Bustling About.

Yesterday I looked like a 1960's interpretation of an 1860's Western saloon girl via some early noughties bad sewing. Well. I tried to looked like Miss Kitty from "Gunsmoke."

What do you think? Is that a look? 60's television Western saloon girl?

The skirt has images of bustling women and in a vague early 2000's interpretation of that, I made it with tucks at the hem and some experimental vertical shirring in the back to create some poof.

If you look closely you can read the skirt -
diary excerpts of a bike ride that mentions places like Cape Ann and a picnic at Pigeon Cove, a visit to Rafe's Chasm and Norman's Woe.

Is it really polite to mention Rafe's Chasm?? Does it possibly has something to do with poor Norman's woe?

Anyway - feel free to read my skirt - just don't look too closely at how badly I made it.

I do wonder who this woman is - especially as her face is placed right on my front bottom, as the kids would say.

The lace shirt is quite a commitment to wear as it is like Miss Mary Mack all dressed in black with silver buttons all down her back and I sometimes have anxiety about getting stuck in clothes. This shirt needs attendants to help you dress!

But if you want to see frills...you have to check out Mel's shirt over at Bag and a Beret! Now THAT'S some FRILLS! And do watch her short movie...what that woman does with a vibrator...well...it clears the sinuses...

Summer Sewing! Kids Shorts!

Will they look back at these photos and the Summer of 2014/15 as the daggy Summer their mother made them half a dozen pairs of shorts out of any bit of fabric lying around? Okay. Probably.

But so far I haven't resorted to matching shorts for the twins nor have I sunk to the Von Trapp family level of using curtain fabric. Not yet anyway.

I have cut up and recycled two wrap around skirts though.... The pattern was too high-waisted and too short at first... but I think I've made the adjustments now. How many more can I make before our beach holiday???

Frocktober Day 11 Caring and Shirring

What do you know about ovarian cancer?

Do you know it can't be detected in a pap smear?

Did you know that the symptoms can range from loss of appetite to bloating?

Did you know that in Australia one woman dies from ovarian cancer every 10 hours?

As women, we need to understand the symptoms  of ovarian cancer and the risk factors. All too often women are too busy caring for others to take notice of their own health. 
Frocktober is a way we can help each other become aware of ovarian cancer as well as raising funds to support research and the development of an early detection test.

So I'm sharing some links and some information.

(from the Cancer Council Australia website)

Symptoms and diagnosis

There may be no symptoms or symptoms may be non-specific and include:

• persistent abdominal pain
• pelvic or back pain
• cramps, swelling, bloating
• symptoms of urinary frequency or changed bowel habits with constipation or diarrhoea and/or nausea
• fullness after food, weight loss, loss of appetite
• tiredness
• painful intercourse or vaginal bleeding.

(From the Women's Cancer Foundation Ovarian Cancer Institute website)

What is ovarian cancer?

Ovarian cancer is a type of cancer that begins in a woman’s ovaries. Some of the cells in one or both ovaries start to grow abnormally and develop into cancer.

Around 90 per cent of ovarian cancers start on the outer covering of the ovary. This is known as epithelial ovarian cancer. Whilst only 1400 women will be diagnosed with this disease every year, more than 900 of these women will die.

Not great odds are they?

The money you donate to frocktober goes to the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation

(from their website)

Our Mission

1. The development and implementation of an early detection program for ovarian cancer

2. Improving the mortality rate, management and long-term survival of women with ovarian cancer

3. Gaining fundamental understanding of the causes of ovarian cancer

I encourage everyone to read up. I also encourage you all to donate HERE. Because with a deadly cancer that has no or minimal symptoms, an early detection test is the key! 

Now for the FROCK. It's a colourful cotton print frock, vintage Sportsgirl, with a shirred bodice and SHIRRED SLEEVES. And yes - I'm shir you guessed (see what I did there?) that I cut it shorter and am wearing the scrap in my hair.

It's a craft lady sort of dress and I teamed it with hand crafted accessories (made by me) worthy of the Golden Hands Encyclopedia of CRAFTS All of which was appropriate for a crafternoon in the sewing room cutting out a 70's dress pattern from 70's fabric. 

Mind you I think I stuffed it up trying to alter the size. SIGH! But If the frock fits, then you can be SHIR I'll wear it! See you all tomorrow!

Yee- haw for Spring Sewing!

