More fabric and......shoes!

Your comments and feedback on my last outfit were greatly appreciated. :) And in celebration, I have been shopping.

My sister and I went to Shepparton for the weekend to visit mum and ......well we visited the local Spotlight for some fabric therapy too. Last time we were there I saw a really appealing poly lycra pink and grey knit. I didn't buy it then but thought if it was still there it is meant to be mine. It was there - and now it is mine...along with a co ordinating grey knit and several other knit pieces that were found on the clearance table:

Most are viscose/elastine. The two at the top right are the only wovens and are poly satins. They are usually about $10 to $15 a metre and were on clearance at $5 a metre. I hear they are as low as $2 a metre at the Narre Warren store! You can also see in the photo that we visited Diva as well - 5 pieces for $10.

Cheryl and I also ventured around town and came across a shoe sale at Jeff Young Shoes. The already heavily discounted shoes were being offered at buy two and get a third free. Unfortunately I couldn't reduce my wants to only three, so I had four! Yes four new pairs of shoes. Here is the first pair:

and this is what I wore with them to work today:
The skirt is a simple straight skirt edged with lace and ribbon that I made pre blog days. The cardi and cami are RTW. The necklace was one of my Diva purchases.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's shoes.......

Companion for my new top.

After finishing my latest top last night (about 6 pm), I decided I needed a new skirt to go with it to wear to work today. Don't you just love the stash to go shopping in? I cut out the skirt using a TNT A line plain skirt. Then I had dinner. By now it was 8.30 and I decided I was too tired to possibly start sewing a skirt!!

Then along came Sofie who said I had to! And in my mind I could hear Tany, Summerset and the rest of you saying "Just do it!!!" (I chose to mention Tany and Summerset as I know they do not sleep - or how else do they get so much done?). To cut a long story short I finished my new skirt at 11.30 and here it is..........

I do have one small confession - I haven't hand sewn the lining to the zip yet...but I can do that tonight watching CI. I have a grey Ojay jacket that I wore with the outfit to work today.
Did my hair really look like that all day today?

The skirt has an invisible zip in the back and I bagged the lining and eliminated facings. I understitched the lining down to the seam allowances. To ensure the waist does not stretch I sewed in cotton tape.

This was so easy and I am really happy with how it turned out. And yes the fabric came with the embroidery and the sequins. Who said accountants had to be boring?



And the wearablity factor for the Ottobre top? 10 out of 10!

Ottobre 2/2007

Thank you everyone for all the nice comments you left regarding my mum's cushion. This is just the best community! By the way, she liked it very much and put it to use straight away.

This week I received the Ottobre 2/2007 - the women's issue. I ordered it after hearing such good reports from Debbie and Belinda. I made the 3/4 sleeve plain tshirt.

I followed the Ottobre instructions pretty closely, however I did not topstitch the seams (except the shoulders) as I did not have enough matching thread. I have just used hemming web for the hem for the moment. I plan to twin needle it when I get some more thread. It was a bit tricky sewing the sleeves by serging with the vent at the bottom. I will need to tidy that up a bit too with some machine work.

This is Ottobre's version:
The fabric is a rayon lycra bought last year at Rathdown Remnants in Melbourne. The trim is made from a stripe fabric purchased from Frou Frou more recently. I have plenty of both fabrics left over for future projects. The striped fabric is a mesh and when I bought it, it was with the plan to use as trims for tops. I also bought another one at the time that has more brown and olive green in it. And here is a close up of the neckline and the trim cut and applied. I used a lighter pink thread on the sleeves - works ok here but would look wrong on the hem.
I made a size 36 without any alterations. To borrow a term from Carolyn, I need to test the wearability factor before I comment on the fit. However, I must say, it went together very easily. No problems at all. Well actually just one.......the tracing! My goodness, if you think Burda is hard to follow the lines then Ottobre is much worse. Have a look at this....
I can see a few more Ottobre Woman designs in my future! Thanks ladies!! :)

Gift for mum.

It is mum's birthday this weekend and I am going to Shepparton along with Sofie and my siblings to take mum to lunch. She is now a resident of a high dependency home that has communal living quarters and she has one small room for herself.


Now what shall I give to her for a present? Chocolates - no, she won't eat them, clothes - no, she has "issues" in that department too! Then I remembered that a friend had given her a crocheted blue and brown rug for her reading chair. And noted that she was using a pillow for a cushion. Aha, a homemade matching cushion. It is useful, won't take up too much space (another issue) and is made with love.

In the stash I found some panne velvet blue fabric and some suede type poly fabric. I used the brown for the front and back and used the blue to add texture and interest to the front. I first quilted the blue to the brown front piece and then cut between each line of sewing so that the brown will peek through.

Also a requirement of the home is that every personal item must be labelled. I embroidered her name on the back..hope she likes it!

Sewing for school.

There is much talk about sewing for going back to school on blogs and on other sewing sites, so I thought I would share what happens here in Australia. We have school uniforms - yippee! At first this may sound too "uniform" and conformist but it really is very practical. Yes they are expensive but you only need the one! And you buy them, so no taking up precious sewing time on school clothes. Here are a couple of photos of the uniform my daughters wear:

On the left is Sofie on her first day at high school - February 2006. This is the summer uniform. The hat must be worn when outside and the blazer must be worn when outside school grounds unless the temp is over 28 degrees Celsius. On the right is Ellen and Marine in the winter uniform. I think they look pretty smart - and there is no trying to dress better than everyone else.

Yesterday we said goodbye to Marine who has now gone back to France. We really enjoyed having her stay with us!!

And I would like to thank Summerset for posting (very quickly) tips on prick-stitching. You guys are great! So generous with your time and talent.

Testing out some of my Birch goodies.

I thought I would test some of the goodies that I purchased on Wednesday. I particularly wanted to try the rhinestone applicator. A t-shirt would be ideal and I used this Threads article from issue 122 as a starting point.
I stitched netting behind the fabric before cutting the holes. Both the cotton lycra and the netting were purchased from MAD fabrics (a wholesale fabric shop in Melbourne). The netting was only $1 a metre, so I bought several metres at the time. My holes were very random. I used the netting for the neck band as well.

This picture shoes the left arm...
and here the right.... and a close up of the rhinestones and the netting. I am quite pleased at how it turned out. I overlocked the seams and just did one row of topstitching for the neckline and the hems.

Other items that got tried out were:
. Birch blue cutting board. This was an addition to my Olfa green one. The Olfa is just a little bit bigger but they worked well together and I did not need to move the fabric.
. Kai 28mm rotary cutter. I prefer my Olfa cutter. The Kai was harder to use and needed to be pressed at an even pressure to get a good cut - this made it feel a bit less safe also.
. Clover white marking pen. This I found to be very good and I will be using a lot. It marked quite well and comes off with ironing. I like it better than the purple one I had been using.

A fun day out!

Today I met up with Cheryl and Belinda for the annual Australian Sewing Guild get together at Birch Haberdashery in Melbourne. There was a talk first on new products and then we were let loose in the warehouse for some serious shopping!! Birch even provided refreshments - sandwiches, cake etc so it became an almost all day affair. All goodies were at wholesale prices, so about half retail. I will be starting a list now for next year!
Here is a photo of my haul. Included in there are a few purchases for my sister as well! My most expensive item was the KC Hotfix Applicator at $33. It is a pretty nifty item as it has attachments to turn it into a minnie iron as well! The cutting mats were $21.
A good day!