Fudging the numbers

Half full or half empty?

It's been a slow sales month for me at Olive Grove. Some blame the trans-seasonal weather, saying when it's really cold people will come shopping for winter clothes. Others blame GFCII. On my own part, I look to the days I spent working on discounted-price custom orders for a long-term customer when I could have been making full-price stock for the shop. Sometimes it's hard to know if you're better off with the safety of earning less per item on guaranteed sales or gambling on earning more on stuff that's not guaranteed to be purchased any time soon.

I was at Olive Grove on Wednesday and managed to take two full-price custom orders - one cushion for an 80 year old former conductor's birthday and one skirt for someone who didn't fit the ones on the rack. I gave my usual quote of two weeks to get the stuff made. At home I discovered that I had helpfully left one of my last batch of cushions half-finished as a reserve for my next custom order. Score! And I remembered that making one skirt takes no times compared to making six at once. I've managed to finish both orders today and the customers have said they'll pick them up tomorrow. That perks up my sales for the month considerably, and with only days to spare.

On top of that, the second half of my discounted-price custom order is being collected and paid for tonight. I love having all my orders finalised by the end of the month so I can turn the page on the calendar to a fresh new month to do with as I wish.

Of course, rushing to get the sales logged for May simply means I won't be starting June on a high point. I'm robbing myself to pay myself, which is a pretty victimless crime!

House hunting

Yesterday while spending dreary rainy hours on realestate.com.au I found my dream kitchen. And as Curlypops has today featured her dream piece of real estate (perhaps her yesterday was as dull as mine), here's mine:




Yeah, no actual bench space or storage worth mentioning, but it's so cute! Look at that completely stupid oven/hotplate setup! I wonder if the yellow canisters come with the house? And those vinyl chairs.

The only other remarkable thing about this house is this appears to be the master bedroom:


Can you imagine the little old people that lived here? They'd be cross about the valance on the bed nearest the window being scrunched up like that.

Teaparty dress: do you like your tea milky?

And here's the other fabric I chose for my Teaparty dresses.


I think I love this even more than the Cadbury purple version. Isn't it interesting how making exactly the same thing from a different fabric can completely change the feel? The purple is very girly, where this has a definite retro feel. It's a lightweight narrow wale corduroy, perfect for winter layering. The colours make me think of milky tea and those lovely bikkies with jam in the centre.


I was planning to take these over to Olive Grove today, but at the time of writing only the size 10 is finished. You'll be able to find them on the rack Wednesday afternoon when Jack and I are staffing the shop.

Teaparty dress: the pattern I *did* use

When I constructed my first dress of last weekend I realised it just wasn't what I was after. You see, I wanted something I could sew doilies onto and look chic rather than crafty-crazy.

Why did I want to sew doilies onto a dress? Because of this picture:


Of course I wasn't content to refashion an existing garment into doily chic. I wanted something to put on the dress rack at Olive Grove with all the other talented dressmakers I work with. So, I needed to design a dress from scratch. And I may be a patternmaker, I may be a dressmaker, but I rarely claim to be a designer.

So what does a design-challenged gal do when she's got a dress designing urge to fill? Don't know about you, but I head to ModCloth for inspiration. While I would never rip off another designer's work wholesale I do find it a good springboard for inspiring my own design pencil. This is what I found:

What a divine cut! Absolutely the kind of thing I had in mind. But look at that neckline:


How on earth could I draft a bodice with a narrow v-split (if you think that sounds rude wait til you read it a half-dozen more times) but no centre front seam? There's no seam allowance for facings and whatnot. I searched my patternmaking bible (it's 821 pages and costs a bomb, even secondhand) but for once it held no answers. I flipped through my mental index for where to find pattern drafting help. The entry that popped up was the BurdaStyle website. Their ads are always throwing around some term like "open source patterns" so surely their community would have answers to problems like this?

Bingo! Once I got a bit creative with my search terms (and liberal with my browsing) I found a tutorial for slit facings (told you it'd get ruder) for skirts. With a bit of ingenuity I transferred the concept from hemline to neckline, made it a V instead of a straight slit (V-slit V-slit, hahaha), and achieved my heart's desire.

