Cushions!

I'm very excited to announce that I'm going to be doing the Melbourne Design Market this year! Alongside Bianca and some other talented folk, I'm going to have a selection of products available on the Bamakko stand, which I will be helping to man on the day. I've never done a market before, so this will certainly be jumping in the deep end!

As a result, I've been focusing on some product development. Next in line - cushions! I really like how the houses & bicycles print looks on them - very whimsical and apt for a kids room or any other cute, colourful spot in the house. I've popped a few up in my shop to see how they go:


Houses & Bicycles cushion in Orange (softie by One Red Robin)


Houses & Bicycles cushion in Robins Egg


Houses & Bicycles cushion in Teal

I'm only selling the covers for now as the inserts are a waste of postage, but plan to get some nice feather & foam inserts for market day :)

Quilt in progress

Aww you guys were all very sweet with your nice words about my simple quilt! As a result I was very inspired to keep on working on it today (sometimes when I should have been working). I got the whole top finished - yay!

Jenaveve asked if I could show some work-in-progress shots, so here they are:


Sewing together strips of squares. See the tiny, featherweight old machine I work on every day? I'm not sure how it will handle the quilting part but I reckon it sends a good message to the "oh but my tools aren't good enough!" style procrastinators out there ;)


Strips of squares laid out on the couch


Strips of squares after ironing the seams flat


Sewing the strips together - the squares actually lined up! Mostly...


Back of the quilt-top, seams ironed flat. I actually really like the colours here - all shades of natural/cream linen with bits of colour in between :)


Yay quilt top finished!


Experimenting with different backing and binding options...


Another option (hello... is that new fabric??? More on that tomorrow!)

And that's all so far! Don't be surprised if I totally run out of steam and there's no more updates for a few weeks ;)

Experiments with clutches

Lately I've found it really hard to just 'stop' in the evenings. After juggling what feels like a million web, textile and graphic design projects during the day, come the evening and I just have to keep on going.

My recent focus has been making clutches. I've been wanting to make these for ages and I don't know why it's taken me so long to get around to it:



Some of these will be available at Bamakko shortly, and I'll pop some other ones up in my shop soon.

Also, I've been prototyping another clutch design idea, with the help of these guys. Here's an initial prototype just made with MDF:





So exciting to see one of my designs cut out of something!! I've adjusted the design slightly and we need to source some nice plywood/vaneer, and then they'll be up for sale too - yay :)

I'd love to find a neat way to add an optional purse chain to the clutch... something that can be tucked away or removed if not needed. I like my bags to be hands free :)

Moo Xmas

Oooh Kwoozy just made me aware that my Xmas card designs (previously mentioned here) are now available on the Moo site! And they have some cool new products that you can put them on too - standard greeting cards (in portrait or landscape) and postcards too. Just go here to view all the designs and drag and drop the ones you like (there are three pages of options). Yay!

I've ordered a set for myself so I'll show some pics when they arrive.

Meanwhile, I've taken a 4 day weekend - Tuesday is a public holiday for a horse race (I love this city) - so I attempted another softie for Mirabel.



Note to self, if you want to make something "simpler", don't choose a creature with 8 legs.



... and also don't try to come up with the pattern yourself - too stressful! I'm sure there would have been an easier way to put him together.

Kirin&Co's Tutorial Factory - Tissue box cover

Well, the suggestion of a tissue box cover tutorial definitely generated enough interest, so here it is! I hope it all makes sense and turns out correctly - if you have any troubles or feel the tute needs amending, please let me know!

The tissue box cover is essentially a single flat shape which folds up the sides of your tissue box, and is fastened at the top. This shape can be made in two different ways:

a) From a single piece of outside fabric, plus a single piece of lining.

b) From a number of pieces of outside fabric, sewn together in such a way that the pattern is always upright on all four sides of the box. Plus a single piece of lining.

These two options (and the direction of the fabric) are illustrated below:



Either method is fine - it depends on the fabric you're using and whether or not it has an obvious "right way up".

1) To create the above shape, we firstly need to figure out it's dimensions. Measure the size of your desired tissue box, taking note of the following lengths: W, H, L, X & Y:

Based on the above, this is how your cover measures up:


Don't forget to add 6mm all around for seam allowance!

2) Cut out this shape from your cover fabric using either method a) or method b). Cut out the lining fabric to match.

3) Pin the cover and lining fabrics together right sides facing. Cut two pieces of elastic each about 8cm long, and create two loops. Pin the loops in place between the fabrics, as shown:

4) Sew around the outside of the entire shape, 6mm in from the edge, leaving a gap at the end of one of the side flaps as shown above. You may like to run the machine back and forth over the elastic loops to make them extra secure.

5) Turn the piece inside out and iron flat, then hand stitch the hole closed. (Note: You may wish to test the cover on your box first, to make sure it fits nicely. If any of the flaps are too long you can always turn it back inside out and shorten them).

6) Now just position two buttons as shown below (the elastic loops should be nice and tight), and you're done!

Thank you to Heather for making the original tissue box cover from which this tute was developed!

Journal cover - Japanese style

Weird. Last night I had my second bout of late night stitching in a row. Not sure what's going on there, but I am sure it's not how most "young people" would spend their weekend evenings. But ahh, who cares :)

Anyway, you know how it gets to 10:00pm, and you're sitting on the couch not quite ready for bed but with a sewing project in mind? And you say to yourself "Oh, I'll just cut out the fabric and then go to bed". And you cut out the fabric and then think "oh... I'll just pin it together". And then afterwards you think "oh, I'll just do the first round of stitching", after which you figure that you may as well just finish it off.

