Minnie Bag

 

Another bag.... More Furnishing fabric, lined with black and white spot.  With the largest self covering button I could find.

Take care Suzy

Short by that much...

I'm making a quilt for display for work.......... And I'm short by 10cm for the backing!

Back to the drawing board, and it will teach me to actually read instructions.

Take care Suzy

My First Cake is Done

I did it, I have officially made and decorated my first cake. I am so proud of myself. I knew I could do it, but that little seed in the back of my head I had my doubt. My mother make and decorates the most gorgeous cake. In our extended family, if you have a cake made by Mum, your chances of the marriage working is a 95%. Not bad at all.

Yes I was dared to make this cake, and I might say glad I was. It was worth killing a Barbie doll, pouring over books and the net. Also remembering the good times helping my Mum. Sitting around the brown wooden veneer table making the piping bags, licking the spoon, decorating the biscuits with the left overs. Memories that are so sweet and loving that just going down this track has made this memorable. 

My mother was at the end of the phone cheering my on, if I has a question she answered it. I had a few “oh Bugger” moments. Like remembering that the cake needed to be cold not rock hard solid, and putting plastic icing on a cake when its like that is “not good”, a panicked phone call was needed.

Youngest gremlin sat across the table from me kneading the icing for me, just like when I was a child. When I had finished and stood back, I was silently doing a happy dance inside. I did it. Simple as it was I did it.

I rang Mum, told her and her words were “ well done , I had no doubt, It was you that seriously thought you couldn’t” 

Why I had doubt, maybe it is I didn’t believe I could do something as good as my Mum. Maybe I thought that my memories where all wrong, but they weren't, they are still as good as pure as the white icing I used.

Last night when we all got together for the belated bridal shower, they all oohed and arrged over it.  Thanks girls, and the "Bride that was, was very reluctant to cut.  She wanted to keep it looking so good, but after I told her that if she didn't we would all stave it was cut.

Take care

Suzy

Death to barbie

Yesterday was a really funny and disturbing day. Youngest gremlin had pleasure in dismembering a barbie doll. Before you band me from never touching a barbie again, please be aware the the said mentioned doll was bought from the “Salvos”and we did buy one that was determinately pre loved, haircut real short and had no clothes.

The D/B is to be used in a cake for one of my girlfriends bridal shower. It might be seven weeks after the event, and I have been dared to make one. Putting it out there that I am going to learn how to decorate cakes has people coming out of the woodwork.

Youngest gremlin would like me to mention that it was me who used the garden shears to cut off the arms. The arms where a tad difficult to pull out. I couldn’t let him completely loose with those.

We where going to post photos, but just in case there are people out there that don't want to see the death we decided not to. I decided to use this one instead.

In a very sad and demented way, why did I found it very satisfying. I am not going to analyze that.

Take Suzy and youngest Gremlin

Daisy Bag

Today was a day for hiding out in the sewing room, thanks to the famous school holidays.  PS3 and computers where ruling the world of the gremlins.  I really do love my two boys, but sometimes they drive me to sew.  Hence the bag...

I wanted a bag that was easy to wear with jeans.  Big enough to hold all my stuff, that seems to collect in my bags.  And basically just wanted another one.  No one can have enough bags I feel.

I went through my remnant bags and found this lovely furnishing fabric.  The chocolate brown lined with a yellow 1930's print.  The flower was made of scraps of 30's fabric from a quilt a made 18 months ago. Ric Rac was found in the bottom of the barrel, so to speak.

It only took a hour was start to finish, I was quite impressed with the bag. Youngest gremlin then had fun taking it outside to take photos. So thank you youngest xxx

Take care

Suzy

Soap Soap and more Soap

Things I have learnt in this Soap month


1.Well nobody told me that I would have to wait 4 weeks for cold proess soap to cure......
2. Its real fun
3. It could become a addiction
4. Its really fun.
5. I could of blown myself up!
6. The info out there is amazing
7. Everyone I know is getting soap this year for pressies
8. The recipes are really easy to follow
9. I have used nearly 4l of olive oil in the past three days
10.  Essential oil is really expensive...
11. Castor Oil is not as easy to find as you think....

To start I went to the library and search the net, gotta love the techie world we live in! The books I read back to front, then re-read them again was
Making Candles & Soaps For Dummies by Kelly Ewing
The Everything Soapmaking Book: Recipes and Techniques for Creating Colorful and Fragrant Soaps by Alicia Grosso

The web sites  that I found  that really helped
www.millersoap.com/index.html
www.teachsoap.com/soapmakingmethods.html
www.aussiesoapsupplies.com.au/
and heaps others...

The Tablecoth Dress

My life here is not always normal, far from it.  Two delightful boys, a husband and now two dogs.  I feel that sometimes I walk into the "twilight" zone.

Take for example the "The Tablecloth dress".

Well late last year we the family had a wedding to attend.  I had decided to make a dress, instead of trolling the stores. Store shopping scares me, I mentally work out the fabric costs and making times and feel ill.  It is the bargain shopper/sewer coming out in me.

I found a beautiful a beautiful cotton sateen in the furnishing department where I work, okay it was on the clearance table.  I love the colours, so I bought and made.  I wizzed it out in less than two hours, whoo hooo I thought, done and dusted I thought.

Oh no not in my house. I proudly walked out to show the boys, feeling on top of the world.  It had hidden all the yucky parts, and looked pretty and me look taller (ok, it could of been the 12cm heels).  I swanned out, feeling damn fine, hot to trot, red carpet ready.  My delightful three gremlins told me I was "great", "beautiful", "looked not fat", "happy", "okay for the wedding", "don't kill yourself on those things".  Self confidence on top of the world.  Ready to take on the world, and the family wedding.

With that, the happy gremlins all depart..  

The oldest child gremlin walks up towards his room saying himself

"I still think she looks like a Tablecloth on legs" Yes I heard.

Yes I did make another dress, same pattern but dark gray.  I wasn't loosing the shoes... Still haven't wore it either.

 

Simplicity 2886

Take care Suzy

2010 Time for change I think

Times are a changing and I feel I do too.

So I have made a promise to myself too do things that make challenge myself.  This could be craft wise, thinking wise or just putting me out of my depth so to speak.....

So January is Soap making

February is Cake decorating

March is reading "Pride and Prejudice" without throwing the book across the room....(good luck I say) and Northanger Abbey both by Jane Austen.  I love romance books so I wil try the classics.

April  is to learn how to Felt....

May is the 2009 Pulitzer for Fiction: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and  2009 Nobel Prize for Literature: Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums. Well if the experts say there good, I say why not.

June is to get enough nerve to enter a quilt into a show... Well if get enough nerve that is...

So that is the first six months and I will still do all my other crafty stuff as well.  All I can say is let the year begin, even though it is half way through January. 

Take Care Suzy