Sweet and Simple Handmade

Hello friends,

I was extremely pleased to be asked to review Melissa Wastney's book, Sweet and Simple Handmade. First, because I was going to buy it anyway. Second, because I knew I would have no shortage of nice things to say about it.

If you read the Tiny Happy blog you'll be familiar with Melissa's work. She uses new and used materials to make sweet garments, toys, accessories, and home wares that have her own characteristic style, which I would describe as Japanese-Scandinavian-Vintage-Antipodean-fusion.

 

The book

This paperback book is published by Stash Books, and contains 25 projects. It is available here and here and perhaps in your local bookshop, too. Each project is photographed (by none other than her good self), and has paper pattern pieces or measurements and full instructions.

The audience

Melissa notes that it is intended for home crafters; grandparents, friends, aunties, parents who want to make clothes or gifts for the small people they know. It would certainly be ideal for that audience. I found myself wishing that I'd had this book years ago, because there is a simple pattern for all of the essentials that I needed back then; pants, a skirt, a Sunday-best dress, dress-up capes, a cardy, a sweatshirt, a coat, etc. There are small and large versions of many of the patterns, so they will still be useful for me with a 7 and a 9-year old.

 

The projects

As I mentioned above, there is a good selection of essentials, but also some great extras. There is a pattern for those fantastic baby shoes, you know the ones, and a grown-up's bag, a children's satchel, pencil case, a foraging bag, drawstring bags, soft toys, and a cot quilt. There is a knitting project, and some great ideas for wrapping gifts imaginatively and inexpensively. The methods of construction are explained in an easy-to-follow manner. As well, there are new ways of thinking about sewing. For example, it wouldn't have occurred to me to refashion a child's cardy from a piece of adult knitwear, but there are instructions and photos for how to do that in a very stylish way. There are some very simple projects suitable for beginner sewers, and more complex ones for more experienced sewers. If you are a sewer and you have a fabric stash, even a small one, you could likely make at least half of the projects without even going to the shops. If you do need something, you could very likely get it at a charity store. In this way, the book is extremely democratic. You don't need lots of money, designer fabrics, special notions, or advanced technical skills to achieve these looks.

 

 

Other points to note

Melissa's simple and practical techniques could be applied to a whole range of projects for adults or children. I found this book to be a great springboard for ideas- I'm planning to make an adult version of the bias-trimmed cardigan, for instance. I hope this wonderful book is just the first in a series, I would love to see a follow-up that included some of her home wares and accessories, too.

 

Worth buying?

Most definitely!

 

 

 

Sewin, cookin, and being good lookin

Hello friends, 

Why didn't I start de-stashing sooner? This using-what-I-have phase is so satisfying! So cheap! So very inexpensive! And did I mention cost-effective? Most latterly off my sewing machine is a new top, made from a Japanese cotton gifted to me by my neighbour. 

The pattern, New Look 6080, was simple and yet had nice little design features, like french darts and cute little pintucks. Instead of using a facing, I finished the neckline with a bias-strip made from the same fabric. Here are those features up close: 

It's a great late-summer top to go with jeans or a skirt. I'm wearing it lots.

Speaking of tomatoes, because we were doing that last post, thanks for the recommendations for things to make. I made another Annabel Langbein recipe, harvest tomato sauce, and it is tomato-sational. The best thing I've made this season. Sorry, make that best equal, since I also made the tomato sauce recipe out of the Edmonds book, which turned out to be fabulous. This fabulous:

Yes it's just about all gone after a few sessions of saussies, fish'n'chips, and homemade chippies. Nom nom nom.

And since the title of this post includes "being good lookin", I will finish up by telling you that I spent my Christmas gift voucher from my father-in-law on a new lipstick and some mascara. It's the first make up I've bought in about 5 years. It felt good. 

Fun with tomatoes (and labels)

Hello friends

You know that summer is in full swing when a stranger says to you in the street "Beauuuutiful f#*&ing day, isn't it!?" (true story), ... and when there are so many tomatoes around and they're so cheap that you find yourself up to your armpits in preserving.