Well that's what happened to me last night. I decided to make a journal cover based on a pattern I saw in a couple of Japanese craft books:



It's really quite a simple design, and it seems like almost all Japanese fabric book covers are made this way, but I've never seen it here before:



It wasn't till after I'd made it that I realised how useful that little tuck under flap is. I thought it was just to make it easy to get the cover on, but I found it also helps to keep the cover from buckling when you have the book open flat. You can take up the slack by pulling the flap in tighter. Very neat.



The pattern isn't particularly complicated, but you can find it in either of those books above, which you can find in one of the online Japanese crafty shops that I've listed in previous posts (sorry can't remember which - but I know I've seen them!). Otherwise the pictures above should make good reference. It's just one big rectangle: tapered at one end, folded over and sewn at the other, with the vertical band sewn in also. Measurements should be based on your own journal and common sense :)

One last note - how bloody cute is that fabric!! I'm kicking myself for not buying more. But that's what happens when you're over there - it's all so overwhelming, and when you see something you like you sometimes hold out because you figure you'll find something even better later on. But my tip - don't hold out - just buy buy buy! I found it in Kyoto (again just $1 for a fat quarter) from a shop called Nomura Tailor in Teramachi Arcade. Grr.

Little pencil case

Petey said to me last night: "why don't you make meee anything?" So I asked what he wanted and he said he'd like a little slimline pencil case. I just happened to have a single, suitable zipper in my stash, and some very appropriate fabric (only $1 for a fat quarter in Kyoto - can you believe it??) and put it together late last night and this morn. I just went and presented it to him then but...well he was still asleep and just rolled over.


(don't you just love arranging/styling up little product shots, just for the sake of it?)

I haven't made anything with a zip in it for ages, and I can't say I enjoy it! At least this time I tacked the fabric to the zipper band first before machine sewing. I used Amy Karol's 'zip pouch' pattern as a reference, but I modified it because it didn't seem quite right to me. Her instructions say to sew up the sides and bottom of the outside fabric, then sew on the zip, then sew up the sides and bottom of the lining fabric and just hand stitch it into the inside. Hmm. I don't like hand stitching and especially not in such a prominant place where u can see the crappy job i've done :)


(more product shot experimentation - man I wish I had a fancy pants camera)

I opted for sewing the outside and lining fabrics to the zipper at the same time, and then sewing down the sides and bottom (leaving a hole in the bottom of the lining for turning inside out). Anyway it seems like there are heaps of different ways to do this, and each has their pros and cons, and there's no simple, perfect way.

Brekky time...

Bird Girls Can Fly

(well, maybe not this one, such tiny wings).

Aha, finally something crafty to post about! I've been inspired by all the lovely softies and birds people have been making so I thought I'd give it a go myself!


I prototyped her out of paper and sticky-tape first which sort of worked. After I sewed her together I had to go back and make some little changes - shorten her body, narrow her neck, give her head some darts. It's still not how I pictured her but I'm happy enough.


(the tail is still a work in progress)

I stuffed her using some cotton wadding that I've had in my stash for ages - it's the stuff they use in making futons and Japanese floor cushions, and basically looks like raw cotton right off the bush. It even has the occasional twig in it. It's awesome to work with tho - much more pliable than synthetic stuff and you can make it dense in some spots and light and fluffy in others. You can get it from friendly futon manufacturers. I'm not sure what other people use to stuff their toys but I really like the cotton wadding...

The ultimate sacrifice?

...forgetting for a moment that you ever had an ounce of good taste, and sewing a Wonder Woman costume for a friend's dance competition. Click here to see a picture of this abomination (I wouldn't want to spoil the prettiness of my blog with such an unworthy picture!).

I had such a love hate relationship with this project. The lack of a proper pattern to go off was endlessly stressful, with me worrying that I might have done something wrong and not being able find out till the end. And a lot of the steps (eg side zip, waistband, appliqué) were things I hadn't attempted since high school.

But on the other hand it was so good to do something challenging like this, and proved a lot of things to myself. And it inspired me to try other sewing projects like the journal cover, which are so easy in comparison. Maybe the sewing machine isn't such a scary beast after all!

Anyway, that zapped up a lot of my time so it's back to work. I have so many emails and lovely comments to reply to, so sorry if I haven't gotten back to anyone yet!

Have a great weekend :)

'Moment of Truth' Reversible A5 Journal Cover

I've been quite inspired by the fact that my sewing machine didn't let me down when I was making those coasters. Now I feel a new sense of freedom when it comes to project ideas that require my trusty old machine and overlocker!

A friend of mine recently bought one of those plain financial year diaries, and I suggested that we cover it with some fabric. Unsure of the best way to do this I decided to do a test run on one of my own journals (I love the beautiful hand-bound books that I've been given but often there's a need for a crappy A5 visual diary that you feel no preciousness about at all - but can still make look pretty).

Anyway, I spent a good part of the afternoon drawing diagrams of how I could best make a journal cover. One with pockets which the front and back covers slide into, and with no exposed seams. I knew there'd be some fancy, tricky way to sew it which would all come out perfectly once popped the right way out (hence the title of this post). I finally came up with a solution that seemed promising, did a test run with paper with heartening results, then crossed my fingers and tried it with fabric.



And it worked! I'm sure I'm not the first person to figure this out, but it was a fun problem solving exercise. Oh and there was a bonus surprise - the cover is reversible! Turn it out a different way and the inside lining becomes the outside and vice versa :)

Tute?