my creative space

My creative space this week is all about trying not to over-extend myself.



After the elation that came from finally completing a skirt that fits me, all I want to do is make another skirt.  Or shirt.  Or dress.  Or pants.  But...I am still plodding along with the Christmas presents and I MUST finish them first.  Right?  Right?!

Yes I must.  I will be sensible and not start anything new until they are done.  Or almost done at the very least.  Now I just need to try and stay away from Spotlight!

Check out some cool creative spaces here

i can make stuff!

Check it out!  It's my completely completed skirt that almost didn't make it (Butterick B5285).  Hooray!  I am beyond excited!

You can't tell in these pictures but it has a zip and everything.  It is most certainly a personal sewing triumph.  My very first completed skirt.  Finally!

I would, however, like to complain about the sizing chart on this pattern.  I made the size it suggested based on my measurements and it was way too big!  Not just a little bit big, but frickin' huge!  I should've made at least 2 sizes smaller.  So what's with that?  Who makes these sizing charts anyway?!

P.S  My skirt, whilst fantastic, is not really appropriate for wearing on windy Melbourne days.  Apologies to anyone driving on Ferrars St today who caught a nice flash of my undies.  Oops!

my creative space

image

I attempted making a skirt this week but it is not yet finished.  Mainly due to the fact that it is too big even though I made the appropriate size for my measurements AND was extra extra careful with seam allowances and the beautifully accurate pleats.  Grrr!

Still going on the quilt and the cross-stitch.  Should both be finished well before Christmas - fingers crossed!

Check out some more creative spaces here

2 days is hardly enough

I can't believe that the weekend is over already!  How fast those 2 glorious days go by!

This weekend I did a some Christmas shopping and am very happy to say (and gloat, if I may) that I have pretty much finished it all.  How fantastic is that?  Now I can happily avoid all shopping facilities until the post-Christmas sales.

I also did a bunch of sewing, but am still a fair way off finishing my Christmas presents.  I started sewing  attempting to sew a skirt for myself too.  I had a massive sewing FAIL (too embarrassing to share here) so wasted a couple of valuable sewing hours correcting that (i.e. starting again).  I'm really happy with how it is turning out now - pleats and all.  Fingers crossed it keeps going that way!

Jasper decided to 'help me' cut out my fabric of course.  If he wasn't so darn cute he would be annoying!



Happy Monday folks.  Or happy thoughts at least!

a little bit of tuscany

Seeing as it is Friday and all I can think about at the moment is not being at work, I thought I might share a bit about my recent trip to Italy.  It's nice to think about being somewhere beautiful and relaxing on a Friday afternoon, I think.

So Tuscany is amazing.  A-MA-ZING!  We spent 6 days in Radda in Chianti and totally fell in love with the place.  How could you not though?  Everywhere we turned was stunning view after stunning view.  It's such a cute little place with a small group of shops and a few lovely restaurants and eateries too.

And then there's the Chianti!  I'm telling you now that if you have had Chianti before and thought, "hmmm, that's a bit ordinary" it is because you are drinking cheap Chianti made only to import to us daft foreigners that don't know any better.  I was one of those people too!  Keep your eye out for Chianti Classico because we can get it here in Australia (and I'm presuming in other countries too - it will have a small sticker with a black rooster on it) and it is delicious.  We spent one day driving around to different places and tasting wine - mostly Chianti Classico and Chianti Classio Riserva given the region.  It was fantastic! One thing we had learnt pretty early on about Italy is that they don't particularly like signage.  Including road signs, signs to direct you to the toilets, or signs to let you know that an establishment is in fact a winery and does welcome people in for wine tasting.  If not for the help of some very lovely locals we would never have found any of the wineries that offered tastings.  Lucky for us we did because it was such a memorable experience.

I could talk about Tuscany forever but I won't.  Except I have to tell you that Tuscany was also the place that I had the best pasta dish of my life - spinach ravioli with a white truffle sauce.  It was so so so good!  Washed down with a bottle of Chianti Classico, of course!

Now I would like to buy a farmhouse in Radda in Chianti, set up my sewing machine near a giant window and do nothing but sew, listen to music, and look out at the magnificant views forever.  Oh, and maybe eat some pasta and drink some wine too.  You're all welcome to come and visit of course!

Enjoy your weekend!

my creative space

Image via The Purl Bee

This week I have been playing crafting catch-up.  

I am currently (and will be for some time) finishing the binding on my quilt.

I am (still) finishing off that cross-stitch.

