feeling festive

Today is the last day of school for the year for my children, they embark on their annual 6 week Summer Holidays. As much as I'm pleased to have a break from the morning routine of getting them ready for school & prepping school lunches I must admit I'm starting to wonder how I'm going to fill the days so we make the most of our time together.

Last Saturday afternoon we drove two hours to Sydney city for the birthday party of a 9 year old friend of ours. It was great to catch up with the parents who are good long time friends. We arrived in the city a couple of hours early so we could take in the Christmas decorations & buzz of this time of year.

The photo above is of my two children enjoying the animated puppets & Christmas stories in the windows of one of the major department stores. Iremember being taken to see these same windows when I was a child.
This is my daughter spellbound with the new Christmas train that my mother/her grandmother dropped around in a surprise visit just the other night.
Yesterday I whipped up this sweet little Forest dress. Its size 3-4yrs & is so light & summery made from a nice soft cotton lawn with a delicate sketchy forest print. I hope it makes some little girl's Christmas a special one.
In Australia at Christmas Time it is custom to pick the native red Christmas Bush & place it around the home. As a child my mother used to take me along with her cruising the suburbs with a step ladder in the back of the car searching out Christmas Bush. The High School where she used to work was one of our best sources, we would try to pick a time when nobody was around, scale the tree & proudly venture home with our prized bounty of red foliage.

Wishing you all the happiest & most peaceful of Christmases yet.

Treasure your loved ones & get a little silly with it.

xxoo

visitor to my garden

This is my cloudy day sundress for a little girl 2-3years old. Love the Cloud Nine fabric such a great contemporary print & a beautiful weight to work with.

I love these tiny Liberty style florals, a really lovely Japanese cotton voile from Spotlight of all places, would you believe. I couldn't resist trying my hand at this dress style, I found the design in the Sweet Dress Book from Japan only the patterns were in adult sizes so I winged it, just cutting out the pieces by eye, & what do you, it worked. It has given me the confidence to try going a bit free form once again with the scissors in the near future. Love, love, love the delicate vintage lace trim that I have used along the hemlines.

Look at this beautiful little fella sun baking in my garden yesterday just outside my laundry door.

I just love the gorgeous colours & patterns on the skins of these Blue Tongue Lizards.This one looked very healthy & nicely plump around the middle, must be enjoying eating all the snails slugs about after the higher tan average rainfall we have had this Spring.

My husband informs me that this same lizard scraped it's way into his office this afternoon giving himself & the other two architects a fright as it crawled under their desks. Yikes, although quiet harmless they look so prehistoric.

Yum, just to make to you hungry, a picture of a very simple chocolate cake I knocked up for sweets one night last week from the Frankie magazine publication Afternoon Tea.

Yum diddly yum.

I call this skirt Daisy due to the sweet guipure lace daisy that once belonged to my Grandmother stitched onto the hem border. The majority of the skirt is cut from a Saffron Craig print consisting of diagonal stripes & snowy little trees. The result is unintentionally quite Christmasy.

HoHoHo not long to go!

Love this sweet little daisy.

Beets

Just pulled these from my veggie patch, my best ever beetroots. Hmmm now what to do with them? Better start googling. Do you have a tried & true beetroot recipe? Let me know it.

Sunshine Patchwork

I had a fun day yesterday pulling out my fabrics filed under patchwork. Still feeling a tad tropical from my last sewing session & post, I found myself chopping up lots of sunshiny yellow pieces & throwing a few animals into the mix. The result is a cheerful summer patchwork skirt women's size 10 - 12. I hope somebody is brave enough to wear it as it has been delivered to Mooch Inside along with my Pineapple Cushions.

Club Tropicana

Hooray today I had some sewing time to myself & I was able to knock up a couple of cushions for sean-the-prawn. As summer is drawing near I've been feeling all tropical & was excited/inspired to find this pineapple fabric in my ever increasing pile of material stashed away in my sewing area.

Club Tropicana is a great song by Wham although a little cheesy but I think that's the point of it. I was obsessed with it for about 5 minutes in the mid 1980's & it remains dear to my heart, hence the title of this post. Oh I bet you missed my long winded ramblings. I've missed waffling on in your direction. Stay posted as there will be a lot more new sean-the-prawn goodness coming your way. Ideas, ideas, ideas,coming out my ears!

Spring in my wild garden

My Nashi Pear tree in bloom, pretty little white blossoms & I believe some are starting to swell into fruit.

Garden looks quite wild from this angle. Yellow daisies, red geraniums & the sweetest smelling pink David Austin roses.

Banana trees giving us our second bunch of bananas. Still learning when best to harvest these.

Excited to grow our own bananas as they are still over $10.00 per kilo in the shops here.

Inside my netted veggie patch, netted from our chickens, possums & native brush turkeys.

Loads of silverbeet, beetroots, lettuce, rocket,water cress, brussel sprouts, leeks, sorrel, rhubarb, tomatoes, eggplant, capsicum & radishes all growing well.

