Happy New Financial Year!

To all my business-crafting sisters, may you find your receipts where you thought you left them and your income exceed your outgoings by at least $5.

I took more gorgeous, fabulous skirts into the shop today. I recharged my camera battery and then left it at home. I would say I hope they're all still there by the time I get back to take photos, but it'd be a great start to my year if they sold! Let's hope the size 10s stay on the rack until the weekend so I can pop them on a mannequin and have a photo shoot.

I also made some - gasp - jewellery. I'm looking forward to finding some more jewellery materials at Mill Markets in Daylesford this Saturday! I don't have any money to spend on myself, but my business can always be relied on to cough up a few bob for 'supplies'. Come with me if you're free.

I was going to write about a heavier topic tonight but I think I'll put it in a separate post. I feel you shiver with antici---pation!

Progress without photographic evidence

I took some amazing new skirts into Olive Grove this morning, but when I went to take photos of them my camera battery was dead. So you'll just have to each individually imagine what they looked like and in a few days we'll see who was right.

By the way, the Olive Grove blog is slowly starting to collect posts but you'll potentially see more of the shop's range on our Facebook page. If you follow or like or whatever the terminology is this week you'll get lovely photos of new stock popping up in your Facebook feed as it's put in the shop. As long as people's camera batteries are charged.

In other news, I'm still a tired and cranky pregnant woman. Watch out, I snap.

If you haven't reserved a seat for the Northside Makers roadtrip to Daylesford next Saturday get on it! The Daylesford Makers Market blog lists all the fantastic crafty things going on in town that weekend.

Photo from CupCate

Lovely Things to Make for Girls of Slender Means

My bestest friend gave* me a wonderful book as a belated birthday present: Lovely Things to Make for Girls of Slender Means. Eithne Farry hails from Ireland, is the former literary editor of Elle magazine and was also a backing singer and tambourinist in the 80s with a band named Talulah Gosh. Look, she's written about the craft movement for The Guardian. With those credentials one can trust her craft book is full of genuinely hip suggestions and a tongue-in-cheek romanticism.


This isn't poser-twee sugar-sweet immaculately-styled lifestyle craft filled with gorgeous lithe models. For a start, Eithne models all her projects herself. What's the point in writing about one's own personal style if every photo features a different model? The book has a handmade, borderline-hipsterish aesthetic which is tempered by Eithne's fantasies of running away to sea and wearing a dress made from living sweet peas.


I am going to get very snobby here for a paragraph and I dearly hope I don't offend you. This is merely a reflection on my own experience with the contemporary fad for craft publishing. Many sewing books piss me off by catering only to people with no sewing experience, teaching 'skills' like hemming serviettes and sewing a ribbon onto a teeshirt. When a writer exclusively offers projects that only require the most rudimentary grasp of a needle they don't push beginners to learn real skills, and offer absolutely nothing to the experienced sewer**. Happily, Eithne's book avoids this pitfall by miles.

Yes, many of the projects are simple and the pattern drafting techniques are the kind of thing I was doing as a teenager. But the resulting projects are something that a crafter of any skill level can aspire to. Embroidered dresses, clothing embellishments that can be undertaken with either a wonky handstitch or a high-precision sewing machine, and the cutest seasonal accessories which can be reinterpreted any way you can imagine. Very inspiring!

The one weakness of this book is the lack of diagrams to accompany the instructions. However it is in keeping with the DIY nature of the book to let readers figure things out for themselves, perhaps do things in unplanned ways and develop their own techniques to achieve their desired result.

I give this book a hearty needles-up, rate it four bobbins and look forward to using it as inspiration for many years to come.

Speaking of craft books - the Green Renters blog has a copy of The Big Book of Recycled Crafts to give away! Head over to the blog to find out more.

* The word is 'gave', not 'gifted'. I do my best to hold back when people use the word 'gift' as a verb but my own blog is a zero-tolerance 'gifted' zone. And yet I will use the word 'bestest'.

** Incidentally, I am so looking forward to a particular sewing book which expects experience in its readers and has the highest-quality instructions one could wish for.

Designing a 50s Kitchen

Our family is hoping to buy a house in about a year's time, so naturally I spend hours each week on realestate.com.au. I used to love domain.com.au until I realised a lot of "affordable"* properties don't get listed there! So I've had to betray the Fairfax empire on this one and go with a Murdoch product.

In our price bracket we'll be tossing up between paying a bit more for a house that's 'done' or getting a cheaper fixer-upper. One of my major priorities is having a non-ugly kitchen. I'm currently living with peeling brown wood veneer, chipboard shelves covered with Contact, damaged orange counter tops and three different types of orange and brown tiles. Plus fake brick wallpaper on a decorative archway. When I own a house, I will not tolerate these things. I'll be satisfied with a clean and functional basic cream kitchen (as long as the oven works - did I mention our oven only does 150º or 220º? No baking going on over here) but if we were to replace a crappy old kitchen I'd be hankering for a bit of 50s style.

