious, tenacious, enthuasiastic, uber talented, intelligent and beautiful to boot. And she's funny.

Teegs has the opportunity to travel to Mexico for a traditional Mexican textile artist residency. If you can help fund her trip that would be so super ace. You can pledge as little as $1 to help her on her way.

I will let her video do the talking, because she is good at that too. Very eloquent. WOOT!

Click here to help send Teegs abroad and continue her learning and her art-making.

Scrap Dancing

While I've been telling you I haven't found any discarded goodness recently, I've realised I have unwittingly lied. I have found discarded goodness of another kind.

Recently, while visiting a fabric shop, I discovered a garbage bin full of scrap fabric. Just strips. Tossed away without a second thought.

By now you should absolutely know that I know no shame. Waste not want not, right?! So I dutifully retrieved all the decent sized strips and even some smaller ones. And I've been adding them to the Doctor's cushion which is slowly, slowly, ever so slowly coming together. See here?

The smaller scraps are for the Doctor's crafting. To stick on cards. Or wherever he wants.

Now I can stop whining about not finding any garbage. Here ends my blog for today.

PottyMouthMama of The Symmetrical Sewing

I had grand plans for sewing class last night. Grand plans. I thought I'd be coming back here today and showing you at least the front of my cushion for the Doctor.

Instead I came home early and ate cake.

It all started when I turned up with my fabric, and my idea in my head. It's a no-brainer for me. I have the idea, I just don't have the expertise to execute it. But given my sewing teacher's wealth of knowledge, I thought we'd whizz up the cush in under no time.

She pulled out her special folder of pattern ideas. Here's where I should have seen trouble. Trouble with a capital T. Maybe even underlined. There was nothing in this folder that replicated even closely what I had in my head.

I got a piece of paper, drew what she was proposing and realised it definitely wasn't compatible with what I wanted. So when she went away, I started cutting, and as I cut I fiddled around with the layout. I spent quite a hefty amount of time moving things around. Everyone else was a little concerned that I hadn't done anything except move fabric around - but you know peeps, it ain't a competition, and I'm just here to do my own thing.

So I finally got to a layout I started to like. My sewing teacher was on the approach. Her deft hands swiftly rearranged the entire layout, while telling me that "unless it was symmetrical it wasn't going to work". Dots in the corners. Animal prints in the middle. Block colours to break it up. Here's me having a nervous breakdown of sorts.

I'm not assertive. Gosh, I know I need to learn to be, but sometimes I don't want to offend. So in my gentle way, I tried to back out from this arrangement with an - 'I've left some of my fabrics at home so maybe I'll just wait 'til next week to go further'.

Would she have a bar of it? Uh uh.

She started pulling fabrics out of her stash to go with mine. These included a hideous egg yolk yellow that made my head hurt. Some other random bits. And a block of Percy the engine.

I knew someone small (ie the Doctor) would LOVE that block. But really, it wasn't working with the aesthetic I had in mind. I have saved all my bits of fabric. My Japanese buys. My naughty little purchases. I've saved them for something special. Percy - sorry - but it wasn't working. My sewing teacher was shocked.

It was at this point I realised what I needed.

Cake. (And more to the point Stephanie Alexander's Orange cake. Who knew 250g of butter and 1.5 cups of caster sugar could taste so darn good? Ok I did.)

I packed up, feigned tiredness and left. In a jiffy. Before any more of my fabrics could be tainted with Percy-ness. So this is what I have done. Or rather, haven't done. Cut up some fabric. Ta-dah!

Just like Cinderella, I wish a Fairy Godmother would come and tap her magic wand over my head and make me a stellar seamstress. A supreme stitcher. Or maybe I could just dive in and remember, it's just fabric, innit?

Favourite Fabrics: Day Three - There's No Slowing Me

a nice piece of Japanese fabric - bold, bright, what's not to love?
birdseed. super cute.

from l to r: some dots i love, Japanese eiffel towers in the palest pink; a graphic print i coveted for ages from afar; ladybirds and dots. love. love. oh sweet love.

Today it's expected to be 33 degrees. While I thought we were in the gentle lulls of Spring, frolicking through the garden, picking flowers, smelling the wisteria, and crafting with the feel of grass underfoot, I've since learnt, today it's not to be. I'm battoning down the hatches. It's a stinker already and it's not even 10am. I've got the washing on the line, the ducks are watered, I've done my outdoor jobs for the day and I'm indoors until the evening. Except for a mad dash to check whether the postman has been.

So here's day three of sharing my favourites from my fabric stash (which is being posted by Mikes). For the past two days I've been going into some kind of pinkie paradiso, but today, you get a reprieve. I've tried to avoid pink altogether (though it's not possible, is it?).

Favourite Fabrics

I'm playing along with Mikes and sharing my favourite fabrics out of my stash.

Here are two pink favourites that I love to love.

The one on the left is a Japanese fabric. It's not the usual thing I go for, but there's something appealing to me about it. I know the colour scheme could remind you of a galah, but I find it strangely attracts me. Plus, I think it also reminds me of my grandmother for some reason..

And the other is from the local fabric store (the same one that tried to tell me I could use baking paper instead of freezer paper for stencilling). Thankfully, when I was served it was an older woman who had a wealth of knowledge about fabrics. Where I thought this one was a seersucker, she told me it was actually called 'everglaze'. Then I said 'hmm, everglade' wondering why would it ever be called that, and she gently corrected me and told me that it was called 'everglaze' because it has a soft sheen to it. I love when people share their knowledge without being patronising parrakeets.

I like this one because it has that old-world charm. And it was dirt cheap.

Who doesn't love cute fabric when it's dirt cheap? I dare you to raise your hand.

Stuff and Things

Today I am kicking goals like there's no tomorrow. The house is undergoing a masterful makeover, and now you can almost see the floor. In places.

I have to make a confession. Pip, if you're reading this, I have been a bad, bad little walker. I missed yesterday. I could blame my friend, because it was due to meeting up with her that I arrived home late and had to dive straight into the dinnertime boogaloo, but really, it was poor planning on my part. Have I fallen off my 21 day road to a habit? No. No siree. I've planned my walk for today with my little family. At 3pm today, I'll be walking. Think of me, left-right, left-right. I'm going double time.

Anyway, confessions aside, my little dude and I have constructed a road from framer's tape on the road. That blinging doily that we used last week for lacework is now a pond - the white styrofoam things are ducks, swimming with the whale (I see that all the time at the park, don't you??). Over the road is the farm - blue bubble wrap masquerades as a river, some green fabric is the grass for the cow and the sheep. It's roadworks ahoy here at Chez PottyMouth.

I'm also set for a date with our kitchen, to whip up some more culinary delights for my wee babe from this book. It's got so many great recipes, and I'm even tempted to eat some of them (actually all of them). Last week one of the recipes I made was apricot, apple, pear and vanilla bean puree. Man it was good.

And my fabric from here arrived from here, so I'm fantasising about the day I amazingly just wake up and can sew (you might arrive at PottyMouthMama and think you're in the wrong place!). Today I'm auditioning fabrics from my stash for a little quilt I plan to make for my babe when she's bigger. Mmm. So candy it's almost giving me a toothache.

Hoppo Bumpo kindly pointed out the Deluxe Albert Einstein - and I have to say - sorry I forgot to mention that pearler. I also see the President Bush looks very similar to a cowpat... No?