Braver

Oh my. Another photo of another 1st Birthday present. This requires me to be supremely organised! I was racking my brain trying to think of what I should make for one of Elka's little friends, a little boy could stand to be a little braver sometimes, and I remembered making one of these just before I fell pregnant and packed all my sewing stuff away to watch Mad Men and eat vegemite on toast everyday, and I got excited and made him his own ninja-blinky. I had great plans for these guys, there was going to be a set, and maybe there will be eventually...

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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.

Life on Mars:

Joe and I have been talking about how much our lives have changed already, and we still have 4 full months to go until everything changes utterly and completely, forever, or so we keep hearing! It feels a little like being on an alien planet sometimes... I just noticed today how it odd it is to do the washing-up from a distance, that is, I can't get as close to the sink as I used to, and I've started to need to sleep during the day, which I've always detested, and my ability to sew is erratic, some days, I can churn them out, others, nothing happens. There is no routine or rhythm, but this is what it looks like:

Something for the little one, from Simple Sewing for Babies, which is actually full of really easy things to sew, AND I managed to find some rattle inserts for once in my life... here. They sell out a lot, so you need to keep checking back if they don't have any in.

Regular blinkies, and some baby blinkies have emerged too, thanks to Emma-Lee's need for smallness for an ingenious Christmas marketing plan she has coming up!

And the piles (and piles) of recently sewn, but as yet, unstuffed softies, and this photo doesn't include the new Spring/Summer version of my dew drops... you don't want to know how many there are!

Hopefully more will happen on the stuffing front soon!

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foxes, bunnies & bears:

I've been having lots of fun with scraps the last week. Making little lambs means lots of little tiny pieces of chenille lying around, and they work wonderfully on red foxes. And all the tincy little pieces of blanket and fur make little bunnies and bears... my scrap piles are dwindling again.

And Japanese fabric Winter Dew Drop Girls, still my favourite to make!

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Hi there!

I have not managed much sewing this week, between a house inspection, which required my house to look like an actual house, and a spot of flu, barely anything got done... on Friday afternoon, I did manage to sit down and sew this little guy together. Joe loves him, and Joe is an integral part of the 'cuteness test', but he also asked me if people will be able to tell what sort of animal he is. I think the long neck gives it away...

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I call them egg dolls!

Well actually Joe called them Egg Dolls because of their shape, nothing to do with Easter or chocolate or chickens or anything else to do with eggs, and since I really don't like thinking up new doll names, I think this one might just stick. I think they are pretty cute, and I'm making them all with red heads and blue hair for now-- I find that when I'm making something new, narrowing my colour palette really helps me a lot! And it seems I'm completely over sewing mouths... they are so last season... or something like that...

And speaking of seasons, it's getting to that time of year when snuggling and sleeping on fabric is far more fashionable than it has been in a long time... 

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Farewell Mitsy...

Sometimes I make dolls that I love a little bit more than the rest, I know I'm not supposed to, but it just happens, seeing how I already have 2 dew drop girls, 4 blinkies, and a Russian doll... and Joe has a special bug named Sylvie that he loves, and a meekoo named Sash, keeping more of them could result in us living with far more dolls than would be socially acceptable... so even though I loved her, I put little Mitsy out on display yesterday, and I took some photos just in case someone else loved her too... I went to buy some coffee mid-morning, and came back to the stall only to notice a little bit of a gap in the display, and a distinct lack of red...

Joe said that the lady who bought Mitsy loved her, and didn't even consider any of the other dolls, apparently she was very nice and didn't even need a bag, she was happy to just hold her new little friend.

I just hope Mitsy knows, I love her, where ever she is now...

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Handmade?

Yes. Handmade... Gosh I get a lot of people asking where I get these little fellas made... who I import from and such, so when I was sharing a stall with Riyo last week and noticed her little stamp, I thought that it might make a great addition to my supplies... I also hope it stops people advising me to get them made offshore in dirty little sweatshops... (I'm reading No Logo the moment, so outbursts like this could go on for some time).

This little girl is actually a display item, she's modeling the new 'Blinky Making Kits' that I've been going on about on twitter and facebook during the week, they are 85% of the size of the regular blinky pattern from Notebook & my shop, and there are 2 styles of face and ears in the kit, one a little bit girly, and one a little bit boyish, but both easily enough turned unisex if desired. The kits are time savers, they contain the fabrics, mostly vintage op finds, but some super cool Japanese prints, 80% wool felt, the embroidery thread and a BLANK name tag with a space for the maker to make him or herself known! And of course instructions because I find they come in handy sometimes!

These kits are part of my 'make less blinkies' campaign. They'll be $20 each, blinkies will be $35 each this week, and next week they will go up to $40 each, so it's all part of the restructuring I'm attempting... I just can't keep it up, and if I'm honest about the time I spend on each one, $40 is still quite reasonable. Fingers crossed that it all goes to plan...

I'm hoping this nice in between Autumn weather keeps it up over the weekend!