I linked to this cute kitchen a couple weeks ago - here's some more inspiration (click images for original sources).


The original thing! Those decorative ends are the living end.
(I've only just noticed the ad says "A housewife cannot but be gay". I believe in the 50s your options were that or Prozac.)




This one's a bit too girly-shabby-chic for me, but the turquoise is nice. I've got the right kind of table but still need matching chairs.


This kitchen reno comes with full DIY instructions. I think a lot could be accomplished just by having the right kind of cabinets to start with- doors smaller than cabinet fronts so the frames and doors can be painted separately. Although getting the right counter top would make a world of difference...




Speaking of counter tops: In 2007 Formica reissued a number of retro laminates for kittens like you and me. See the full range here. No idea if they're available in Australia. Mine's the Aqua Boomerang.


Ooh, and maybe some Quilted Aluminium!

More 50s kitchen inspiration can be found on Elle Decor, No Pattern Required and the Ikea Fans forum. If one thing's for certain, any budget reno I do is going to involve some Ikea.

* Affordable? The international standard is that a property is affordable when it costs around three times the household's annual income. Melbourne is currently six or seven times annual income.

A sister to the Teaparty frocks

As much as I love my retro printed corduroy, I have to admit many women prefer a bit of classic black and white.


Ouch, must give those darts another press.

Once again I was confronted by the need to topstitch the neckline and armholes. I remembered my patternmaking teacher's mantra when having to take care of a problem: make a feature of it.


The contrast topstitching helps the white zips blend in a bit better! Why can long black invisible zips not be found for love nor money?


The fabric is a luxuriously heavy sateen cotton, but with the sheen side on the reverse and the plainer side used to make it look a little less fancy, a little more organic.

As always you can find these dresses at Olive Grove Studios, along with these cute tote bags - a joint project between me and my mum.


Give my trams a wave while you're there!


And maybe swat that disembodied arm away from Finki's stuff.

R&R

One way to deal with the exhaustion and tension caused by pregnancy and a bouncy toddler is to run away. With the pregnancy and bouncy toddler, of course. After Saturday's Craft Hatch market Jack and I hitched a ride to the country and have been staying with my parents for a few days. When Jack wakes in the morning I pitch him into the loungeroom to bother his grandparents and I retreat to bed - bliss!

Last night Mum and I undertook one of the loveliest tasks there is - the planning of a new baby quilt. We flicked through her library of Australian Patchwork & Quilting, Australian Country Craft, Down Under Quilts and Magic Patch. I finally found a design that was suitable for a baby and able to be translated into a cot-sized quilt. It was a quilt featured in a Sydney quilt shop's ad rather than a tutorial feature, but Mum quickly recreated it using her Electric Quilt 5 software.



'Orange Peel' block
EQ5 has every quilting block known to woman stored in its database. After choosing the right block and sizing it, the software generates templates in the right size to print out and use. Newer versions of EQ also allow you to download digital swatches of current craft fabric ranges so that you can design your quilt on screen before you even hit the fabric shops. We skipped that bit and visited eQuilter.com for some virtual shopping.



eQuilter.com swatches
And would you know it, the first fabric swatch I clicked on happened to share the name we've picked out for the baby. Kismet!

After browsing the leaves and birds categories we used a new feature on eQuilter where you can click on one colour of a print and then search for all fabrics featuring that colour. That's how we found the pink leaves in the corner, as well as tonnes of spots and swirls.

I'm also going to check out Konstant Kaos' list of Australian fabric designers to see if I can pick up a bit of local content that fits our leaves and birds scheme. And there's always the Two Bits Patches online fabric shop to fall back on, seeing as it's based in Mum's sewing room.

Can't wait to see the finished quilt in a few months time! Thanks Mum/Grandma!

Crafty garage sale

I'm not attempting to communicate, this is just a repost from Finki:

Well........Here's one crafty sale you can't afford to miss.

A while back I directed you to a blog whereby the crafter in mention was going to craft her heart out for a year, then have the hugest crafty garage sale to SELL EVERY CRAFTY THING SHE OWNED.

Who could do that!

Definitely not me.
Alas.................Manda over at create every day till its gone away has cut her year long crafty journey short and is having the SALE this Friday.

Why oh why......one might ask?

Who could do that......
What! No cotton in the house, no machines, bias, fabric, vintage stash. Nothing!

The reason Why, So she can move on and start her new journey in the world of fitness and personal training. To remove all distractions and have ultimate focus on her new path.

All the more for us I say.

So I implore you, do not miss out on stocking up the crafty cupboards with all the fabulousness on offer this Friday.

Some of the goodies up for grabs.

Details:

When: Friday 11th June

Time: 6:00pm-8:30pm

Address: Reservoir, Vic

Just drop me a line at finki [at] dodo.com.au for the exact address.

If you can't make it Friday, the garage sale will be held on Saturday too................
For the left overs!

Still kicking

Not posting because I'm in the grip of pregnancy hormones and the only thing I can communicate is GRRRRRRRAU
WGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!