It's just a simple gathered skirt - the fabric is so good that it seemed an obvious way to display it. I can almost hear the coyote's howling and it makes me want to sing "I'm an old cow hand from the Rio Grande"
Now I'm riding off into the sunset - well actually I'm catching a tram into the city..."yipee yi yo kayah"

*thanks to my little photographer Joe who is only 5 years old

Learning to stitch

I have been remiss - all this encouraging other children to get crafty with my re-sew-cool sewing kits and I hadn't even bothered to teach my own kids to sew. I know! Bad mother! On the weekend they were imploring me to help them make softies and Sunday turned out to be the perfect rainy afternoon to get crafty in the back room.

Pepper and Wanda drew a picture of the critter they planned to sew. (Yes, for identical twins they have very different drawing styles.)

 




















I helped Joe with his shape. Then we selected felt and got cutting and stitching. Pepper didn't have the patience to wait her turn and so just got started with glue - which is perfectly cool I think. She stitched the outer seams.

Joe showed surprisingly good concentration and managed to sew on a button.

Wanda was very patient and tenacious. She even put a pocket on her softie.

  Wanda has called her creature "Pom Pom", Joe has called his owl "Parsley" and Pepper has called her bunny "Hermione".

Best of all - all of the softies are made entirely from recycled materials. 

* and just a postscript: after we finished I gave Joe a hair cut! He doesn't look like a wannabe Paul Weller mod now!

A farewell quilt.

As you have probably guessed from the previous post our retiring school principal, Dionne, is an extremely well loved and respected member of our community. Some of the crafty parents at the school wanted to put our efforts towards creating a keepsake for her. This is what eventuated.

A sumptuously warm plum coloured quilt made from recycled jumpers.

With so many crafty people participating, was it a case of too many cooks spoil the broth? Never. In fact we proved the other adage to be true: many hands do in fact make light work. 

We enjoyed each other's company, shared our skills and talents - along with tea, sunshine,stories and cake. And their was plenty of warm unspoiled broth too.

Justine washed the jumpers, and then, with my industrial cutting machine, I was naturally in charge of cutting the many 12 cm x 12 cm square (under strict advice from task master Karen to be accurate! Yikes...no pressure.) 

We met at Jenny's warm light filled house and lay the squares out on the huge bench. Next thing multiple hands were rearranging and changing contrasting squares in a fairly hilarious felty crafty game of tetris!

Each row was labeled and stacked then the dueling sewing machines were brought out and lifted onto Jenny's generous dining table (I must point out that everything at Jenny's place is larger than life and of generous proportions - from the huge welcoming front door, to the huge sun-filled windows, to the huge old dog, Betty and most of all to the huge generous nature of Jenny herself.) 

Karen, an experienced professional maker, backed the quilt with a natural coloured linen and made her own bias binding from wool suiting.

Then all hands were on deck for hand stitching leaf designs and squares.Jenny finished it with a hand embroidered message in the corner and a colour co-ordinated bag to keep the quilt in. 

As you can see, Dionne loved it.  

And we loved making it. I learned so much from these women. Community-minded crafty company - the best.

March playlist

 A new month has dawned!
Here's what I'm up to, in general, some of the time, this month...

Making: Many things for our school fete!* Every scrap of fabric is being whipped up into peasant dresses and tops!

Reading:  "The Secret River" by Kate Grenville  - for my new book club! I've joined a little book club comprising of a few mothers from the school. Kate Grenville is an acclaimed Australian author and this should be a cracker of a book to kick things off with and one I have wanted to read for some time.




Listening to: Latest Mavis Staples album

Watching : True Detective (isn't everyone??)

Wearing: tennis dresses...

 

....on the court - for ladies tennis!


*there will be more posts on the school fete making in due course!!!

Don't be scared to cut and alter crochet garments!!!

Well it's not everyday you find a complete crochet suit in mint condition....so much work put into it - beautifully made - of course I had to have it. Alas is was a little bit big, making me look like a saggy baggy Nanna. So I took it in.

I've made crochet garments before from blankets so I have cut and sewn crochet before which probably made me brave enough to tackle this....

As long as you sew it/overlock it/zig-gzag and seal the edges pretty much straight after cutting, you should be okay and not an unravelled mess. Then wear it! Preferably with a pussy bow blouse and big hair.

And as a friend said when she saw me dropping the kids at school, "well, it's not everyday you see someone in so much aqua crochet."