Want to see the end result?




I've named it the Teaparty Dress, because that's what doilies make me think of. Teaparties and nannas, but I don't want to name it the Nanna Dress. Every time I look at that purple I think of a certain chocolate manufacturer. It's a lovely stretch poplin and what's best, I bought several metres of it about three years ago so it didn't even cost me anything (this year)!

Another experiment on these dresses was using bias facings instead of drafting facing pieces, cutting them out, cutting out interfacing, fusing it all together, turn around and touch your toes. I hoped bias facings (basically, sewing bias binding to the raw edges) would save time but the hours I spent steaming it into curves was more that I would have spent doing regular facings. I had my heart set on the neckline and armholes not having any topstitching, like the ModCloth dress I referenced, but bias facing really isn't ideal for a non-topstitched finish. Especially the first time you try it. I will try it again, but only on a fabric I'm happy to topstitch. You can find the technique in your Reader's Digest Complete Book Of Sewing (which you can apparently download FREE using that link if you haven't already picked up a copy from your secondhand bookshop or oppy).

These dresses are now on the rack at Olive Grove and I've already cut out the next lot in a fabric I'm quickly falling in love with. Can't wait to show them to you! In the meantime, here's two of my babies (but not the third one, which I left on the ironing board at home and had to make a second trip for):

And here's the dress on a real human being, hairbrush optional but stripey socks essential:




See what a difference an extra 3cm in the waistline can do? I fit an entire 22 week foetus in there with me!

Pattern Quiz 2 Solution

I've been too busy sewing to show you what that pattern piece was for. Here 'tis!


It was the front bodice piece of this terribly sexy dress.

The reason for the cut-out triangle in the pattern piece was that I started from a fitted block (BurdaStyle calls it a basic bodice block). The front bodice is drafted with a dart from shoulder to bust point, and another from bust point to waist. This offers a lot more options for dart manipulation and creating a closely fitted garment. I used the simplest kind of dart manipulation, cutting up the centre of the waist dart so that I could close the shoulder dart, leaving a very wide dart at the waist. You don't want all the spare fabric from a 6cm dart flapping around so a triangle gets cut out of the piece, leaving a 1.5cm seam allowance for sewing the dart.

That didn't make any sense, did it? I can't be bothered doing it again and photographing the process. If you want to learn more, enrol in a patternmaking course.


After all that you'll be apathetic to hear I decided not even to use this pattern. But pleased to know I added another 3cm to the waist measurement before starting on my next pattern. No-one's actually got a figure like that, do they? Even my mannequin's wearing a padded bra to look this good.

I'll show you the pattern I did use, tomorrow.

Pattern Quiz 2

Thankyou to everyone who played the previous round of Pattern Quiz! It was fun hearing what people thought my pattern piece would turn into, so I'm making another quiz* from a pattern I drafted on Sunday.

Riddle me this:


Again, this is a front bodice piece. What do you think is going on? What's going on with the triangle cut out of the waistline? What will it look like when constructed? Looking forward to your ideas!

* Today the word 'quiz' reminds me of the line from Northanger Abbey: "Where did you get that quiz of a hat? It makes you look like an old witch."

Craft Disaster: the sad demise of a tram cushion

I don't know about you but I looove reading craft disaster stories. Not ones that don't have a funny side, but ones where the disaster survivor is able to shake their head at their own foolishness and use it to give the rest of us a laugh. Even better is when the disaster takes the survivor on a new direction altogether, in the spirit of "what doesn't kill me only makes me stronger." One example I still giggle over is CurlyPops' felted jumper (and the rescue attempt).

This weekend I have had a craft disaster of my own. At Olive Grove Studios one of my W Class Cushions had been leaning against an antique sewing machine for a couple weeks. When I picked it up to move it elsewhere, I found a nasty rust stain front and centre!

Sorry for the fuzzy photo.

I went straight to the internet to find out what to do. A highly recommended technique was to pour lemon juice (fresh or bottled) over the rust stain and then steam it over a kettle. Gingerly I gave it a try, being careful to rinse out all the lemon juice after the steam session, and hey presto! It worked!



