Birthday season around here, and lots of garden pics

I'll start trying to add in links to books that I use for patterns etc - I love it when I find a good book via someone else's blog, so I should make the effort too.

This is the first birthday crown that I've made - based on the one in the book The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections. It's for my oldest daughter. Wasn't sure if she'd be interested in starting a birthday crown tradition at this stage, but she loved it!
I wanted to add some more traditions to our lives, starting with their birthdays, as I always feel so rushed on their birthdays (particularly on their party days - getting ready for a party and/or visitors) and I felt that with a few nice traditions it would make the day more special and make us all slow down for at least part of the day!

On their birthdays they get to take cupcakes or similar to school to share with the class. Typical of my daughter, she didn't want cupcakes, but chose biscuits instead. Half choc chip biscuits, and half anzac slice. Both are vegan. The place where I use to buy my vegan choc chips closed down so I chopped up a block of choc instead. I'm fussy about choc so it is also organic (couldn't get fair trade, but tried) - I avoid buying chocolate that might come from cocoa that has been grown at a plantation that has child slaves.

My choc chip cookie recipe is from this book: Vive Le Vegan!: Simple, Delectable Recipes for the Everyday Vegan Family, by Dreena Burton. They are really good choc chip cookies. I make them all the time.

My daughter wore this outfit recently, although I sewed it up last summer. Wasn't sure if I'd put in pics already. Love how it looks on her. I only wish I had one similar! Both top and skirt are from Ottobre patterns.

This is her modelling an apron that I made for a friend of hers - for a birthday present. Simple style.

Made her a new tee - plain white, to go with her dalmation pants for a disco party for another of her friends. She badly needs more of the basics at the moment like tees - growing too fast. I'm only giving myself tonight off to do some blog catch up, then sewing full steam ahead to fill up the kids' summer wardrobes. They are currently seriously lacking things that fit them well.

And have I ever shown you the dalmation pants? I love these. A pattern from Ottobre of course, but any plain jeans pattern would do.

Not trying to show you anything homemade here (although I did make the top - hemp/org cotton, fibre reactive dyes; and the pants - from a thrift shop jumper), but I just love this pic. So fun to watch a bub with a balloon. I think this was the first hellium balloon she'd played with.

And now, onto some garden pics. There are heaps of them and I wont say much about them, but please make sure you get to the end, as there is a cute baby pic there!

By the way, this veg garden is our front yard. The back is full of fruit trees (still too young to be baring fruit). Haven't taken pics there yet.

Snow peas and sugar snap peas.

Love the look of the new peas "hatching" - with their cute little flower hats.

A few strawberry plants - will have to get a lot more of these in.

Some Giant Russian Garlic - love this variety. Not much here, but it just came up from cloves I accidentally left in from last year. There is a little of the smaller garlic too, but no pics of that.

A baby blueberry tree. There are three of them - with flowers on them already. Wonder if that means there will be a berry or two???

Some lettuce - there's heaps more of this, and actually, I took these pics a couple of weeks ago and it's grown a lot since then.

Spinach. I have masses of this and really need to get picking and make a few spinach pies. I made spinach frittata for dinner tonight and actually used frozen spinach - completely forgot about the lovely fresh, organic stuff growing in the garden. Hmmm ... might have to make it again in a couple of days!

Nasturtiums, parsley and weeds - growing under the lemon tree - just looking after themselves really. I try to encourage nasturtiums to pop up everywhere for a bit of protection for the veggies. And I end up with masses of parsley by the time summer hits - it self seeds and I can't bring myself to pull it out.

Potatoes - there are quite a few of these popping up from potatoes left in the ground from last year's planting. Which reminds me that I did buy some more seed potatoes and should get time in quickly. Adding that to me "to do" list now.

New Zealand Spinach. You might have seen this growing wild. I have it in because I don't have to do anything to look after it and it comes up. If food prices go too crazy, at least we'll be able to live on New Zealand spinach and parsley!

This is actually the most sparse part of this garden bed - not sure why I put in this pic and not another one, but you can see some silver beet and broccoli here. Also in the bed is cauli, cabbage, lots more silverbeet and all the spinach. I've tucked in a few other things too - just added one capsicum plant and a couple of rhubarb plants - that looked as though they were about to die in the pot, so not sure how they'll do. I put them in this bed because there is a section that seems to just flourish, and I wanted to give them the best chance.

This bed had potatoes last year, grown using Peter Cundall's method from his Organic Gardening DVD (which is excellent). Now, it is such a healthy garden.

The lemon tree is flowering madly.

A cabbage from the above-discussed bed.

Just some flowers. I thought they looked nice. I don't put much effort into decorative plants, but am trying to do a bit more to make things look nice.

Ahhh ... now back to birthday stuff - the crown I made for my youngest daughter's first birthday. Isn't she cute?

And her birthday cake - the first of a few (by the time we have the various gatherings with various people). This is just a plain sponge cake - not my favourite (although very nice), but her dad's favourite. I know the sprinkles and the strawberries don't really go that well, but the strawberries were completely necessary, and I had to add pink sprinkles when she was being such a pink girl that day. The sprinkles were very sparkly ones - called "Fairy Dust".

More of her birthday in the next post.