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Doll Fabrics:

I've been making some custom dolls over the last few weeks, and decided that it might be a good idea to have a fabrics set on my flickr page so people know what I have. I'm not sure how it will work in terms of when I run out, but it will provide a good place for inspiration and ideas, I will try and update it each week. The little doll here is named Ursula, and she is made from a machine embroidered pillow case I picked up at the op shop recently... I have a bunch of pretty things like this here at the moment too & they work really well with modern fabrics.

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My market highlight from this weekend was when a very serious girl, about eight years old, took one of my cards and asked if I was at the markets often. She told me that she loved my dolls and fabrics and that she was going to save up. Very sweet and made me smile.

I can't believe it's Autumn already... jeepers!

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What's new:

Some meekoos made from organic Japanese cotton and lovely prints.

I've also been performing a little pattern cross breeding:

You take a blinky pattern and a Russian Doll face (and some really funky blanket type fabric which you find metres and metres of at the op shop): 

and you get a fuzzy, happy little girl in a rabbit suit!

Then you take the same blinky pattern (front) and you use a meekoo face (back):

And you get a very sweet little thing that is neither smiling nor frowning, and therefore the perfect childhood secret keeping companion!

Happy Weekend!

And about Glebe: the sun shade still isn't up... so I will be in the same place as the last few weeks, down the front opposite Pookie and their funky peeling fruit candles! I will also have Riyo accompanying me-- so come and get your Japanese craft supplies, including hand-carved stamps, masking tapes, fabrics, and the like, as well as a fresh batch of blinkies!

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Now you can make a meekoo too!

I finished the meekoo pattern and added it to my Etsy Shop, so now you can make a meekoo too! There aren't any photos in the listing, but I've made the cutest, softest batch of critters from organic Japanese cotton which I hope to photograph and upload tomorrow... I got a little too focused on meekoo making last week and started seeing fabric only in terms of its ability to make cute meekoos! Oppps!

Good Night!

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Babushka pattern is here at last!

I just popped the Russian Doll sewing pattern over there (------------->) in the sidebar. Please feel free to comment, email, ask questions, add suggestions, I'd love to hear them.  You can also pop your creations in the Blinking Flights Flickr Group.

Happy Sewing!

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From me to you...

I just typed up this pattern and popped it over there in the sidebar for you all to use, it's a REALLY simple little softie, so it might be good for first timers or for helping little kids learn to sew. I used some of Riyo's hand-carved stamps on some scrap linen pieces to make the ones in the photos, and I'm really liking this style.

I hope you enjoy! And I hope the box corner description makes sense!

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Slowly, slowly

I've been taking things pretty easy production wise around here. I'm taking the motto 'slowly, slowly', and it's turning up good results, I'm liking what I'm making. I'm spending less time feeling resentful whilst sewing something I don't so much like-- not that it happened often, but it did happen. This new mindset is a good one to be in... and these are the things that have come into being this week:

I'm yet to sell a brown skinned doll, but I like them, so I'm sticking at it.

I started making these little scarf wearing gals just before Christmas-- an accident, I really messed up the hair and the headband, and in an attempt to salvage certain coloured felts, I stumbled across this do... they last about 4 seconds on the table before someone buys them!

And this special matroshka fabric which I bought from The Netherlands has been sitting around for months, I cut out a dew drop doll dress as soon as it arrived, but it wouldn't work with ANYTHING, that is until Riyo generously donated all this lovely teddy bear fabric to my stash, and voila!

But these three girls won't be at Glebe tomorrow, they have headed up to the Notebook offices to have a photoshoot, as they will be featured in the craft section of the April edition-- very exciting for me, and the blinky and dew drop girl pattern will be published here too!

These guys will be there tomorrow, despite the crazy heat that is predicted! Jeepers-- 39 and windy, I'm not sure if I'll stick after noon, but I'll be there in the morning for sure.

I've gone a little crazy with the message blinkies- 'say I'm only bee in your bonnet' is going to be a hard one to hand over to someone else.

She's half bug, half doll... something new for me. I will be so sad when that pink floral pillow case runs out...

Hope you all have a great weekend, and if you're in Sydney too, I hope the heat isn't too mean!

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New at Monster Threads.

This is Ivy, her and her pals Inez and Sabrina are now hanging out at Monster Threads  in Newtown, waiting for someone to take them home and adore them. There  are also some new blinkies and a very spunky red meekoo named Sam!

Unfortunately, now my work table is one big mess...

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So off I go to clean...

Hemp fleece lambs are go!

I stayed up very late the-night-before-the-last-market-before-Christmas making 4 new organic cotton & hemp fleece lambs, the fleece had only arrived the day before. I sometimes forget how long these things take, I think it must be like giving birth, they say you forget all the pain and complication when the baby is born, and I can be pretty optimistic about how long a toy takes to make. It took eleven hours to make the four lambs, and I was busy doing the closing stitches the next morning at the market. I LOVE THIS FLEECE! It's sooooo soft and lamby! I got it here, it worked out to be $30/m by the time I paid the shipping, so it's a little pricey, but very nice.

Welcome back to the post festive season life! I'm completely out of any routine, my wake up time has shifted from about 6/6:30am to about 9am, and I found myself awake and pumping at 1am last night (this morning), it made getting up for the markets on Saturday extra painful, and it meant I needed a little nap when I got at 3-- came home early thanks to Mr. Rain!

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