Big big order!

Well, I just posted off my biggest order to date, to the very lovely Carmen in California - and I'm so pooped!  I've been sewing almost non-stop in every spare minute, I even had to give up domestic chores in order to sew, and that is just so sad :-)...


Anyway, I'm really pleased with how it all came out, but sometimes I get a bit frustrated by the tyranny of distance we suffer from down here - it's really slow (10 days-2 weeks) to get supplies from the States, and I can't get some of that stuff here, so I'm at the mercy of the postal services - and it impacts on the service I can provide my customers... 
but they've gone, and I really hope she likes them!

I also made one of these tonight - it's a pyramid pouch, lined - very cute & easy to make - I'm going to post a blog entry on how to do it on the weekend & I'm going to make some for sale here ...

This is a really terrible photo - I'll post a better one after I've made a couple more.  Cute, huh?

And also...

Not forgetting Hogan, who got a First on his Jazz & Pop exam.  Whoda thunk my friend Deb would have such talented children?  Why, me, of course!  Anyway, to help Mr Hogan celebrate, I made him this, but I'm so cross with myself I could just spit - I wanted to make him a pencil case, so I cut 10" X 5", thinking the average pencil is only 6" or 7", then I made 3/4" cut-outs for the boxing, and bam!  The pencil case is too short.  Damn, damn, damn.  And of course I painstakingly hand-appliqued his initials onto the damn thing as well, and of course I did fancy stitching on the bottom, and of course it's turned out perfect.  It's just too short for pencils.  Maybe he could put something else in it?


Anyway, here 'tis.

  

"A" is for Aster

which means, in case you didn't know, Star.  This is for Miss Nellie, who just got an "A" on her flute exam, which impresses the bewhoosis of out me - so I made her a little someone (yes, you read it right) to say "Well Done".  And here she is:

Note she has a "A" instead of a heart.  I kind of made up patchwork, I had a bunch of 5" squares from the beautiful "Butterfly fling" collection from MoMo & just stitched them together, then cut out the frog at an angle to get the best of several colours.  Oh, you want to see the whole thing?  Okay:

I'm pretty sure I broke a significant number of quilting rules to do this, but hey, I'm sure nobody's going to come after me.  Yet.  

Enjoy, Nellie. 

And here it is...

Amazingly not that much later, a finished phone case, as a gift for Dot:


Thanks to Michelle at Keykalou.etsy.com for the pattern (I adapted this one to make the glasses case, too!).

And the glasses case for my lovely M-I-L, to keep on the outside of her handbag.  Apparently she gets sick of rummaging round in her bag for the existing one, so I invented this - it's just a variation on an old idea, but she can hook it onto her handbag strap & it won't be going anywhere!  I also padded it with some quilt batting, and  next time I'll know to cut that a bit smaller.  Quite a bit of work with the stuffing tools was required to get it all inside itself at the end!


The glasses case was just 2 pieces of focus & lining fabric, 4" X 7.5", or 10cm X 19cm  & two pieces of batting a bit smaller, stitched into the lining, to make it good for glasses.  I also interfaced both focus & lining, which I probably wouldn't do next time I make one of these, because the friction between the interfacing & the batting makes it hard to get the stuffing to sit still.  If I could find a supplier of fusible batting, I'd get some of that!

Hope she likes it!

Good news for me, not so good...

for my loyal Etsy-based fabric suppliers!  I have found the perfect fabric store, just 8 minutes from home.  Amazing.  The Cottage Quiltworks, at Bilgola Plateau, is exactly what you could hope for in a fabric store - local, chock full of fabric delights only glimpsed tantalisingly on the internet, staffed by real, friendly people, and open on a Saturday morning!  I was so mesmerised I spent $200 in there in one go (it wasn't hard, because I did buy two books at the same time as the odd scrap of fabric) - they have everything, from those fantastic Japanese linens I bought earlier this year, or last year, right through to ikat-style, japanese-type prints & of course the lovely amy, tanya, anna-maria, erin & jay.  I feel like Christmas has come very early, except that I'll be spending a lot more money, because of the huge savings I'll be making on postage.  That's my excuse, anyway!


On an interesting note, I bought this pattern & I'm going to attempt to make one of these for one of my colleagues, who has two phones with her at all times, one for the ex & one for her daughter.  I think they should invent a multi-SIM phone, myself.  That could solve a bunch of difficulties!


And these also arrived, which is very exciting, and I'm off now to make something lovely to put in the shop. 

Ciao!

I see red

First, the road rage incident; for those of you not lucky enough to live in sunny Sydney, you may not be aware of the joys we experience during the morning peak hour.  All I'm going to say is to the crazy woman who screamed at me for having the temerity to honk at her, "you are very selfish".

The traffic was moving  smoothly, all three lanes of it.  And Bam!  There's the brain fart.  I'm going to pull up at a bus stop.  I'm not even going to drive on 10 metres and go round the corner so I don't impede anybody else.  I'm going to pull up at the bus stop, and everybody behind me, including the bus waiting to use the bus stop, and all those other people doing what they're supposed to, which is, obeying the road rules, can get nicked.

And then, gentle reader, she pulls up next to me, winds down her window & starts screaming at me.  I think the vein throbbing in her forehead kind of gave me the clue that maybe she wasn't quite sane.  Lucky for me the lights changed & I drove off in the opposite direction.  You can rest assured that on Monday I'll be very carefully avoiding looking for her!

And now, normal transmission resumes.

These have arrived: 

I'm very excited to have these in the house, because some of you may already know I love red, and now the big question is, what shall they be???

I sat in the small but perfectly formed room last night & tossed a few ideas around, and then went & watched an episode of Torchwood instead.  It's hard to be creative when you're tired, so I didn't even try.  I went to bed at 9.00pm, but now I'm thinking, cosmetic bag, froggie, pyramids, bunting - oh, yeah!

I made these for tomorrow - the photos are a bit crap, sorry about that, but you can see how nicely they came out:

I got the pattern from here and I think I'm going to turn it into a new family tradition!  Personalised Banners, pick your own occasion!

Have a lovely Mother's Day, all you lovely Mothers!

Must Have Cardigan

Must Have Cardigan
Originally uploaded by woolamina

Wow! I was just browsing through some yarn sellers on Etsy & came across this lovely shop (www.woolamina.etsy.com). I love the colour of this, the evenness of her stitches and the skill involved! Beautiful.