Following the wedding chaos it was time to find my sewing room. It was lost beneath piles of table runners, bunting and stuff! In the weeks leading up to the wedding my sewing room became a dumping ground for stuff! So last week I started digging. Look at all the projects I found.

Lining up my sewing projects. Fabric matched to pattern

I decided to match up my fabrics with patterns. I've tied them up into bundles and lined them up in order. I have WAY more projects than I realised, and many fabrics/patterns that don't go with each other, or with my wardrobe. This has been a big reality check to be more considerate when making pattern and fabric purchase to make sure they form part of an overall wardrobe plan. But first, I am just going to work through my stash before buying anything.

 

First up... Pyjamas. And probably not just for me.

Lots of pyjamas!

I made some pyjamas in the pink bike fabric last year. Haha I'm actually wearing them as I write this post! I was very excited to find some new blue bike fabric. Possibly some PJs for my husband? I also have a PJs pattern from my Mum's stash. It's been well used.

 

My Mum and Dad are actually visiting at the moment. Hopefully today I have time to take my Mum shopping. She is getting into knitting again and maybe we can find some nice wool... Hint, hint. I would love a cosy jumper for winter and my knitting history shows that is unlikely to happen!

 

Not only have I been working on making nice curtains for our apartment (which make a huge difference by-the-way), I am also revamping my blog. Actually I should say I am "vamping" my blog as it was never really "vamped" to begin with. Luckily there are heaps of free templates out there to get me started and I also know enough HTML to get me around the code*. So what has taken me so long... What design to choose?  I just don't know

Do I want clean and simple, or fun and quirky? Should I make some background and header graphics or keep it plain. Oh dilemma! But a fun dilemma. Please excuse this blog over the next few days while I work it out. I am sure it will look like a multiple personality blog while I chop and change templates and elements until I get it right. I will also be stalking a lot of blogs to determine what blog elements I like the most.

If you have a blog I would love to know what you think about templates and design. Or what design elements do you appreciate in a blog. I am assuming that bright yellow backgrounds with red text are not a favoured option?? One thing that gets to me is blog features that do not work on mobile devices.

I promise not to burn your eyes like this

*I won an award in my first year of uni for best website design in an IT multimedia class. HILARIOUS experience. All the lovely nerds in my class wanted to help me (because I'm female means that I shouldn't be good at something like HTML right? Actually I think I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they were just excited to have a girl to talk to). Where they all made black background, green text websites for things like Xbox I made a website for a fashion store... 

Only days after making it home from our honeymoon I chained myself to the couch with my iPad and a cup of tea and caught up on months of blog posts. Unfortunately there were a lot of things I missed out on including the Colette Laurel competition and the international sewing swap on Kestrel Makes. But I was just in time for a wonderful Melbourne sewing bloggers excursion to the Hollywood costumes exhibition at ACMI.

It was great to meet some new Melbourne sewists and see the amazing work at the exhibition. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of the group and we weren't allowed to take photos of the exhibition. So I got nuthing to show ya! But I can describe my impression of the exhibition. Firstly, it was busy! In the end I missed a little section because I couldn't handle all the people and the traffic jams in front of the costumes. That section wasn't of that much interest to me anyway as the costumes were from movies like Brokeback Mountain where the items were sourced instead of sewn. Secondly, it was a little creepy. The mannequins had tv screens as heads with very slow moving head shots of the actors who wore them, complete with eye twitches and blinks. Yep - creepy! Thirdly, it was dark and the walls were black. I couldn't see anything of the famous little black dress from Breakfast at Tiffany's. sigh

But, the costumes were lovely and they were what we were there to see! I was very surprised by how raunchy and revealing some of the costumes from the 20's were. It turns out things got a little crazy for a while there before some strict codes came in and made movies all conservative again (until recent times). It was also interesting to see the colourful garments that were destined for black and white movies. Overall there was some amazing, intricate and imaginative work, oh to have a Hollywood budget for my sewing projects. The sequins, the beads, the pleats, the complicated patterns and pieces, the head pieces, the period features, the fabrics! Just stunning.

So if you haven't been yet I definitely recommend it. I would also recommend trying to pick a quiet day.
Huge thanks to the lovely and super organised TJ at the Perfect Nose for organising and everyone else who attended (including Jenny & Emily) I look forward to seeing you again soon, especially if it includes another meal at Cookie.

Hello my patient blog following friends. Good news! I'm back. Please forgive my absence, it's been a crazy few months. But rest assured, although I haven't been blogging I have certainly been sewing.
So what kind of things have I been sewing? Lets start with metres and metres and then even more metres of table runners in hessian and lace, I've stitched about 100m of bunting, I made a stylish bow tie and pocket square as well as a pretty blue waist sash. I also made a white dress....

Have you guessed?

Let's see if you were right

A sneaky little picture in the outdoor photobooth

Yep, I've gone and got myself married. Some of you might be thinking well how can this be, there was no mention of an engagement last time this lazy one bothered to post. Well that's because I decided to pop the question to my lovely man in January. And with a magical and slightly stressful mix of circumstances (that do not include pregnancy thank you very much) we ended up pulling together the wedding of our dreams in less than four months just in time to catch the last of the magical April weather in Melbourne.

Once I have the professional photos I will do a wedding post and show of all the sewing and DIY touches we managed to include. I tell you what I was sewing like a demon before the wedding. (And enlisted my Mum and MIL to help me too)
Before I mislead you too far the white dress doesn't actually refer to my wedding dress. In the end I decided to leave that to the amazing Colette Dinnigan haha. But I did sew up a fab little white number for my hens party. More on that soon.

The little white dress for my Hens, and my lovely waiter. (Dress is Simplicity 2053)

So thanks for sticking with me, hopefully I can catch up on some posts and keep you entertained... Until the next crazy adventure.