June 13th is Sewing Machine day!

Today, June 13th is sewing machine day! (Whoooo!)

The sewing machine has existed in many forms since 1755 (258 years!) and many variations were invented and patented over time eventually leading to a "patent war" in the 1850s between Isaac Singer and Elias Howe.

Singer won but had to pay out Howe with some of his earnings as Howe owned the original patent. Even though it was 20 years old at the time. 

The Bliss of Mrs Blossom

I picked up this fabric from Fabric-a-brac (blogged here) and I knew it had to become a dress! The fabric is good enough that I could have even made a jacket – but alas there was only 2 meters!

Blog Society + Giveaway!

Yesterday I attended the launch of Blog Society  and their workshop ‘Learning the art of digital story telling”. It was hosted by Jaclyn Carlson from Little Paper Trees and also included Jen Bishop from InteriorsAddict  and Vivian Mansour from Ish and Chi 

We then broke off into groups to learn a few new skills on styling and photography. I don’t often get to do nicely styled vignettes on this blog, but it was still useful and there are ways I know I can adapt them into sewing life. My group was hosted by Jessica Bellef – Stylist for Temple and Webster  Photographers Milton Gan and Emma Scamell

We learnt about using scale, texture, colour, harmony and shape. Here are some of my attempts…

It was a really useful day and I meant lots of amazing people from all different genres. I was so great to meet my fellow Sydney bloggers;

Noah and Willow (Events planning)

Mscritique (Beauty, Style, Food, Travel)

Lipstick and Cake (food, beauty, lifestyle)

Annette Wilson (Photography)

Antipodean Diaries (Beauty, Style, Food, Home)

The Urchin Collective (Life, style & Curiosities)

The Style Project (Interior Design)

Potty Mouth Mama (life, beauty, fashion and everything else)

Eat Read Love (gorgeous styling, food and photography)

Amanda Fuller of Kaleidoscope (Interior & Graphic design)

Amanda May  (Fashion and Styling)

Dom Morris of Crafted  (crafty tutorials and more)

There was so many wonderful people there I didn’t get to meet everyone (If you were there, let me know and ill add you to my shout out list above!)

After such a great day of networking and learning, I popped down to the book store and picked up some new sewing books – including this nifty zine Fix your Clothes by Raileigh Briggs 

It’s a cute little book which has some very handy hits for repairing your clothes like sewing on buttons, mending seams, darning holes, and caring for certain fabrics.

Pretty basic stuff – but I have met people who didn't know how to sew a button and this zine would have been great to pass on!

As a sewer (and now blogger) I can never stop learning. There are so many techniques out there that I’d love to know and become an expert at. Reading other blogs, going to workshops and meeting other people all help with us learning more and more about our craft or life in general.

To win this book all you have to do is tell me something you would really like to learn. It doesn't have to be sewing related (but that would be good so I can set up some tutorials!)

I will pick a winner and have it sent out to you wherever you are in the world!

If you’re a pretty good sewer and you’re not keen for the zine (rhymes!) let me know in you comment

Cat xo 

The Fairest Of the Seasons

Nico - The Fairest Of the Seasons

It's getting mighty cold now that winter has arrived in Sydney. While everyone in the North is enjoying the first days of summer, we're settling in for the long and boring winter.

Boring because our winter has none of the festive benefits of a northern winter;

No Christmas

No Snow

No outdoor ice skating

No public holidays unless you count the Queen’s Birthday Public holiday this coming Monday and after that there's nothing till October!

Very boring and cold and DRY! And the daylight hours are of course shorter making it hard to take decent outfit photos for you all.

The Pattie Suit - Progress report

I received my fabric in the mail last Friday for the jacket/skirt combination that I was talking about here.

Before I started, I attempted to read through the instructions, which were the biggest load of gobbledygook, so I threw them in the bin and took out my favourite sewing book - The Readers digest complete guide to sewing.

It has an entire section on tailoring a jacket and recommends techniques that make way more sense and the pictures are clearer.

I also decided to name this the Pattie Suit, because it’s shorter than "jacket skirt combination" and because I'm currently reading Pattie Boyd's biography - Wonderful life. So my sewing will be embedded with quotes and stories from Pattie's life.

So far I have finished the body of the jacket and will move on to the collar, and facings next.

This is what's happened so far

Baby you can drive my car

I’ve been working on this early 60s coat for awhile and I finished the hand stitching this weekend.

Initially it had a collar but I didn’t have enough fabric to make a full front facing so off came the collar!

The fit is similar to the 50s style car coats – it’s shapeless and only has 2 small darts at the back to stop it looking too sack like. The pattern I used was Butterick 2624

Fabric-a-brac

This Saturday I woke up nice and early to catch the train into Newtown for the Fabric-a-brac pop up shop.

Newtown is one of those special places in a big city. You can dress as you wish and no one will blink an eye. It's the alternative centre of Sydney and you'll find many shops to support people's love for vintage clothing or mid-century home wears as well as piercing and tattoo parlours, cyber Goth outfitters and plenty of hairdressers who will style your hair to match your outfit. In international terms it could probably be compared to Camden Town in London or Portland, Oregon. It's become very popular for upper middle class families and lots of high end boutiques have moved in lately, but that's ok. Its underbelly is still owned by the weird and wonderful!

My friends and I Ioved it so much as teenagers we would replace the words of Petula Clarks Downtown with Newtown and sing it on the train on the way there!