2009

A New Year

2009 was a BIG year for us. We moved to a new town, Chris started a challenging role at work and Jasper arrived in style! I think we’ve done pretty well adjusting to all the…

Blankie

I’ve been stitching A little travel blanket, only two layers with the other side being a soft flannelette. My hand ‘quilting’ is crude, but I think it looks pretty good with the…

Bunnies!!!

There’s a little production line going on here! Today operations moved out to the living room. Jasper started crawling last week and it is no longer safe to have him in my…

Slowly Winding up for Christmas

I’ve been linocutting! I’m really chuffed with these snowflake Christmas tree ornaments, I also printed some on dark brown paper and they are all happily hanging together on our…

Thoughts on Tea Towels

I’ve just finished constructing two linen tea towels. Hemmed by hand with neat mitred corners and a simply appliqued stripe of linen ribbon across one end. These are for me 🙂…

Sewing Lessons

Last Friday a friend came around to my place so I could show her how to sew a dress for her daughter. Of course, I’m ill qualified to be teaching anyone to sew garments since my…

Linen goodness

Yesterday I braved the $AU/Yen exchange rate and made a huge order with Linnet. I had a good excuse… I’ve signed up for a Linen Tea Towel swap. Linen saps up water brilliantly,…

On my table today

Taking up most of my table today is the makings of Jasper’s christmas stocking. The embroidery isn’t quite the right dimensions, but I should be able to make it work, I’ve just…

Little Shoes

Oh look! I made a cute pair of shoes. You can get the pattern from Shara Lambert’s etsy shop if you’d like to make a pair too. Even though I made the 9-12 month old size, they…

THIS is more like it

Broccolli was a hit. Not mashed up with rice cereal mind you, no that was spat out with great haste. But Jasper took to the whole steamed floret with great enthusiasm. He sucked…

Plans

About 7 or 8 years ago I was given a ziploc bag with a few scraps of fabric and directions for making a paper pieced patchwork pincushion. I had been dabbling in pottery for a few…

You have GOT to be kidding me!!!

I haven’t been quick enough with the camera to get Jasper’s expression the moment the food enters his mouth. It’s like the above pic, but he wrinkles up his nose more and looks at…

Mummy

Random thoughts about motherhood: – it’s fabulous to see Jasper develop and grow everyday. – looking after Jasper has turned out to be a lot nicer experience than I anticipated. I…

Shakin'

I felt an earthquake last night! The bed rocked backwards and forwards and our wardrobe doors rattled in sync. It was 7 on the richter scale, but it originated a long way away, so…

Mmmm I can smell dinner cooking

Ok I’m just popping in for a quick post so I don’t completely lose the blogtoberfest spirit 🙂 This week our friends Catherine and Heath had a baby girl, Matlida Olive, born with…

Baby Sewing

Onwards and upwards. To get over the dissapointment of cutting too much off the hem of my skirt I moved onto a new sewing project with lightning speed. I am happy to report that…

Distraction

This post was going to be titled: Measure Twice, Cut Once; When Good Skirts Go Bad. But I don’t want to talk about it. So I wont. Instead, I’ll share some doodly drawings I did…

Ooops

It was almost inevitable. I was triming the seam which attaches the waistband to the skirt. And SNIP. I cut a hole in the waistband. Crap! I had three options. 1) screw the whole…

Clothes

Against my better judgement I’ve bought a book called Clothes for Kids Who Are Just Able to Walk. Seduced by the cute pictures of children in beautiful clothes I ignored the…

Weaving on a Cardboard Loom

I like learning how things are done. It might be the engineer in me, I don’t know. Anyway, I’d love to learn how to weave but I can’t add a loom to my already overstuffed workshop…

Bounty

Today I had FOUR (4!) parcels waiting for me at the post office. One cute little package contained Renilde de Peuter‘s georgous pincushion all the way from Belgium. The $AU – EURO…

New embroidery

Stitching and the use of stashed fabrics have been occupying my creative thoughts over the last few weeks. The yellow, hand dyed muslin has been waiting for many years. I this is…

Pool

My two hansome fellas lounging beside the pool. The water in the Jabiru pool has warmed up beautifully since our last swim. Jasper loved it! We swooshed him around and he spashed…

Progress

I’ve started embroidering the tablecloth. Little sprigs placed at the intersections of the square grid pattern which is part of the fabric’s weave stucture. I think I got this…

Handmade

I live in the middle of nowhere and there are few opportunites for retail therapy. The highlight of the day is going to the post office box… where I’m often disappointed to find…

Random thoughts about household linens

Squares and rectangles of terry towelling, muslin, cotton knit, seersucker, flannelette and waffleweave. I get a lot of pleasure using, washing and folding baby items. (we use…

Mitred Corners for Hems

Mitred corners are a neat finish and are easy to sew as there is no great wad of fabric to sew through at the corners. I’ve been on a roll with sewing up baby blankets and wraps…

Love

Last year I made embroidered felt balls to hang on my Christmas tree. But I seem to have lost them in our move PLUS they would be a major choking hazard for our little one. So I…

Yay for just blindly following your impulses

This top took me 5 minutes to ‘make the pattern’ (ie trace a top that I already own), cut out the fabric and sew together with my overlocker. Until today I was scared of sewing…

Link-o-mania

First off, I’d like to congratulate my sister, Megan Collidge, on her exhibition which opened last night at Devonport Regional Gallery. It’s up until the end of October, so if you…

Making clothes

I’ve been drafting a pattern for a pair of fitted shorts. This time I’m using a commercial pattern and trying instructions from Pattern Fitting With Confidence by Nancy Zieman.…

Recovery

I needed a moment there to catch my breath. Infection, pain, a cold and just plain tiredness hit me at once. Thankfully, Chris’ mum and dad have been here this week and I’ve been…

Ohh look over there - a baby!