This is Cluck Cluck one of our four chickens looking longingly into our veggie patch thinking of the feast & havoc she could reek in there.

Not a lot happening with Sean-the-Prawn at present as I'm working flat chat on the costumes for my son's school Musical of Uncle Crumbles' Mad Machine. Opening night is next Wednesday, so in a couple of weeks I'll be back at the machine sewing up many new creations for sean-the-prawn summer, & I can't wait.

Elkhorn surprise

Monique of Elkhorn's gorgeous hand screen printed work top left & bottom right. My sean-the-prawn cushion bottom left.

My sean-the-prawn grevilla cushion .

This week I received the loveliest of emails from Monique of Elkhorn, she had been on a visit to Mooch Inside a beautiful store in our local area in which we both retail our creations. Monique had taken many photos on her visit & collaged them together, posting them on her blog. I'd have to agree with her, yes, our goodies do look great together. I love Elkhorn's earthiness & fresh colours, I can't wait to get my hands on one of her new hand printed tote bags. Thanks Monique for including me in your blog post, you made my day.

cushy old time

I love this map cushion of Australia. I've been hoarding this fabric panel for some time now, it was the centre of the tablecloth from which I cut all the birds for those florally birdy cushions that were such a hit. Almost kept this one for myself, hard to part with but I'm pleased to say it has gone all the way to Italy to spend the rest of it's days.
These next little guys were such a pleasure to make from a vintage tea towel from Lightning Ridge, so grassy green is that background. Got to love a joey in the pouch! Kangas were teamed with an awesome vintage wool plaid in fab orange & brown. Worked a little hand top stitching along the panels in green Japanese sashiko thread just the jazz her up a bit. Over all quite snazzy I believe. Hope you like them too.

Here's a quick little snapshot of my cushions in Mooch Inside at Hardys Bay where they will be retailing. The Kanga cushions along with my remaining wildflower ones are currently for sale on the newly established online store. Quite exciting that their online shop is happening as it has been in the making for such a long time. Hooray!

Seen in Green

Front cover of the Green Magazine in which sean-the-prawn cushions & quilt feature in an article about one of my Husband's home renovations. The house is only a few streets away from where we live & my Hubby designed a beautifully relaxed modern extension at the rear of the quaint coastal old weatherboard cottage. A good friend of our's & an extremely talented photographer Brigid Arnott lovingly styled & photographed the project. The mag has been hanging about in the shops for almost a couple of months & I've only just managed to post about it. Life seems busy, busy,busy of late & blogging has been sidelined for other activities, but that is about to change. So many things I want to share with you lovely lot. Hello.... is anyone still out there?

Large cushion on bed of main bedroom.

Australia cushion & quilt as throw on bed in one of the girl's bedrooms.

Wildflower cushion on cane chair in the other girl's bedroom.

Wildflower & Australian map cushions in living room of the weekender. I love all the doors in various shades of green in the background that open up the living space like gills of a giant fish.

Can you open your home up to let the outside in? I'm forever opening up windows to feel the breeze. I guess some people like dark & cosy, I don't I love loads of sunlight & fresh air.

sunny winter days

Front room of our house/my workroom, you can see some of my fabrics, buttons & trims stacked up in the old buffet cabinet that once belonged to my Grandma Lily.

This is one of three birdy cushions that I have been making recently. Sadly the last of my bird fabric so the end of this popular little range of cushions.

Another birdy cushion.

And another, think this one is my favourite with the waterlilies in the background...great vibrant colours.

Wattle tree at my front door, so bright & cheery.

Sunny winter days have been scarce of late, with rain, rain, rain bucketing down. Talk about cabin fever! Washing piling up & everything feeling damp in the house. Great weather for staying indoors & sewing, curling up under blankets & pawing over my new Japanese "Sweet Dress Book".
Yesterday the sun finally broke through all those rain clouds & today has just been so gloriously sunny. To celebrate the sun, I thought I'd take a snap shot for you of the beautiful wattle tree in my garden, so sunshiny yellow. It blazes away near my front door putting a smiling on my face every time I catch a glimpse of it through the window.

Kanga dress

Oh how I love this little kanga dress, I made it for a gorgeous young lady (five years old to be precise). Her mother who is a good friend of ours called me one night saying that she had a photographer from Dwell (american mag) coming to do a photo shoot of their Sydney home in a couple of days & she would love to have her daughter wearing a sean-the-prawn dress/something quite Aussie looking. Mmm, this sent me into quite a frenzy as I only had a few hours available the next day to scrape a couple of things together to meet the express post in time. I grabbed a dress from Moochinside that I had already made from a teatowel with a bright print of Tasmanian wildflowers, but what if she didn't like it?? I thought she needed another choice so I looked through my aussie stash & found an adorable old kangaroo teatowel from Lightning Ridge. I spliced the tea towel with a yummy chocolate brown linen & chopped out a few extra kangarooy bits to use in the future for some cushions, & bob's your uncle a little cute kanga dress was made just in time for the express post.

