Little Bear Skirt

I love the texture that hand stitching brings to a garment and I love the slow process of sewing something by hand. But I also love being able to quickly put something together with a sewing machine, so I've been finding myself more and more using a combination of both hand and machine sewing when I'm making things.

This skirt came together really quickly, I finished all the edges with the over-locker and then relaxed in the sun room watching TEDx talks and slowing stitching the hem and waist band. I like using bright embroidery thread to highlight the hand stitched detail and I chose yellow to compliment the gold detail on the bear print.

My little Peace Warrior was very happy to have a new skirt. 

Lavender Dream Pillows

I harvested the lavender from my pot plant recently. I enjoyed watching the bees buzz around the flowers as I sat looking out the sun room window with my coffee or my knitting, but the time came to chop it back and dry the flowers once they had all set seed.
The lavender is beautifully fragrant and I got a decent sized harvest for just one pot plant so I was able to made a little lavender pillow for each of my kids to take to bed with them. I made use of some lovely Japanese inspired fabric scraps from previous projects- making a dent in my stash is always a good thing. I also had enough left over to make a lavender bag to hang between my wool dresses.

Mio's Pom Pom Beanie

I love making beanies so it's a good thing that it's autumn again and my small person has done plenty of growing over the summer and could do with some more cozy head wear for the colder months here in Melbourne.

This was a super easy beanie to make without a pattern, once you've roughly figured out the gauge and head circumference, cast on an even number of stitches and work beanie in a knit 1 purl 1 rib in the round until you have a cuff the width you like. Then knit in stockinette (knit all stitches in the round) until your beanie is the right size and cast off using kitchener stitch. Add a couple of pom poms and you're done. Easy!
The wool yarn was so soft and such a delight to work with, and it only used a little over 50 grams of yarn so it was well worth investing that little bit extra money to make something with natural fibres for Mio's precious little noggin.

       

Immortalising Children's Art

There is nothing quite like seeing your child draw a picture. As my daughter grows I love seeing her style change and skills grow. If your place is anything like ours then you will have a thousand art books and pieces of paper filed away because they art too amazing to throw out. Some of her pictures really grab me and I've taken to turning some of them into relief prints so that we can print her designs onto cards and clothing. Here's a few things we've created...

A tortoise print on a card finished with water colour.

A tortoise print made into a library bag for India

Robot print on a t-shirt

Sleepy Mio sporting an organic cotton singlet with her big sister's fox print.

An organic cotton t-shirt for a friend's little boy.

This is my home studio- the kitchen table. I call this operation t-shirt station.

Photo Journals

With digital media I rarely print out photos these days but I do like having a few hard copies around because there is something special about flicking through a photo album. I've made my photo books from scratch including the paper and covered them in special fabric. Making my own books gives the photos a special place to live and give more meaning to the content.

The top one is covered with fabric my friends sent back from overseas and has pictures of Mio's first 2 weeks. The one on the right is covered with fabric that Dave gave me when he asked me to marry him and has pictures of my pregnancy with India and her birth. And the one on the left has pictures of India's first 2 weeks.

Mio's first 2 weeks

India's birth

India's first 2 weeks

India's Little Doll

We recently made the big decision to cut India's dreads off. After nearly three years she was ready for a change so we gave her her first haircut. I couldn't bring myself to through her dreads out though so I put the aside and set to work on a doll I could sew them onto.

Here's the result of my work...