But alas, the lemon juice had seeped across the different fabrics before I rinsed it out and had caused the colour to spread.


Alright, maybe it's subtle, but I couldn't put it back on sale knowing it wasn't in top condition. Instead of searching the internet my first thought was Rit's Colour Remover. To quote one website:

To remove stains caused from dyes leaching from one article of clothing to another, you can purchase a product that is designed specifically for this purpose. It is called Rit color remover, and is available everywhere that you can buy fabric dyes. Soak in the color remover, then launder as usual.

I bought it from KMart for $6, read the instructions back to front, and used the method the box recommended: stove top. The box said to immerse the item in a simmering pot of water & colour remover for ten to thirty minutes. To be on the safe side I only immersed the cushion cover up to where the colour had spread, as I didn't expect the Spoonflower-printed destination to stand up to soaking. After eight seconds I yanked it back out because it looked like this:


If you can't see the problem, here's the back:


Oh. My. God. Eight seconds. Did I curse Rit and every product they've ever invented? No. The deserver of the blame is clear. I put a finished saleable craft item in a simmering vat of bleach without testing it on a scrap of fabric first. The only dummy here is my sorry self. I can't believe I did that. The only credit I can give myself is that I didn't turn my back on it for ten (or thirty!) minutes.

So what next? I could replace the back and the green and get it to saleable condition again (apart from the slightly faded yellow bit) - a lot of effort. I could retire it to my own couch but that'd be a constant reminder of what a dummy I am. Or I could try an experiment I've been wanting to... experiment... with for ages. Which is, wrap it around a rusty piece of iron and bury it in the back yard for a month or so* to make it really decrepit. It's called rust dyeing. I've had suggestions of adding a few rusty rivets and I could attack it with sandpaper too. Make an art piece out of it. Yes, I can see the irony. And the pun.

It seems the least sad option following such a disaster! And I promise to blog it if/when it happens.

* On further Googling the burying step doesn't seem entirely necessary. But it does add to the drama.

City Circle and its Stripey Friend

Last week I used up the very last of my Geometric print set making a custom W Class Cushion. While it's sad to see the Geometric go (and I've just realised I don't even have one to call my own), it's also the perfect excuse to put together two new print sets!


The first has been named City Cirle, after the free tourist tram that runs around the CBD.


This one's a lot of fun and I think it could be as popular as the Geometric.

The second doesn't have a name yet.


This cushion is stripey. I've tried to think of a catchy name but all I can come up with are 'Linear', which doesn't work grammatically ("W Class Cushion in Linear") and Northern Line, which is a London reference and not a positive thing to be compared to.

Can you suggest a good name for my new stripey cushion? It's been ages so I'll even make it a giveaway. If someone can help me pick a winning name I'll send them a little thankyou package!

A Very Modern Sampler

Do you read Mr X Stitch? I started following a couple months ago and it's one of the best things in my Google Reader.

I'm enjoying Penny Nickels' Needle Exchange feature in particular, examining the history of needlework in a social context. Last week Penny looked at the traditional samplers which were considered an integral part of a girl's education. This week features some more modern samplers, and this one made me grin:

The QWERTY alphabet cracks me up.

Stitches & Craft (& Mothers Day) Loot

So how did I spend my S&C dollars?

Firstly I bought a piece of Two Cheese Please's display, which Holly wouldn't let me take home with me. Boo. I'll get it one day!

More loot for me:
Little Boy and Little Girl panels by Ric Rac. I don't know what little girls talk about, but one of my boys will be shouting 'Poopoo!'
A piece of Ink & Spindle's Blue Wrens to call my own.
A Two Cheese Please fortune cookie kit (to replace the one I bought and lost in March). I'm going to use it to make namebadges.
A card from one of the Mini-Me Handmade stallholders, made of vintage book pages and a holiday photo collaged onto a card.