Please let me distract you with gratuitus baby photos while I recover from this excruciating breast infection. Perhaps I should have saved this one for his 21st birthday party.…

Linkity Link

I’ve recently enjoyed reading the blog of Renilde de Peuter (that’s a snipit of her embroidery pictured above) http://at-swim-two-birds.blogspot.com/ . She creates little…

Skirt 4 with Embroidery

I’ve finally finished the embroidered skirt. It’s very comfortable to wear because I drafted the pattern to my own measurements PLUS it’s made from stretchy denim. I drew the…

Reuben

18/5/02 – 22/8/09 Our sweet dog, Reuben, passed away yesterday. He was enthusiastic, mischevious, affectionate and loved his food. Last week we became very worried when Reuben…

Pins and Needles

Last week I bought a new pin cushion (and brooch) from Karen http://karenruane.blogspot.com/ . It’s fabulous with it’s silk and it’s bobbles and it’s stitching. It arrived here…

Jasper Jennings is 12 weeks old

12 weeks ago I was in hospital falling in love with the most beautiful baby I’d ever clapped my eyes on. I’m blown away by how much Jasper has grown and how much he has learnt in…

Adventures in Pattern Making

I’ve made up two skirts now and I’m pretty happy with the pattern I drafted, though I’m going to tinker around with the back part as the darts are huge creating a bit more room…

Itty Bitty Drawings2

Wow, Jasper is having a nice long afternoon nap! Better be quick. Our backyard is quite wild on one side of the house but plain old lawn and clothes line on the other side. The…

Little Minutes

I’m trying to quickly post before Jasper wakes from his sleep (Sleep! Yay! he’s just had a 3hr afternoon nap which is a big deal as he hasn’t been too keen to sleep during the day…

Mobiles

I didn’t get Jasper’s room decorated before he was born, but I did make a mobile to go above his change table (sorry for the terrible photo!!!). It was so simple to make and…

Priority

One of the unintended consequences of breastfeeding Jasper is that my hands are idle for hours a day, so my mind is free to cook up all sorts of plans and ideas for things I can…

Baby Baby

It’s all baby all the time here at the moment. I feel like I’m slowly emerging from the baby fog. Though I wonder how we will go next week when Chris’ mum leaves… We’re gonna have…

Itty Bitty Drawings

I’ve started to feel a little bit creative again with ideas for a felting project, some little paintings and some more stitching floating around. Time and energy are in short…

Thread and Needle

I thought I’d quickly pop in here and throw up a picture of some stitching I’ve been doing recently. The cross stitch is something I started this week as I decided I wanted to…

Simple

The Birth Story

Warning: this post describes a birth and contains some information which some may find too intimate or just too much. That’s ok, I won’t be offended if you just skip it 🙂

Arrived!

We are happy announce the safe arrival of Jasper David Jennings. Possibly the most delicious baby ever! Born via emergency c-section at 6:20am, 9 May at Darwin Private Hospital.…

Still Here : Still Waiting

Yesterday was the due date…. but the only baby I got to hold was this little 2yo crocodile. His skin was SOOO soft and cool to touch. I’ve been in Darwin now for 2 weeks. The…

Thinking about Yellow and White

Our baby is due in just over 4 weeks, which means I only have 2 more weeks before I leave home to wait for his arrival. Excitement and nervousness is building, but I’ve also been…

More Random Stuff

Random is about as much as I can ‘do’ at the moment. Birds: I haven’t seen a sulphur crested cockatoo since we’ve been in Jabiru, but there are plenty of corellas. They like to…

Random Stuff

Wild Dogs: There are plenty of wild dogs around here, they are more ‘dog like’ than the packs around Nhulunbuy which have a real a dingo look about them. We were told that at…

The Embroidery Itch

In my last post I mentioned that I had an itch to do some embroidery. So, in my usual fashion, I tossed the zig zag quilit aside and started putting a simple embroidery design…

32 years old, 31 weeks pregnant and a Saucy Look

I’m sort of itching to get into a bit of embroidery after this quilt. I’ve been reading Sheila Paine’s book Embroidered Textiles : a world guide to traditional patterns and I’m…

Relief

Reuben is going to be ok. I spoke to the vet this morning and apparently Reuben is very alert and the symptoms of his gastrointestinal infection have disappeared. He’s going to…

Soothe

Preparations

I was keen to get this quilt finished before I lost interest, so I took a few shortcuts. The first one being that I quilted it with a large stipple. I’d sketched out lots of ideas…

Settling

Much to our suprise the move into our permanent house has already happened. I was fully prepared for another 2-3 weeks in transit acommodation. It is SO nice to have our own stuff…

Goodbye Gove

We fly out of Gove tonight and will have a day for shopping in Darwin before we drive out to Jabiru for Chris to start work on Tuesday. Our year (+2mths) in Gove has been…

Movin' and Groovin'

First of all, I’m posting a pic of the apple slice I made a week ago. It was yummy, but very fiddly to make, next time I’ll use a smaller tin than specified as I had to spread out…

I've Quit Coco-Pops - Cold Turkey

The removalists are coming on Thursday. So I need to get my craft and art supplies sorted out. But I sorta got distracted by the basket of scrap fabrics under my desk. This is the…

Baby Blanket Panel One

Baby Blanket Project

Of course, I live in the tropics so a wool blanket may not be terribly useful. But it will be lightweight merino wool and our acommodation is fully airconditioned, so you never…

2009

2009 is shaping up to be a BIG year. Later this month we’ll be moving to Jabiru which is located within Kakadu National Park and of course our baby is due in late April. So lots…