Flora maker....

I've been busy making crochet flowers.I've stream-lined the process, so know I'm steam-rolling along!
Just not sure what I am going to do with them all!

But it's winter here in Melbourne, maybe I should scatter them in the garden!

Up in the sky....

I just got home from a shopping/art gallery visit in the city, looked up and saw this in the sky.Jumps to where or why is unknown!

....yay!......

I'm a winner - finally!
I won a clutch purse from yellowgoat & I love it!
And I have already found a use for it...... for keeping my digital camera safe on excursions! Brilliant!Check out Yellowgoats blog: http://yellowgoatdesign.blogspot.com/

One down.....

Great news, did I forget to tell you? The green & white blanket is finally finished! Well, I actually finished it about 3 weeks ago and tossed it aside because it needed blocking as the edges were curling up. But alas, I did some housework and uncovered the blanket cowering away on a chair, so I quickly got out the iron and steam ironed the edges flat!
Voila, one finished blanket.........
It only took about 20 years to finish..........

What a 'shirrful' mess

I bought some great fabric with a brillant idea to make a shirred dress for my sister-in-law.
I then scoured the internet and found some brilliant ideas on how to make the dress.
Simple, that's what I thought, Simple.

Huh but no! No, no, no, not simple, not in my household.
Firstly, I had to move the furniture to find enough room on the floor to cut the material.
Then I had to pull the vacuum cleaner out of the closet to clean the floor.
Then it took about 3 goes to get the fabric to lay smooth enough to cut it.
Then I had to drag my sewing machine out from under the spare bed.
Then I had to stop and have a cuppa!
Then it was ok, I was on a roll, I wound the shirring elastic onto the bobbin and threaded the machine with normal cotton.
I managed to sew straight lines without the sewing machine eating the material. Perfect!
Then I popped the shirring bobbin into the machine, and off I went.
Fun, it was fun!
And then I finished the first bobbin, took out the work and examined it.
BUGGER!
I had forgotten to turn the dress inside out and had managed to sew all the shirring elastic onto the front of the dress (not the inside).
"No worries" said my partner. "No-one can tell, it looks good."
Huh, it didn't look good in my eyes.
So rather, than unstitching all the elastic and leaving marks in the fabric, I had enough fabric leftover to start again.
So, off I set, cutting, stitching and shirring all over again.
But after the first bobbin was used up rather quickly, I turned over and examined the material - the elastic had caught up all in one huge clump and looked hideous. Argghhhhh.
I decided to give it up as a bad experiment and have cast it aside with the hopes of turning it into some sort of weird bag in the future.
Don't be put off by my disasterous attempts, Shirring is rather fun and quite easy - it's just that I have trouble with new things and don't have the patience to follow instructions to a T!

Here are the links of great Shirring guides available on the internet - give 'em a go!

http://www.kukyideas.com/journal/2007/04/shirred-dress-tutorial.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsSZTHyCLyU

And the winner is.....

Congratulations to Tania of myrtleandeunice blog, you are the lucky winner of the needlefelt necklace!

A very sophisicated method of choosing the winner was used - by asking my partner to pick a number between 1 and 16, as there were 16 entries in the competition. The number 14 was chosen!

Congratulations once again Tania, I have sent you an email, but you can also send an email to me via my profile - remember to provide your postal details so I can pop the necklace in the mail to you.

Stay tuned for another competition in the coming months.