Summer Outfit for My Daughter

Quick post yet again, just to put in a couple of pics - this is an outfit I made for my oldest daughter last Summer. Both patterns are from Ottobre - the blouse is 1/03, number 20, and the skirt is 1/03, number 21. I love this outfit. Just wish I had some more of the fabric that I made the blouse from to do one for myself!

Quick post with winter jacket pics

I sewed these a while ago but didn't get around to posting pics then. You can see that my son's jacket needs a wash! It's wool, and he loves it so it gets worn a lot. They both say that they look like they're going to work when they're wearing them. My daughter's jacket could be straightened and pulled about a bit to get it to sit better - she just threw it on and tied it up, but you get the idea. Both patterns are from ottobre.

Sewed a lot lately, but baby crying now, so will be back to do a big update soon. Mostly just basics though - not super-exciting stuff. Have some more fun stuff on my to do list though.

Sewing from March to April 08

Every now and then I'm adding pics of stuff from when I stopped blogging last yr, so here is a little selection.

Summer pajamas for my daughter. My pattern.

Jeans for my daughter. From Ottobre 1/08. Topstitching is of course mine, but the denim came with the embroider already on it.

Pink suit for my daughter from Ottobre 1/06.

Shorts for a gift - just basic shorts with added pockets.

My first ever Waldorf style doll - for my daughter (who is now 2). This was such fun to make. I wish I had more time for this sort of thing.

May and June Catch up

Okay, once again I haven't written in ages, so here is a quick picture tour of what I've been doing on the crafty front. I don't feel as though I've been very productive, although I don't have pictures of everything so I've done more then this! I'm not going to write much.



Here is some of the matroyshka fabric that I screen printed sewn up into pants for my toddler. I also made the top - my own version of a peasant top, in Sandi Henderson fabric - love this design in yellow and wish I had more of that fabric. I made these clothes when my toddler was this age, but now they've been handed onto the bub I just had to take a pic. I love her in all red. She's wearing a minky fleece hat, a frottee jacket (Ottobre pattern), a cotton velour dress (my pattern) and recycled jumper wool pants/nappy cover, along with red fleece booties (that never stay on). She looks so snuggly. It may not be fancy, but it's one of my favourite outfits for her now that it's winter.

A screen print that I did for my daughter's classes' education week performance. I didn't do the design - I just printed it ...

... on a heap of t-shirts.

These tees were for the boys. I didn't get a pic of all the girls' t-shirts, but there's a pic further on of the girls' whole costume.

This pic is jeans that I made for my boy, and also a plain white tee (not very exciting). Jeans are hemp denim, and Ottobre pattern. Tee is organic cotton.

This is what the girls wore for their costume. I printed the tees and added a bit of elastic down the bottom to make them a nicer shape. The sun design is mine - super-simple. With help of other mums I sewed up the skirts. Thank goodness I didn't have to shop for the fabric and all the other bits and pieces too - sewing them up was easy. I also made the leggings just for my daughter. All the girls supplied their own leggings.

This is my first try of this sort of screen print. I just did about 1&1/2 metres of it to do a peasant skirt for my toddler and a dress for my bub. My plan is to do lots of mt of this print to make curtains for my dining room. I drew the design and did the printing.

This is the biggest piece of embroider I've done. It looks a bit wonky and it is a bit wonky! I didn't want it to look perfect because I wanted that "freehand" look, but I think it would have been better if it were a little neater. It is going to be part of a handbag.

This is the fabric that I printed to make up the rest of the handbag. It is hemp/cotton muslin, dyed with fibre reactive dyes, then screen printed using a couple of kirigami shapes - ie paper cut-outs - as the design. I only printed about 1/3 mt of the fabric for this, but wish I'd done more as I'd love a skirt made out of it.

I did print this for a skirt for myself though. It is using the same screens, plus one other, but uses much stronger colours on undyed hemp muslin. I think I would have preferred the colours to be more similar to each other - perhaps pink, red and something else.

But I like it much better now that I've sewn it up into a skirt for myself! I think it will be better in Summer or Spring, rather then with black stockings underneath.

I also printed this paisley design (my drawings) on some hemp/cotton muslin. As usual I dyed it using fibre reactive dyes and love the shade of blue that it turned out. That's one of the great things about dying fabric, that can also be one of the bad things. Because I'm at the stage of trying out all the colours, and not of trying to repeat them, the colour that eventuates is always a surprise. I do keep careful notes though so I should be able to get something similar if I want to repeat them in the future.

You can't see the paisley design very well here. I love drawing paisley. It's easy, and it's fun to fill with different patterns. Hardest bit is chosing which ones to use (and finding the time to do them).

So these are pants for my daughter. They're just super-simple, beach/lounge pants.

I love how this turned out. It's a screen print - I did quite a few of them. You can't really tell here, but it's about the size of an A4 sheet of paper, printed on hemp/cotton muslin (of course, although I've pretty much run out of the lovely thick stuff now until I can get some more). It's to cut out and sew together to make a simple mini-cushion. I'm thinking of selling these as craft panels. What do you think? I have some other designs in mind too.

That's all for now. I've also made a couple of peasant tops for my bub and a few other things. And I've almost finished crocheting myself a scarf. I'll post pics when I get to it.