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!)

Intergenerational Creativity

Have been in Melbourne for my grandson's 4th birthday ... 4yrs old - Gosh!

My gorgeous daughter made a great play-mat for her boy to play with his cars in an imaginative way. A piece of AstroTurf with some of the 'grass' plucked out to make a road. I helped with some road-making while I was there ... plucking plastic grass is very slow & tedious work! The houses are more of my daughter's creativity - yoghurt tubs with masking tape, paint ... and little boy made garages from some boxes - it must be genetic :-)

Daughter is far more artistic than I am - she gets that from darling Hubby's side (his mum is an artist). I love it that our daughter is painting & creating again; she needs to paint as I need to make things. When she was a little thing I used to sew and knit 'around her' when she would not settle to sleep without me - just as now, she paints 'around' her little one ...
To me, that is what a Yummy Mummy looks like.

Her current works are quite 'woodland', almost cute animals with a dark background - quite sweet but not kitsch. Like this critter - not quite of this earth ...