I am getting some fabric ready to make the table runner and matching napkins in the picture above.  I'm really hoping that mine look just as lovely as the ones in the picture.

I'm hoping to have another attempt at making a skirt on the weekend.  I have some pretty (and cheap) fabric and an "easy" pattern.  Fingers crossed.

Check out what everyone else is up to over at kootoyoo  

christmas wishlist

Picture by rkeohane


I've got so many things going on at the moment that I feel a bit like a scatterbrain.  Do you know the feeling?  I have committed myself to sewing quite a few Christmas presents, plus I really want to attempt to make myself a skirt...and that's just the crafty stuff!

Did you know that there's only just over 6 weeks until Christmas (and, more importantly, my birthday!)?  And did you know that this year my present wishlist is actually a list?  Normally I'm saying, "I don't need anything" and "there's nothing in particular that I want" but this year my wishlist is CRAZY long.  I'm not sure why.  Perhaps I am reverting to childhood.  Perhaps I am just greedy.  I'm considering actually writing a list and giving it to my husband for discreet passing on.  Is that wrong?  Will that make me look totally greedy and controlling?  It's just that I don't want things that I don't need, you know?  I don't need more Myer vouchers or random books to fill my already full house.

I wish I was a kid again so I could spend days putting together a lovely visual Christmas wish list (with the aid of advertising material from toy shops and glitter glue, of course).  Then I could stick in right in the middle of the fridge so that Santa could find it.  He never seemed to mind.  He used to find that list mighty helpful!

So, what's on your Christmas wishlist?


P.S  The Christmas wishlist above is not actually mine.  Just a cute one I found on flickr

wonderful things

By simonhn

The Hepburn Bathhouse is wonderful.  Especially when you spend hours there bathing and getting massaged and talking with a very good friend whom you haven't seen in a while.

The whole area of Daylesford is wonderful.  Especially when you go there with your very good friends from Brisbane who you don't get to see very often and miss alot.  It was only the 2nd time we had visited Daylesford but I just love it.  It has lots of wonderful things and shops like Lark.  The food is pretty good too (except for the maggot-infested ham I was served at a very well-known local eatery that I won't name).

Speaking of food...Mamasita (which is not in Daylesford but in Melbourne) is also wonderful.  You should definitely go there if you like Mexican-y goodness like this:



Now that the fun of having visitors is over, the countdown to Christmas is well and truly on.

I have so much sewing to do!

my creative space

By oversewn


I am finally up to the binding stage on my quilt - hooray!  Let the hand-stitching begin!

Once the quilting was done I noticed how incredibly unstraight some of my lines are.  I was tempted to unpick it and redo it but then realised that the lines are actually quite straight - it's the squares on the quilt-top that are not straight.  I used them as my guide and thus ended up with some wonky looking quilting.  I have decided to leave it be instead of ripping up ALL of the quilting lines and starting again.  It is handmade so surely they've gotta be some little idiosyncrices?  Or am I am being totally lazy?  I'm not sure.  When I handover the quilt I will say that it is handmade and I am still learning and it still serves it's purpose even though it is far from being totally perfect and just don't look at it too closely.

Check out some more professional creative spaces over here

not quite Venice

How was your weekend?  What did you get up to?  Did you enjoy a gondola ride through the canals of Venice?  No, I didn't either.  I did have the pleasure of doing so just a couple of weeks ago though and it was totally amazing.  I know that the cheese-factor is incredibly high on this but I can't even describe to you how wonderful it was.  It was peaceful and relaxing and the most amazing way to see one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  I highly recommend it!

Oh, and at night the gondola men even serenade their lucky guests.  We could hear their amazing voices (and guitar and accordion) from our hotel room!  It was truly magical!

So in light of that, our weekend was pretty boring!  But it was magical in it's own kind of way.  There's nothing better than relaxing at home after travelling for weeks.  I got to do some sewing and watch some tv and sleep in and go to yoga and go out for breakfast.  There's some of my favourite things right there!

We did attend the inaugural Men of Letters event in Thornbury, and that was pretty inspiring.  We saw the likes of Paul Kelly (oh, I love him so much!), John Safran, Tim Rogers, Bob Ellis, Alan Brough and Matt Preston read out letters "to the woman that changed my life".  Then we got to write and post our own letters on these super cute aerogrammes in the break.  It was a lovely way to spend an afternoon.  If you're in Melbourne, keep an eye out for upcoming Women of Letters.

Hope your weekend was ab fab!