Fabric-a-brac 2014

Hello dears! How is your weekend going? 

For me, this weekend was successfully spent splurging my pay on vintage fabric and patterns, eating bagels, listening to ukulele bands and "sewcialising" with Susan from Measure Twice/Cut once and lots of other fabric lovers

The shops, crowd and merchandise was substantially bigger then last year, which was awesome. If you remember I attended last years Fabric-a-brac at Newtown and had quite a bit of luck with my buys - you can see last years post here. I didn't spend as much time in the notions baskets or button jars this time - I had my eyes on fabric and the huge amount of vintage patterns which filled the boxes, cute suitcases and baskets around the tables

Photo by Susan Goodwin

Less is more

Hello one and all! 

How are you keeping? I think it's time for a nice short and sweet post. Life is all so busy and crazy lately, I need to re-centre myself and get back to basics 

Less is more is the theme today - enjoy my lovelies

Me Made May week 2

Dear lovely readers, guess what? Monday was my bloggy birthday!

Hip, hip, hooray!!!!

Thank you for sticking around and listening to my nonsense this past year! I'm so darn excited and grateful to have you all popping by every now and again for a look. The frequency at which I post has definitely slowed down from those first few months, but I guess it was all very exciting back then, and it still is, I'm just such a busy little bee of late. 

I wanted to post this on Monday, but man I've been sooo tired lately after work that I crash out after dinner, I haven't sewn in about a week, but that's ok cause this weekend end is gonna be spent behind that machine!

I'm still prepping the pieces for my McCalls coat, which is taking ages cause I have to baste organza to each of the coat pieces. Cause I chose cotton sateen as the coat material it would basically be useless without some sort of under lining so that's what the organza is for! 

So anyway onto the me made's then? 

Eurovision - 1960s style!

I love many things, but each year in May, the thing I love the most is the Eurovision song contest!

Yes, quite seriously I am a Eurovision fiend. When my good friend still lived in Australia we would watch together and play drinking games and have a giggle at the insane costumes and dance around and smile when our favourites would come on. 

Eurovision has a quite a decent following in Australia, being that we are a multicultural country who in the past 60 years has seen immigrants from all over Europe and who are still in touch with their families in Greece, Italy, Turkey, Germany and so on. And as I have Lithuanian heritage I also get to legitimately cheer on my country even though their entries aren't always stellar!

We watch it on time delay however, so I have to restrain my Facebooking and news watching during the weekend so that I don't accidentally see who the winner is!

The most outstanding part of Eurovision is always the fashion and costumes. Some are amazing architectural pieces, some a plain letting the singer shine and some are multi dimensional giving the wearer the chance to change costumes mid-song for higher impact. The show is voted on by the viewers, so the song, set, costumes and dancers must all be entertaining. 

But back in our favourite decade, (before the famous ABBA performance), Eurovision was a little more restrained and certainly didn't reach the dramatic proportions that it does now

Lets take a look at the sweet and demure looks of 60s Eurovision!

Me Made May - week one

Hey there fine people of the internet? How have you been?

Last week was another nightmare week at work so I did pretty much no sewing and totally forgot about Me Made May!!

I knew May 1st was coming up, but for other reasons, and then May 2nd came and I think the only me-made item I wore was a knitted scarf, but it wasn't anything to sniff at!

So I tried to make up for the two days I lost by wearing my pledged me-mades on the weekend! 

Impromptu swing dresses

It's Sunday, and I have to go back to work tomorrow after 10 relaxing days off! But happily I think this has been the most productive work break in a while! 

On Friday, just for funsies I whipped up a new dress so I could have something to wear to my first day back at work tomorrow. Something to help ease back into the work week that was fun and easy that I knew would fit without any problems, and here she is Simplicity 7436!

Green goings on

Hello lovely people! How was your Easter?

I'm still on holiday because I was a smart cookie and took off the 3 days between Easter Monday and Anzac day which falls on Friday this year. Quite a lot of other people in my office did the same thing, so I guess it would be somewhat un-Australian not to extend it out to a 10 day break!

So, what have I been up to these past few days? Well quite a lot of cleaning out of my cupboards - nothing good. Just trying to get rid of those naff things that I've bought over the years that don't fit me or my style any more. Some things I've put into storage because I cant bear to let them go - kind of like an outpatients ward. If I don't see it, it will be easier to let go of later!

And I've also been watching this interesting 5 part series on Youtube - "The 60's - The Beatles decade". Basically it tries to follow the ups and downs of the Beatles in line with the changes of the 60s, focusing mainly on England and its own political and social story. 

You can watch parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 here

I also took time to take photos of all the little projects I've been doing here and there. Repair jobs and modifications as well.