Things I made this year (left to right, above): loads of pasta sauce (made with olive oil, onions, garlic, tomato pulp, salt, sugar, pepper, marjoram, basil, white vinegar, and whatever vegetables I can sneak in there to torture the children with); tomato relish (from this recipe at NZ gardener, my favorite recipe even though I just know that your Gran makes your favorite kind); and something new, a Moroccan tomato sauce from Simple Pleasures (Annabel Langbein). When I first tried this new recipe I cursed aloud because it was too sweet and too gingery for my tastes. However, I tried it in a chicken tagine thing and it was very very good, so I take back all my bad words. By the way, if you have any yummy tomato things to recommend I'm all ears. I have another 7 kg on the kitchen table even as we speak.

I had a lot of fun printing off labels for these various concoctions. I found great vintage labels here and here, and also printed off these fun postal ones you see below. Being a low-tech girl I just printed them on paper and glue-sticked them, but you can print them onto sticky labels if you like. Boy, I could really waste a lot of time mooching around those websites.

Oh and thanks for all your nice comments last post. Linda, I hope you enjoy the fabric, it's on its way to you.

The one and only resolution of a 40-year-old

Hello friends,

I have really enjoyed reading other people's New Year's resolutions here and there, and many of them resonate with me on one level or another. However, I have one and only one resolution this year. It is nothing huge or earth shattering, it is not trying to be a better person in any way at all, it is not to be healthier, or to be a better parent. No, now that I am freshly FORTY, yes 40, and once again I stress four decades old, I am going for one, tangible, practical goal, and that is....

...to appreciably diminish my fabric stash.

There it is. You heard it here first.

I know this is a rather modest resolution, but there is a degree of reasoning behind this middle-aged madness. Even though I like to sew, and I like fabric very much, especially vintage fabric, I do not like having a stash, because:
1. The stash takes up room in my house, which is tiny. We 40-year-olds need to make the most of whatever space we have.
2. I do not need a stash as part of my employment, since I never sell anything I make. This 40-year-old has a different job that does not rely on fabric in any way.
3. The stash inhibits me, rather than inspires me, because I always feel like I should use something from it instead of buying the fabric that excites me to do a particular project when I see it in the shop. Here is an example: I very much want to sew new duvet covers for the kids. But I cannot bring home new fabric until I use something from the stash. However, there is nothing in particular, at this moment, that I want to make from the stash. Outcome = I sew nothing, and we make do with ugly duvet covers. This situation is unacceptable for a 40-year old person.
4. By hanging onto the stash, I am actually depriving someone who would use that fabric if they got their hands on it. This is nothing short of selfish. Forty year olds are many things, but never selfish.

So, I outlined to myself three practical steps towards having less of a stash:

1. I must get rid of three pieces of fabric before I buy another piece. This can be via giving it away, throwing it away, selling it, or using it.
2. I must use the fabric I do buy in a timely manner, within 1 month. If I don't, the fabric must be disposed of via the methods listed above.
3. To be reasonable, I will allow myself one suitcase full of fabric as a modest stash that neither takes up too much room nor stifles my sewing mojo.


Funny how just having a plan is enough to get your enthusiasm back. No sooner had I thought this plan through than I felt like sewing something. This bag, from "Bend the rules sewing" by Amy Karol, is one I'd been meaning to make for an age. Big enough to hold your togs, towel, purse, magazine, and sunglasses. Not too plain, not too fancy. And...it used three pieces of fabric, denim and a contrast cotton drill on the outside, and a different cotton drill on the inside.

By using three pieces of fabric I have now enabled myself to bring home some new duvet cover fabric. How liberating sewing can be....

But to show I'm serious, SERIOUS, about diminishing the stash, I'm also giving a piece away. This vintage cotton is a bright white and chocolate brown floral print. It's only 87 cm wide, and I have a little over 2 m of it. It has been stored with mothballs at some point so it has that smell, but that washes out after a while, I promise you. If you want it, please leave a comment below. I'll check comments for one week and if you are the only one that wants it then, sweet!, its yours. If there's more than person after it then I'll do some random number thingie and alert the winner that they can have it. I'll even post it to you if you live in New Zealand for FREE, such is my commitment to my resolution. And Happy New Year to you!

On Gifts

Hello friends,
I hope you all had a good Christmas. We had the usual mixture that is the kiwi festive season: some highs, some lows, best behaviour most of the time, too much eating and drinking, lots of time at the beach, and some lovely gifts.
We had a low-key Christmas in terms of gifts- one $20 present each, and it was awesome. Unwrapping my drink bottle, my lovely soap, and my nice sharp kitchen knife from my children and husband was a total highlight. There were also some totally unexpected gifts that were so practical and/or so unexpected and lovely that I thought I'd show them to you.
1. Some plums from a friend's tree, and a bag of apricots. I bottled them, quick as a flash, because I'm so excited to mark the beginning of a new season of preserving. Don't they look sweet on the kitchen shelf?

