New Stuff

New brooches with vintage buttons which is something I plan on doing more of.

And the award goes to.....

Proximidade is described as follows: This blog invests and believes in PROXIMITY - nearness in space, time and relationships. These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes for self-aggrandizement! Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers!' The rules are: This blog award should be sent to your favorite eight bloggers and they, in turn should forward to eight of their favorites. You should include the text for Proximidade (above) in your announcement blog.

Over a week ago Jan on her blog In my spare time made me one of the recipients of this award for helping out with the OZBushfireAppeal shop. Thank you Jan! Although I have to say I do feel a little unworthy.

Anyway I am meant to pass on the award to 8 other people, but I am going to break the rules and pass it on to a whole group of people - the DUST team. For those of you who don't know DUST stands for Down Under Street Team. We are made up of Australian etsy sellers and if you want to find out more about us you can check out the DUST website.

I am giving the award to the DUST team as a whole because of the way everyone has banded together to set up the Bushfire Appeal store and help raise money for the Red Cross Bushfire Appeal.

As well as Emma and Carely who took the main responsibility for running the store, there were DUSTers helping to list the items, donating items, marketing the store to everyone they knew and of course buying all the lovely products. It was a great team effort and wonderful to be part of it.

The OZBushfire Appeal shop has stopped taking donations and will now run until the 31st March. So far the shop has raised $15,000 for the Red Cross Bushfire appeal which is an amazing effort. There are still 216 items in the store to sell so the final money tally will probably be higher.

Etsy Down Time

Just letting you know that if you try to go the Bushfire Appeal shop or my shop from this blog you won't get very far. Etsy are doing site maintenance and won't be back on board for at least another 3-4 hours.

It a good time for me to get some actual work done with no distractions.

Messanger Bag Project

Here is a project that has been in the works for a while. It’s a messenger bag I made for someone, to their specifications and using their fabric.



I did a mock up in calico first to test whether the bag was going to work and iron out any problems. Force of habit, we always had to test our patterns in calico at TAFE and then make adjustments. Of course that was for garments and we called them “toile's” but I do the same with whatever I make.


Bags can be pretty complex and there are always layers of fabric to sew through. Luckily my trusty Consew can sew through just about anything and this time I needed it to. I had interfacing and fusible wadding in the main bag to give it some body and webbing straps to sew through as well.

I only had a small amount of fabric to work with. It took me forever to work out how I was going to line up the stripes o the front of the bag and somehow get the little frog in a good position. I only seemed to have one repeat of the print, and half of it was a mirror image of the other so it was a little difficult, but I managed to pull it off okay in the end. If you look closely you can see a climbing frog on the upper left and lower right corners.

Latest Listings from the OZBushfireAppeal Shop.

$12,000 Raised So Far

In a little over a week the OZBushfireAppeal shop has raised $12,000 for the Red Cross Bushfire Appeal.

That's an amazing effort for everyone involved.

feliciafairy and vanillapixe are putting in a mammoth effort running the shop and are being helped by members of the DUST team (including me!).

It is not only Australians who are donating items and buying, but also people from overseas which is really heartwarming.

False Start

This week, I attempted to do my screen printing for real. Yes, no more practising. I am talking about printing on real fabric to be sewn up into real cushions that I can sell on etsy and madeit.

Unfortunately it didn’t quite go to plan. The first print was perfect. No problems there. The subsequent prints didn’t work. If you look at the photo you can see that the ink wasn’t coming through the outside lines of some of the flowers. I kept trying on new pieces of fabric, thinking that all I needed was a little more pressure in those areas. But every print after the first had that same problem. In the end I gave up printing on my linen as it was just wasting fabric. I had a few more goes on calico but nothing I did seemed to fix the problem.

It was extremely disappointing. And because I don’t have much experience to draw from I can’t quite work out where I went wrong. I guess I will try again this week, starting off on calico and see what happens.

Sunday Stash #11

So, I bet you are wondering why I have a picture of plain old linen for my Sunday Stash. It's not very exciting you might say. The thing is I was quite excited when all 4 meters of it arrived at my door. I am finding it almost impossible to track down quality natural coloured linen that isn't $50/m in Melbourne. Maybe I am just not looking in the right places. Anyway this linen comes all the way from Bunbury WA, courtesy of my mum. It's the last of the roll too so I am going to have to keep looking for a supplier in Melbourne.

OZ Bushfire Appeal shop

The OZBushfireAppeal shop on etsy is up and running with permission of etsy admin. You can find an article in their blog about it here.

ALL proceeds from the shop go to the red cross and will help those affected by the Victorian bushfires.

