The Baby's Room

I have spent the last couple of months getting acquainted with Ohdeedoh, and whilst I think it's a great blog, I think it affected my sanity a little for a while there. It's a bit like constantly looking at home renovation shows or interior design magazines... you start to think that everything has to be perfect... and you start to feel that your rented, 30 year old, 2 bedroom flat isn't good enough, and that neither is any of the stuff in it. Having said that, Ohdeedoh do show lots of thrifty, secondhand, crafty type rooms too, and I started to chill out a little about the whole thing eventually, and went with that thrifty, handmade type of vibe, which due to severe budget restrictions, was the only option open to me!

Whilst it's actually a really bright, sunny room, in this super hot weather, I had to close the blinds so that the photo wasn't overexposed.

Jane, it's nice to have a different kind of doll in there.


All the dolls I put aside for whatever reason- it turns out there is a dew drop girl for every season in this stash.


The lambs are up and flying about above the change table.


And I finally managed to finish a quilt I started 3 years ago- it doesn't fit the super sized cot I bought, but it will do for other things. I have almost finished a quilt top based on this fabulous quilt I feel in love with months and months ago, I'm just worried it will take me another 3 years to complete it!


And this is me in the middle of it all. We still have the spare bed set up so that people can stay, but once she starts sleeping in there, it'll have to go.

It's all getting very close to being finished!

B.

More for baby...

A basket to hold the blocks I picked up at the op shop (before my op shop swearing off of course!), which I made from lots of my red/pink scraps of fabric, I think I got a bit inspired while I was making the patchwork horse from the Softies book. I loosely used this pattern/tutorial from The Stitchin' Chicken.

And finally something for the baby from the Softies book, this is Mama Bear and she was designed by Nest Studio.

And cupcake booties, which my Mum crocheted for me after I gave her this US pattern, which she had to translate into her Australian crocheting knowledge.

And another pinafore, which is a bigger size than the others I made. I made it well before Christmas but I didn't have any nice buttons for it, so after looking everywhere I knew to look from Spotlight, Lincraft & HobbySew, to all the op shops in the area, as well as a few vintage clothes shops, and then to Etsy, I started to give up on the idea of really nice buttons... and instead started bemoaning this to everyone I know, which resulted in my Nanna sitting me down with ALL her buttons at Christmas time, and allowing me to pick out the ones I wanted. And I must have winged quite loudly, because when I got home, Joe's Mum had sent me a little parcel full of her old buttons as well. So now I can only complain that I have too much choice...

The old ones are sooo much nicer!

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Sharing something awesome:

It seems that lots of people already knew about this book before me, but for those of you who don't, you NEED to check this out! Emma-Lee gave me the most lovely baby present I've gotten so far, and although she explained that she buys this book for any remotely appropriate situation, I'm so glad she did! It's called 'An Awesome Book' by Dallas Clayton, and I recommend it to anyone who loves dreaming, thinking, making, pretty pictures, big ideas and lovely stories- and it isn't just for little ones, although it has been written especially for them.

It's about thinking outside boringness and blandness and thinking big, and it's been done in such a beautiful way.

You can read the whole thing here, and then I think you should buy it, and then buy one for everyone you know! I love it.

Thank-you Emma-Lee!! :)

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Getting Busy!

I'm not good at sitting still at the best of times, and I'm starting to get pretty excited about the baby, so I think that's what all the sewing is about, and this isn't everything... I do need to stop and sort her room out though because it is a mess- everything has been placed in there and left for arranging at a later date!

The pencilcase is for someone else, but you can get the pattern here. And the kokeshi doll is from 'Simple Softies' which is by the same people as 'Softies', but it's all completely kid friendly and hand sewing, and I made her up in a couple of hours- and added a rattle! And the burp cloths and bandana are from the Aranzi Aronzo book I'm loving at the moment.

And I've been doing the Christmas sewing that I promised some little people in my life that I would do, I just need to attach some legs to a certain patchwork horse and I'm all done. I'm really happy with how well this kangaroo turned out, but it was my second attempt- the first one just didn't look right. She is from the Softies book too, and the pattern is by My Little Mochi, and the joey is harder than it looks!!

And I'm going to draw the winner to my giveaway tomorrow night- and yes twitter entries count! :)

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Where to start...

1. The drawers are actually finished! Yay... Joe spent an entire day last weekend touching up the edges of all the animals and attaching the handles. I will post a photo when it's where it's supposed to be.

