A Sewing Space of My Own Again

We spent the first few weeks of this year sorting, de-stashing, rearranging and I once again have a sewing / creating space ...

It is cozy rather than spacious but I've natural light and access to all my machines and a little ironing space / cutting table ...  Also ... I can now find things again.

So far I've made 6yr old grand-daughter a Sun-dress

Had fun with the 2 sizes of this print and the pale green really suits my GD.  

However, I was really glad I checked the bodice before I sewed it up - it would've nearly fitted me!  Added some tucks (had to remove 7cm - 2.8" in width)  then we went to All Buttons Great & Small (love that shop!) and got buttons to match the fabric.
The pattern looks recent though I found it 2nd hand - Simplicity 2994.

Grandson loves buttons too ... he really liked the bow-tie buttons and we decided one would look OK on the hat I made him last year (a fabric 'spy' hat or Humphrey Bogart hat) - especially if we also put some feathers there ...








 Back home we got out the box of feathers and he chose this collection ... a partial red-dyed chicken feather, a tuft of white ostrich, a tan brown chicken feather that curves the wrong way and a spotty guinea fowl feather ....  I must say that all together they look really cool.

I'm also making daughter a race-day hat -

 

 Well it isn't going to look like that - though I really like that wind-swept look.  I blocked that very old felt (a failed hat) it'll be the base / the foundation ... covered with fabric and lots of frou-frou.

 And here is the collection of fabric & flowers & frou-frou sitting on the dress

Now, this might be one of the cheapest hats ever - the felt & wire were an old millinery failure, the fabrics & veiling were 'gleaned' from the rubbish bins at Tafe, some of the flowers were gifted, some bought about 30yrs ago.  The only 'new-buy' for this hat was the blue bell shaped flowers ($2.50 for the bunch). 

So happy to be able to make something from all the stash that I can now find with ease following the great big tidy-up.  And perhaps an advert for never throwing stuff out ???   though 30yrs maturation in stash could be seen as a little excessive.
Of course, when 'gleaning' from bins you find that trash sometimes needs a little TLC to restore to 'Treasure'. 
 

A bit of steam will restore a battered silk rose -




Careful ironing can restore old veiling -



The finished hat (shown on an old 'head' shape that has no hair!)

Holiday Knitting

Well we've been back over a month now but I'm still in mourning :-/  it was a lovely holiday - what isn't there to love about France in the spring-time! 

Naturally I did some knitting - can't go anywhere without a suitcase full of knitting projects.  This sock was mostly knitted in Belgium -

Appropriate given it's colour and those famously yummy Belgium chocolates :-)

I finished it in Versailles - also appropriate because of the amount of walking we did about the palace gardens and grounds ... Marie Antoinette's impossibly cute 'hamlet' ... the Petit and Grand Trianons ...

 

The colours of spring in Europe are lovely - and reflected in the clothing worn by many women and children (must be sub-conscious) !   Soft greens, aqua, clear jade, teal colours, apple greens ... the colours of all those new fresh leaves against the freshly washed sky ...

I found those colours in some yarn in the wonderful haby shop in our favourite town in Burgundy - Avallon.

Luckily, one of my daughter's friends is expecting her 2nd bub which provided the excuse I needed to buy it - bought a pattern & the needles ...

 Really European style with all those stripes.

I think I was somewhat obsessed by those colours - bought this deliciously fluffy mohair in Vezelay - 

I bought it from the breeder  :-)  she showed me photos of the goats and everything ... very lovely.

My 2 Blythe Dolls came with us!!   and I did some knitting for them too ...  Lillian needed a chic Parisian dress ... classic, understated elegance - 

figure hugging with 2 little 'Dior pleats' at the back (a bit hard to see in the black yarn) -

Audrey asked for a similar dress - but with bracelet length sleeves and a frilly hem "like the dress in "Breakfast at Tiffany's", the one that other Audrey wears with the big hat" ...

We all did lots of shopping in France and the Blythe Dolls needed a new bag!

I met up with a lovely group of knitters in Paris - a knitting group I met on Ravelry .  Despite my appalling lack of French they were very welcoming and sweet.  As a group they had been knitting shawls and were having a Shawl Fashion Parade in the Palais-Royale.  I took this shawl project but I'd only just started.  I'm not entirely happy with this and it will probably get un-knitted ... not sure about the yarn - I love purple, I love green but I don't love the way they are mixing here.

Embrace the Lace

Lace is my current obsession - I'm determined to learn how to make bobbin lace this year and have joined on lovely on-line group of lace-makers. And now for a tale of "inspiration" or the torturous path of creativity ...

Last Saturday I was getting my hairs done again and one of the young hairdressers was wearing a lovely vintage crochet singlet top - it got me thinking. Then a member of the lace group posted a photo of a multi-coloured lace shawl and as I tried to work out how that shawl was made, I realised that I knew some methods to stitch together a miscellany of lace pieces. Now I've collected small bits of lace for several decades - left-overs from sewing projects, bits un-picked from vintage garments, pieces rescued from the scrape bins in costume workrooms ... the result is yet another of those stashes that sometimes threaten to over-whelm me.

SO - I got out an old pattern for a singlet / camisole top and poured out the bag a lace bits ... a bit of sorting out into colours ...
then a whole day spent pinning and sewing and Voila !

yeah well I feel it is a Voila moment. That's the front with a lot of Broiderie Anglaise and ribbon. It is not finished yet, the boring tidying up at the back is yet to happen and it needs straps but I am very pleased with the result of all that work. A pretty little top (hopefully sellable in my Etsy shop) from a pile of lace bits. Now to start on that pile of cream and ecru coloured pieces ...