For Mrs Beckinsale the business entity:
Heather Bailey fabric from Kelani Fabric Obsession, the first piece of a new W Class Cushion print set. I was hoping to put together two whole sets at the Show but there wasn't as much fabric as I had anticipated.
Heavy quilting pins from Victoria Sewing Supply. I've recently found one excellent pin in my pin tray, longer and stronger than the rest, and I suspect it's a quilting pin unintentionally lifted from Mum's sewing room.
Clover white marking pen from Nicole Mallalieu Design. It says it fades when ironed, as opposed the the one I've been using which needs to be completely erased before an iron goes anywhere near it. This may revolutionise my life.

For the kids:
Taggie blanket from Oz Handmade maker Baby Laila. Yes, it's a bit pink.
Disco Bot pattern and fabric from Ric Rac. Jack's robot needs a younger sibling. In pink.
Button bear from another Mini-Me Handmade stallholder. It was the last thing on her table and she desperately wanted to sell out before their market space closed in three minutes. Glad to oblige!
I also bought an elasticised bracelet from another Mini-Me Handmade girl, but Jack loved it a bit too much and it needs to be restrung.

One last thing for me. This week at occasional care, where Jack spends Thursday and Friday mornings, the kids were making Mothers Day cards. I collected him on Thursday and asked excitedly if he'd made a card. His carer said no, he really didn't seem into sitting down and painting. Before I put Jack to bed Thursday night I told him all he needed to do was hold a paintbrush and put one splat on a piece of paper. When I collected him Friday his carer handed me this card, Jack's first artwork. I don't know what she had to do to make him participate (and don't care how tough it was!). Jack gave me exactly what I'd been hoping for and it made me so very happy. T says it's a painting of my cactus. I love it.

Stitches & Craft - Worst Photos Ever!

I took the little camera to Stitches & Craft today and it must be on low-res not-suitable-indoors setting. Whoops!


Sandra Pepperberry's magnificent stall


Jodie Ric Rac switched to Nice Face while I was still doing Skinny Face


Incubator section - I want to live here


Incubator section again


Naughty Librarian fun at the Craft Bar

Coming up - my purchases!

Designer Spotlight

This fortnight Australia's online handmade emporium Made It has chosen Mrs Beckinsale for their Designer Spotlight!


The interview's a bit long, but if you're a Project Runway fan I hope to entice you to read the second-last Q&A - I sure had fun with that one!

P.S. In the photo of me I'm wearing an orange wristband. I'd just been into the Doctor Who exhibition in Cardiff.

Full Incubator list for pre-Show browsing!

I was having an internal moan about wishing I knew who and what would be on display at Stitches & Craft. I clicked on their website and Lo, they have added a retailer list! Visit and download for yourself. I'm feeling friendly so here's a list of Incubator stallholders, as far as I can read it:

Blue Ginger Designs
Craft Schmaft
Edwina Bolger
Funky Friends Factory
Hawthorne Cottage
Heartfelt Australia
IMOK
Ink & Spindle
Itchy Bird
Juicy Roo Designs
Kids With Crayons
Kristen Doran Design
Little Eve
Nicole Mallalieu Design
Oz Handmade
Pepperberry & Co
Pippijoe
Red Parka Designs
Ric Rac
Ruby Rose Designs
The Red Thread
TrishAlan Designs
Two Cheese Please
Two Little Banshees
Winterwood
Wren's Nest Studio
Yardage Designs

Wow, huge! Hope I got all the names right (tell me if I didn't). It's easy to get mixed up when typing Studio/s and Design/s so many times. And congrats to all (well, except one) of these businesses for being the very first Google result when I searched for them.

My ideal Saturday at Stitches & Craft, if I had Hermoine Granger's magical time repeating gizmo and Harry Potter's bank account:

10:30 The September Issue movie (90 mins)
11:30 Easy Hand Dyeing craft lab (120 mins)
12:30 A Thing Of Beauty Is A Joy Forever studio (60 mins)
1pm Interfacing Fashion presentation (40 mins)
2:30 iSpy Style Craft & Business Workshop (60 mins)

Plus hanging out at the Incubator, Stitch Bar, Make Do + Mend and getting my shopping in... I wish I could go two days (and have a bottomless wallet).

Image from The Red Thread