tiny happy

a bigger smock top

I found this old maternity top pattern a while ago, thinking the sleeveless design would make a good summer top- you know, since I seem to love that smock-style so much.

I made it up this week, in some Japanese quilting fabric I had been hoarding for a while- olive green with an Umeboshi blossom pattern.

It was fun to make, but I did end up having to make a lot of adjustments- the finished garment was really big and tent-like, so I ended up taking out the zip I had laboriously sewn in, and cutting a fairly big panel of fabric out from both sides. Hmm, perhaps using a maternity pattern wasn't the easiest way to go about making this top. I also omitted the front buttons and apron-like pockets, which I kind of regret now.

I replaced the back-zip with a small hook-and-eye closure instead, and it's still easy enough to take on and off without it.

My next job is to make another for a friend who actually is pregnant.

some green, and zips

We've been having the trademark temperamental weather of spring... sunny and hot one minute, and torrential rain the next. At least it's good for the greenness of things- like our local park, for instance.

Sometimes in the mornings, we have the whole place to ourselves, which needs to be celebrated with frenzied running around the trees:

and there are always little ladybugs to be found:

In crafty happenings, I think I may have finally mastered zips, thanks to this zipper tutorial at twelve22, a great crafty blog with lots of sweet dogs in it. Thanks to Katie for bringing it to my attention. xx

Here are two little coin purses I made using recycled fabric and zips: the one on the right is made from old barkcloth fabric, and the bird purse has one of those great, clunky metal zip-pulls. I like those.

a smock top

I made Keira a little smock-style top yesterday, from an old pattern I found at the op-shop: Simplicity #6923. In a sturdier fabric, this pattern would make great little aprons for toddlers, but I made Keira's in some lightweight, vintage cotton which will be great for when the weather gets hotter, by itself or over a swimsuit. Both Arlo and Keira have been blessed (?) with very pale skin, and now we're suffering from the biggest ozone-hole we may ever experience, I'll need to think of some good ways to cover their skin up this summer.

It's a really simple little top, finished in bias tape, which I might finally be getting the hang of using- don't look too closely though...  The main reason I used this pattern was for the cap-sleeve style... I've always loved it, perhaps because it's quite 80s-ish, and therefore reminds me of clothes I wore as a child? I'm not sure.

Here's the front:

and the back, which does up with bias-tape ties.

I had to give Keira some jellybeans so she'd sit still long enough for me to take this picture. Oh, the trials of being a child model...

dancing skirts

It was a busy, social weekend at our place, and we don't even celebrate Thanksgiving here! Hope you had a lovely time with family and friends if you did.

One thing I am grateful for at the moment is friendship. We saw a lot of friends over the weekend, some having travelled from faraway places, and others that are regular visitors to my stall at the market on Saturday morning, who bring their coffee and chat behind my table. We've started having barbeques in the evening, a true sign of summer. Here's a new innovation, now the weather is warmer: the children eating outside, while we are having a nice quiet time inside at the table. Can't believe we hadn't thought of that till now!

I tried out a design I had been thinking about doing for a while now: these little 'dancing skirts', which might be nice for summer:

They're all made from vintage cotton fabric, and the brown one has a raw-edge applique of a poppy on it. They're quite full, and reach just below Keira's knees, so now I'll try to work out a couple of different sizes so I can put a few on my craft stall.

the magic number

The other day I noticed, from looking at my site stats, that nearly 1000 comments had been left on this here lil'  blog. Can you believe it?  I certainly can't. It continues to amaze me that you might come and check in with me every now and then, see what I've been up to, and write nice little notes for me to find afterwards.

Thank you. For all the support and interest, lovely mail, emails and just the thoughtful comments you leave on anything from storing baby hair to making pants from t-shirts. I am so thrilled to be part of the wonderful online community of crafty people, and even more amazing to me, is that I've actually made a lot of new friends, from all over the world. Believe me, being a fairly shy and awkward person for most of my life, I still can't get over it.