2. The flat is so clean that I almost feel awkward. All the fabric is away. We had a house inspection this afternoon.

3. I did the Glebe Street Fair on Sunday, and I think it worked as an antidote for all markets for me, possibly forever. I forgot how rude people can be, don't get me wrong there were some really nice people too, but the 'I could do that' crowd was out in force.

My highlight was hanging out with some people I hadn't seen in a long time, one being Riyo, who spontaneously made me this blinky stamp- a type of portrait, she sat and drew a picture of her fave blinky and whipped this up and presented it to me!

She also gave me some of that great Japanese rubber she uses to carve her stamps from, my mind boggles at all the possibilities, but she's had a lot of practice, and I'm pretty sure my first attempt won't be nearly as impressive as her stuff.

4. Needless to say, I have some extra dolls left over from the weekend, and I will be popping them in my online shop sometime soon- this time I'm using Etsy, the Aus dollar is practically the same anyway.

5. I'm selling the Dew Drop Girl and Meekoo patterns up until Christmas- I've gotten a million emails about them in the last little while, so this is the link to my etsy shop. Please don't make them and sell them though, I've noticed a bit of that going on lately.

6. I've been making some more things for the baby, including some drawings for her walls, and I'm planning on making up some screen prints too. This is what I have so far:

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A little lamb

Apparently babies need mobiles, I'm not sure exactly why yet, but they are everywhere and when I saw this pattern in my new Aranzi Aronzo book, I figured that we needed this one in our house just for the sake of cuteness. I need to finish 3 more lambs and attach them, and then I need to figure out how to hang it from the ceiling in this rented flat without leaving too much of a mark, which means I also need to figure out where we are going to put the cot... jeepers!

And babies need drawers, even before they are born, because it turns out that even before they are born they accumulate a lot of clothes, so when we found this abandoned dresser on the street outside our house, we thought it would be perfect to clean up and paint. We used the stencil pattern from this Lena Corwin book that I got ages ago, and so far it's taken us 4 weekends to sand it back, paint with undercoat, paint, and then do the stenciling, and it's STILL not finished, it needs some touching up here and there, and some handles, and probably a hundred other things I haven't thought of yet, but we think it looks pretty funky:

Note: just ignore Joe's sculpture space in the background and imagine a nice white wall!

Edit/P.S. I just found this project as a free online one on the Etsy blog, it provides the template and the instructions from the book here!

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Sydney siders: I will be at the Glebe Street Fair, Sunday November 21- which is held on Glebe Point Rd, so come and get all your Christmas pressies there from me in person, and I will be sharing a space with Riyo from Talk to the Wind and Sun, and Stephanie from Spark Candles.

Look, no toys!

Well actually I have been steadily making (and stuffing) toys all week long, but I thought I'd share some other crafty endeavours related to the most popular topic at our house at the moment... lots of them I made weeks and weeks ago, they actually helped pull me out of the spotless house syndrome I was going through in the first 14 weeks, where the lounge-room was clean and the fabric was all packed away. That's not the case anymore.

I had been making bibs for my market stall, and they were all from tea-towels and the like, but I've let my opping wane a little over the past couple of months and thought it would be good to use up some of those pieces that were too small for anything much, but too big to bin... and I found this piece of linen that I screen printed way-back-when...

Normally I think kids should stay well away from politics, but I just couldn't help myself with this lovely Propagandhi quote. The bib pattern is from here.

And a snuggler, which looks more like this, it's just that mine is folded in half! It's from my Lotta Jansdotter book. And I made it from summer-weight fabrics rather than snuggly winter ones. And some shoes from this here pattern.

And a doll's quilt. I managed to find a second hand toy cradle which Joe is currently painting up, this is my contribution. Inspired by this amazing full sized baby quilt. I found it through this awesome quilty post by Kelly at My Happy Little Life, and I'm three squares away from finishing a cot sized quilt inspired by the squarey one (second from the top) in that post, but those pictures are for another day!

And I'm sorry if I started too many sentences with the word 'and', now I'm an adult, I know that it's technically okay to do so, but in primary school, it was strongly shunned and I still feel a little pang of 'inappropriateness' whenever I do it!

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Meanwhile...

So, it's been a lot longer than usual, but you know, some things cannot be helped! And I think I have a reasonably good excuse, I tried to keep up the blogging in the early months, but this little one was just not that interested in me getting up off the couch and participating in anything other than daytime tv and sleeping, and she really let me know about it... but I'm able to stand the smell of coffee again, and able to sit at a sewing machine without intense nausea... so hopefully there won't be any long absences for a while!

We're just over half way, and she already has a pile of sewn goodies as high as the roof...  if things continue this way, I might even be able to do an online shop update before Christmas, *fingers crossed*.

B.