2. A bag of patchwork fabric that a friend's mum was throwing out. There are about a gazillion pieces of 100%  cotton in there. This was a windfall gift for my 7-year-old daughter. We sorted them into a suitcase, her and I, and agreed that these are her special fabrics and I have to ask her if I want to use them. This will be awesome fun for, oh, the next 10 years or so. She sighed and said "this is the best present ever". I will remind her of that when she is pestering me for an ipad or some such.

3. A framed print from my super clever nephew. I've always loved his cartoons and for the longest time I've wanted a framed one to hang in my office. Now I have a framed one to hang in my office. It makes me so happy to look at it.

4. My degree! I hadn't seen it for years. Since the day I got it actually. I thought I'd left it lying around somewhere and didn't expect to see it again. But...it had been lurking in my brother-in-law's art studio all this time. He framed it and gave it to me and it made me laugh out loud to remember that I even have a degree. But now there is proof, see?

So how about you? Did you have a nice Christmas?

Little Red

Our wee girl just turned 7, which is amazing because it was only 5 minutes ago she was just a little baby. Handwringing over aging aside, we offered her the choice of a dolls house or a sewing machine as a present. She chose the sewing machine, which I was very happy about, because I remember having a lot of fun with my sewing machine when I was little, and it was not the same as using my Mum's. We bought her a little wee machine that's light enough for her to set up herself, but with all the necessary functions (straight, zig-zag, and reverse stitches). Here it is: The Elna Mini.

As her first project, we decided we'd make something for her hallowe'en outfit: a hooded cape made of stretch lamee velvet, lined with seersucker, with tricky bits like gathering along the neckline, ribbon closures at the front, etc. (Kwik Sew 3723) Perhaps a little ambitious for a first project, but with the very significant advantage that it was something she actually wanted to make.

 

Actually, I have to say, I'm a big fan of the run-before-you-can-walk learning strategy. There's nothing like doing something you're really interested in to make you learn the skills as and when required. She did lots of the pinning of pattern pieces onto the fabric, some of the cutting out, pinned some of the pieces together, sewed along the straight seams, and mastered the reversing at the end of each seam. I did the rest. In a time-honoured tradition, she learned some new swear words as I caught my fingers on the pins. Essential to have a good range of expletives for sewing, you know it as well as I do. We finished the cape in an afternoon, and she wore it out trick-or-treating as Little Red Riding Hood.

At each house she said "I MADE MY CAPE" and she got A LOT of chocolate. Awesome. 

The Sweet Kitchen

The relative inactivity on my blog this year has been due to some major renovations at our house. Would you like to see what's kept us so busy? I'll just do room by room hey. Not too much all at once.

This was our old kitchen: funny old cupboards, not much storage space, appliances higgledly piggledy where ever we could squeeze them in. It looked better when it was tidy, but that hardly ever happened because there was nowhere to put things away.

I now show you, with much pride and excitement, the new kitchen. Lots of cupboards to put things away, drawers, and proper spaces for appliances. I tell you, I am living like a grown up at last. The tiler sighed as he did the white butcher tiles on the splashback "I haven't done one like this for years" he said "everyone's going with mosaic tiles or glass these days". Not us Mister. We like the old-style stuff.

We had some open shelves made out of plywood to go in the new kitchen, because I have *special things* that I like to look at. These shelves are among my favourite things in our new, old, house.

 

Along the window sill are some old bottles and jars. Some of them were found under the house when we ripped up the floors. Some were gifts from my late Dad, who also had a fondness for jars, like me. I wish he could see our new, old, house. He would think it's cool (although he would cringe at the thought of spending money, also like me).

It's a funny thing, spending money. My Dad spent his whole life modelling thriftiness and I am so grateful to have had that upbringing. I found it so hard to agree to spend money on the house because it seemed to work well enough as it was, but I love it now that it's so functional and so consistent with my aesthetic. Ha! Who even knew I had an aesthetic?! I don't think I would have appreciated how nice the house looks now if I had always expected it to be so. Contrasts are a wonderful thing in life. Happy and sad, disappointed and proud, heartbroken and in-love: you can't have one without knowing what the other feels like.