I made this bag from some red wool and lined it with some 1960's blue and red striped fabric, to give away to the person who left the 1000th comment on here, thinking that might happen today. But when I logged into Typepad this morning, that number had already been reached...

So, if you'd like it, Amisha, it's off to you this weekend...

sadness, and aprons

Thank you for all your well wishes for Minnie. When Tom got home from school he managed to reach high enough in the tree to return her to the nest. We saw her mother fly in to her with lots of bugs and things, but this morning when I went outside to check that she hadn't fallen out again, I got a nasty surprise. The neighbour's big black cat was scrambling down the trunk of the tree, with a dead Minnie in his mouth. I decided not to tell Arlo and Keira about it. They'll be expecting her to fly out of the tree one of these days, with her wings healed.

For pure escapism, I'm going to talk about aprons. I've never participated in Tie One On before, and it's typical that I would decide to just when there's a simpler version of it taking place, but, well, I'm lazy. November's assignment is to show a picture of your favourite apron, and post a recipe which is a favourite in your family.

So, here's my favourite apron:

It's a bright patchwork of 50's fabrics, fairly loud and joyful, as if to sing, 'come on, it's not so bad...' while you wash the dishes. I found it a long time ago at the Recycle Centre in our town. It's reversible, too, with a ric-rac-trimmed pocket:

For the more elegant occasions, such as serving cocktails or canapes. (Whatever they are.) Or perhaps just for when the cheerful side got too dirty?

And here's a recipe I make a lot, so I guess I can call it a 'family recipe' now. It's great to make for a weekday dinner when you don't have anything too special in your pantry, or, if you have people coming over for dinner, you can make it to accompany other, richer curry and dahl dishes. I think it originally came from the book 'The Vegetarian Adventure' (1988) by Rowan Bishop and Sue Carruthers (NZers- you can find this easily 2nd-hand on Trade Me) which is excellent, reminds me of my childhood, and has lots of yummy stuff in it.

Potato and Pea Curry

1tsp each of poppy seeds, mustard seeds, ground black pepper

3 tsp each of ground cumin, tumeric, coriander

1 chopped onion and 4 cloves crushed garlic

approx. 4 small dried chillies, chopped

2 cups peas (frozen or fresh)

800gm peeled and diced potatoes, par-boiled

3 fresh or a tin of chopped tomatoes

2 cups water, 2 tsp salt

1 tbs tamarind paste (optional)

Soak the tamarind paste in the water. Break it up a little, and remove any seeds. Heat some oil in a big pan and saute the onion, garlic, and spices. Add the peas, potatoes, tomatoes, salt and the tamarind soaked in the water. Stir well and simmer, covered, for 20-30 mins, until the potatoes are well-cooked, but still hold their shape. Add more water if necessary. Nice with plain cooked rice, natural yoghurt and chutney, or anything else you can think of...

blackbird singing in the dead of night...

Meet Minnie. Arlo found and named her this morning, as she was huddled in the garden, directly below a tree with a huge blackbird's nest woven high up in the middle of it. She looked a little worse for wear, with one foot distorted in a painful-looking way and two wings missing most of their feathers. My first thought was to place her in a cardboard box and bring her inside, but her mother (I think) was hopping around her with bugs in her beak, so I decided to leave her outside. Arlo and Keira placed a blanket over her and we gave her some water and honey in a jam jar lid. (I heard a radio documentary the other night about this woman and her wonderful work with native birds, she's inspiring.)

A bit later in the morning a plumber came to look at our water tank, and Arlo excitedly relayed his discovery of Minnie. He had a ladder so Arlo announced he would need to return Minnie to the nest, but the plumber wouldn't. His reason: Minnie's mother might have pushed her out of the nest in the first place, and might do it again. And also that the other birds would sense human intervention and reject their little sister. So she's staying under the tree, sipping her honey water and, we hope, recovering a bit. Arlo is most distressed and checking on her every half an hour or so.