Melbourne here we come

Hooray,Hooray, sean-the-prawn is making it's way to Melbourne. After chatting to the super nice Madeleine of DoReMe & maybe twisting her arm just a tiny bit she has agreed to start stocking sean-the-prawn goodies in her beautiful Melbourne shop. I'm over the moon to have a Melbourne stockist as I was down there about a month ago for a long weekend while my husband was involved with the National Architecture Conference. I had such a fab time wandering around Fitzroy & Collingwood & eating in amazing restaurants in the city. So many great little shops & a general love of craftiness all round. Can't wait until I can visit again. Pretty upcycled vintage floral & Aussie cushions waiting to be finished off.

Sweet purpley pink patch worked cot quilt/throw waiting on the ironing board while I choose from my stash of backing fabrics.Quilts & cushions will be bagged & tagged & making their way to DoReMe towards the end of this week. I do hope you Melbourne folk enjoy my work.

I love my neglected garden

I love my garden, my poor neglected unruly garden that is growing wilder by the day. At the present it is giving the most beautiful David Austin roses with the sweetest peachy scent. I have citrus trees laden with oranges, limes, mandarins & lemons almost ready to harvest, yum. It gives me so much pleasure to sit & watch my four fluffy bottomed hens scratch around under these trees looking for tasty wormy treats.
Poor neglected garden, I used to give you so much of my time, tending you obsessively, but now the sewing machine has stolen me away from you once again. I'll be back, I haven't forgotten you, loyal friend. Thanks for the roses.

Easter frocks all sweet & floral

During the lead up to Easter I've been busy whipping up some sweet little floral dresses. All dresses are made from upcycled vintage cottons that I have op shopped over the last year or so from local charity stores. These dresses are very versatile as they can be worn over long sleeved tops & tights for winter, as well being perfect for summer as is. The style is very roomy with a drawstring waist which allows for many years of comfortable wear.

The two dresses with the contrast border hemline have a pretty lace applique detail, so fancy schmancy.

All these dresses are now hanging in Mooch Inside at Hardys Bay looking quite a treat if I may say so myself. I hope who ever buys them gets as much enjoyment out of them as I did putting together the print combinations & sewing them. Each dress I make is a one of a kind a has a lot of love that goes into it's fruition.



I thought a little handmade brooch might be nice for this dress using the dress fabric & an antique green button.




This little dress has a great 1950's feel to it with the printed border hemline & lace trim. Gorgeous yellow old rose print.


It's the last day of the Easter School Holidays here in NSW Australia & I guess it leaves me with mixed feelings. It has been so lovely having lots of relaxing time at home with the kids doing our own thing & with no fixed routine, but I would be fibbing if I didn't say that I was looking forward to having time to myself for my sewing.


Hope you all had a special time with family & friends over Easter. I would love to hear what you got up to & whether or not you celebrate Easter at all.

red,white & blue the boys love you

Easter holidays are fast approaching, with some school children already on vacation in our area. This means lots of holiday makers & extra people visiting the store in which I sell my sean-the- prawn goodies, so I like to top up my stock. I have decided to make a couple of cot quilts/throws & probably 3 of my little puff sleeved drawstring waist dresses (picnic dresses).

These snap shots show my first completed quilt made from gorgeous Japanese craft fabrics & screen printed red linen fabric from the Prints Charming girls. I also threw in a little blue & white stripped ticking fabric to pull it all together.

I backed the quilt with a very feint, fine beige & brown stripe printed fabric. The border is a very narrow, hand stitched binding which is the same fabric as the backing.

Originally intended for a little boys room, I now think it is quite contemporary & could sit well in any room of the house where even the adults could enjoy it's playfulness. The monkey fabric is just too cute, love it!

100th Post, wild about wildflowers.

Hip Hip Hooray, 100 posts today! Considering I've been blogging since 2007 it's not really that many posts. Should probably be celebrating at least 200..but hey, they say quality not quantity.

I have finished my Australian Wildflower cushion family & I must say I really love them. The prints are on the most delicious natural slubby linen & they are trimmed with a totally gorgeous cream vintage cotton pom pom braid. That braid was given to me by a friend 12 years ago, I have been so good hoarding it away, pulling it out on many occasions, but then waiting for the right moment. Everytime I use it I feel a teensy bit sad that it is getting closer to running out, but it sure is nice to see it take on a life.

Flannel Flowers, Kangaroo Paws, Wattle, Sturt Desert Peas & Grevillias just to name a few. After dropping them all over to Mooch Inside where I retail, my hubby said he was disappointed that I didn't keep one for our house. So now I have to make the big decision of which one I like the best..... easy peasy it'll be the Flannel Flower & Sturt Desert Pea cushion. I'd better hot foot it back to the shop, with a bit of luck some might sell over the week end. If you are interested in purchasing anything that I feature on my blog, just send me a message & I'll pop it in my Etsy shop for you.

I like this combo together, Waratahs, Wattle & Banksias. These two cushions feature many of the flowers that grow native to the area in which I live. I am lucky to be able to go for a walk in the bush at the end of my street & to be surrounded by such beauty.

Do you have a favourite wildflower?