Items have been generously donated by etsy sellers from Australia and the rest of the world. All the items have free International shipping and in many cases free shipping for within Australia.

Now is the chance to buy something for yourself and not feel guilty about it because the money is going towards a worthy cause.

Funds raised will be sent to the Red Cross every Friday and you can keep updated here.

Victorian Bushfires

I guess I am feeling like a lot of Aussies at the moment when I say that I am shocked and saddened by the devastating effect the Victorian bushfires have had on the community. It is heartbreaking to see houses and whole towns turned to rubble and hear peoples stories of loss and tragedy. So many people have lost their lives.

If you would like to help out the people affected by this there are ways to do so here.

Another way to help is by buying an item from OzBushfireAppeal on etsy. Products have been donated to the store and ALL proceeds will be donated to the Australian Red Cross. So you can shop and not feel guilty about spending money because it is going to a good cause.

Edit: the OZBushfireAppeal shop is temporarily on hold as we are waiting for permsision from etsy admin to continue with it as it violates some of their Terms of Service. Lets hope they see sense and let us proceed.

Update: Etsy admin have allowed us to carry on with the shop so it is up and running and being stocked as we speak.

6 and 6

I have been tagged by Shannon over at Rabbit and the Duck to play a photo game.

The rules are as follows:

"Open the 6th picture folder on your computer, open the 6th photo and blog it. Write something about it. Then tag 6 more people to do the same."

So when I did this I came across the photo of my sewing machine. I got it serviced 2 weeks ago and was thinking about doing a blog post on it, hence the photos, but I never quite got around to writing about it.

The machine is an industrial straight stitch. I bought it second hand in 2000 to help me through studying fashion at TAFE. It cost between $500 and $600. I can’t remember the exact amount but I do know that it has been worth every penny. The gentleman who came and serviced the machine thinks it is about 20 years old. He told me it was getting a little long in the tooth but doesn’t sew too badly for its age.

I couldn’t go back to a domestic after using an industrial. It’s fast, and will sew through just about anything. I had to use my mum’s domestic machine over in WA before Christmas to sew up a shrug I was wearing to a wedding over there. Anyway a quick and easy sewing job turned into a bit of an ordeal. I couldn’t get the machine to sew in a straight line, let alone with consistently sized stitching and my edge stitching was all over the place. Every time the machine stopped the needle would jump to the side a little and I couldn’t believe how slow it was. Anyway I can’t tell you how glad I was to get back to my machine that does exactly what I need it to do. I really should get it serviced more often because it is sewing like a dream at the moment.

To keep the game going I am tagging: Chrissy, Billy Boy and Mia, Shelia, Anna Laura, NeverEver and finiki

Sunday Stash #10

Something a bit retro this week. It's a pillowcase I found opp shopping in "as new" condition. I might make a bag out of it. I am working on a clutch pattern as we speak.

Yay! I Won Something

Well, not just something but a cute painted print from Aya of LoucheLab.

I entered a giveaway hosted by Nicole Tattersall (on her blog) and was lucky enough to be one of four winners.

Skulk of Foxes Goodies

I thought I would show off some of my new goodies from Melbourne jewellery label Skulk of Foxes.

I haven’t exactly been on a spending spree. The black acrylic brooch was a Christmas present from my brother and his girlfriend. What can I say, it’s beautiful and they have impeccable taste.

The silver “Howling Wolf” brooch I bought for myself and I am totally in love with it. The brooch looks like my dog Elvis when he howls which makes it a sentimental piece for me, and I have renamed mine the “Howling Elvis” brooch. I always get excited when I manage to hear Elvis howling at a siren and I get super excited when I get to see him do it. Howling seems to be some kind of instinctive response for him that he doesn’t have much control of, yet he doesn’t howl at every siren he hears. I always wonder what makes a particular siren howl worthy.

Anyway back to the jewellery. You can check out more Skulk of Foxes stuff here. They do sterling silver animal silhouette jewellery, that includes earrings, necklaces and brooches as well as acrylic brooches like mine and in animal silhouettes. Natalie Cirillo behind the label is super sweet to deal with too.

On the Front Page

I logged in to etsy this morning and was lucky enough to see my Summer Grass brooch on the front page. I didn't even know I was in a treasury so it was really unexpected and of course exciting.

Thanks to laurasloft who curated the treasury. It's a nice way to start the day. Your can check out her Leaves of Grass treasury here.

Sunday Stash #9

This one I bought from Patchwork at Central Park.

If you are interested there is a list of other people playing Sunday Stash here.