It was his idea to make a t-shirt with leaves and a nest on it, in honour of Minnie. (He's been helping with the freezer-paper-stencils over the last couple of days.)No nest, but some leaves and a branch on this one:

Get better soon, Minnie!

vintage, part three...

Well I could go on in this theme for at least 50 'parts'... but I promise today will be the last time I show you my old treasures for a while! ((warning: lots of pictures to follow!)

Would you believe me if I said I had another amazing swap parcel arrive this week? I first 'met' Debra on Flickr, when I used to actually visit that site (ha!) and found out she was emigrating from the UK here to NZ. We agreed to do a swap once she and her family had settled here, and this week my parcel arrived. It was so much fun to open. Everything was wrapped so daintily, it was just like opening a lucky dip as a child, except each thing was gorgeous and unusual, not like a plastic whistle or toy gun. So as you can imagine, Arlo and Keira were in heaven.

lovely old bag- (maybe a Liberty print?) with fine wooden handles

a Christmas apron (!) old wallpaper, and antique child's hanger with a little crocheted decoration (Keira's best dress will definitely have the honour of being on this one)

old fabrics and embroidered linen (way too nice to chop up)

antique buttons- some are glass and mother of pearl, others are little brass navy-style domes

I think this is my favourite thing, though. A little display book for favourite buttons- all sewn carefully inside a piece of recycled wool blanket with cotton on the outside. It was tied with a ribbon and comes with little notes: 'pretty', 'fun and silly'... it's so sweet! Thank you Debs, for such treasures! Debs also has an Etsy shop here.

For the first time ever, I'm trying to make a few Christmas presents, say, before Christmas Eve, and this morning I did some stencils on plain cotton t-shirts I had previously dyed. These will be for my baby neices. The bird stencil was inspired by this appliqued fabric I still haven't used, and the hearts one I made a long time ago, for Keira. It's taken from a little Andy Warhol sketch I saw in a library book.

nice, old things part 2

We visited the Motueka Craft Market yesterday, and Keira had her first real-fruit icecream there. It's a great market, much smaller and more relaxed than our local counterpart, with more of a rural feel to it. Good place to get organic fruit and veges, and plants for the garden.

Keira was pretty serious about that banana icecream, as you can see.

I found some small pieces of vintage fabric this week which I thought would be good for making kid's pants. This is fine needlecord:

This find almost made my heart stop. About 2 metres each of this amazing old fabric: all 'viyella' which I think is a wool/cotton mix, probably from the early 70's?

It's quite drapey in texture, and fairly loud (but lovely) in person. Do you have any ideas of what I could use it for?

old is the new new

After three days of grey and rain the sun has finally come out, thank goodness. I made the mistake of pegging washing on the line yesterday, during a brief break in the weather. But an hour later, it got washed again and is still hanging out there, heavy with rain. I hope it's warm and bright where you are.

Thought I'd share some new additions to my button collection - I found these in an old ice-cream container in our nearest op-shop, just 5 cents each. I love the muted colours of old buttons, and their grainy texture.

Running my hands through buttons in a tin brings back such vivid childhood memories- my Mum had a blue tin full of buttons with 'Roses Chocolates- Thank You Very Much' written on the side. My favourite job would be to sort them all into type and colour piles, only to tip them all back in again afterwards.  Lots of my friends say they remember their childhood button tins too.

These green ones were still in their original tubes, with a sample button wired onto the lid:

And look how fine and delicate the stitching is on these little tray-cloths:

I love finding these among the tea-towels and tablecloths, they're such hidden treasures. I look out for the stained and torn ones, to use for making my baby shoes. But those in perfect condition, like these, I can't bear to cut into. And sometimes the designs on them are quite abstract and unique, and I wonder why the crafter chose to do the design that they did.