Pegboard!

After living in this house for only a year, we're finally getting around to putting things up on the walls.  I guess we've been waiting to be finally settled in and happy with furniture location etc.

The first thing that has gone up 'permanently' (ie not 3M Command hooks) is the pegboard in my sewing room.

I first had the peg board hanging up at our last house and it was full, but now I can't remember what I had on it!  I think I had all my scissors hanging up, but they now live in the baskets on the door of my Horn cabinet.  This may have to change when the munchkin becomes a crawling/walking munchkin though.

In the mean time, the peg board will be used for rulers and embroidery/quilting hoops as you can see.  I just need to recover my metre ruler from the garage now that I have a place to put it.

More presents

Christmas appears to be here.  My parents have arrived and my brother (and family) is coming in a few days.

I've made fruit mince tarts, and even put kitties on a few of them.

The house  is becoming more of a home, and the carpet is due for tomorrow so then we can finally unpack everything (once christmas is over of course).

On the craft front, I've finished another Christmas present.

A few years ago I made The Best Library Bag Ever (tm) for my niece who was starting school

 

Next year my nephew is starting school so of course I had to make him a library bag too.  It had to be cool like hers, but different.  So I present to you The Best Library Bag Ever II.

The books with titles were machine embroidered.  The green one on an angle was supposed to be Where the  Wild Things Are, but the embroidery was too long for the book unfortunately.  The back of the bag is the woodgrain fabric which adds to the bookcase feel of it.  It's padded to protect the books inside and I've quilted around all the books and around the inside edges of the shelves.  I hope he likes it.

And yes, I'm overdue for my last Christmas decoration pattern.  The scanner wasn't working when I tried so I shall try and remedy that tonight.

Busy Crafting

This weekend just gone we officially moved into our house!  Most of the stuff is in the garage until we get the carpet done, but stuff is here, and here is home.  I've currently taken over our new dining table for my sewing, with so many christmas projects on the go.

We might not have carpet but we now have a fence and a driveway.  It's all coming together

On the crafting front, I finally got around to doing the machine embroidery for my dad's shirts.  I had to unpick the pocket and then sew it back on again after I'd done the embroidery.  I had a bit of trouble with placement, which wasn't helped by the fact that I didn't have the printer working and couldn't make a template.  The last one (top) is perfect placement because by then I was in the new house and had the pirnter all set up.

I think I ended up with three layers of stabiliser under the dart board, but with that many stitches on a knit fabric it really needed it, and it came out really well.

Christmas presents yet to be finished are the chess/backgammon board quilt, and the bookcase library bag.  Quilt is cut out and partly sewn.  Library bag is waiting for some more fabric, but what I've got is all cut out.

I'm a busy girl.....

Free Pattern - Christmas Decoration 3 - Candle

As promised, here is the next one

Click here for the pattern (pdf)

In house news, we had the new washing machine delivered today, and the dishwasher is due this afternoon. There is a "towel carpet" between the family room and the bedroom so as not to get my feet comletely covered in concrete dust. The fencing and the driveway are due later this week

I've done some more embroidery today as well so I'll have that so share soon.

Finally - A new house

We've finally moved into the new house.  We moved enough stuff yesterday to be able to live there now, and have hired a truck to get the rest of it next weekend.  The cat moves this afternoon.

There is no carpet as yet, but we have laminate flooring in the family room so I'll be setting up the sewing machine on our new kitchen table for the time being.  I also managed to find my iron, cutting mats and ironing board in storage so they're now at the house and I can sew properly with my own things!

This is also the reason that I haven't posted the instructions for the Christmas decorations yet, but this week, I promise to catch up!

I have been working on some craft projects though.  Here is a taste of what I'll be posting up in the near future:
Finally did the hand sewing and finished my mother's birthday present
Have cut out most of the fabric for my chess boasrd quilt
Done the machine embroidery on two of the three shirts for my dad's christmas present
I've come up with a easy and quick pattern to make my nephew's promised library bag for christmas (this has been plaguing me for weeks because I promised it but then the vision I dreamed up was quite complicated and time consuming so I had to make a new plan)
Plus there is my neice's toy bag, which I finished a few weeks ago (wasn't going to post because my family is on the 'net and might see it, but in reality, the chance of them finding this is slim)

That's it for now, time to pack up the sewing machine to move it to the new house this afternoon.

Productive day

I finished the rest of the christmas decorations at 8pm tonight.  Later than I wanted, but all ready for tomorrow.  Have photographed them for pattern/instruction writing, but sadly didn't get around to doing the next pattern for tonight.  Will do my best to get it online by Tuesday night.

Hubby was also productive, building a 'boardwalk' from the footpath to the front door so we don't have to put on our gumboots just to get from the car to the house.

Now it's off to bed!

Not much crafting this week but....

I now have keys to our new house!!  It will be a couple of weeks before we start to move in and then a few  more before we can fully unpack and settle because the carpet is being held up (because the bank took so long to pay the bill, the handover was delayed and we lost our carpet booking so we have to wait till they can fit us in).

I bought those two patterns I wanted, and am scheming on colours for the apron so I can make it before Christmas.  Just have to hope that I can find a fabric that fits my 'vision'.

Must spend today finishing Christmas decorations for the Amitie Christmas Challenge tomorrow night.  I think that will be my whole day.

I've been inspired

After seeing You SEW Girl's great summer dress, I wanted something that was as cool and comfy as her dress looked.  As much as I loved the simple shape on her dress, I knew that style doesn't look as great on me so I went hunting for patterns.  Of course all the patterns that I have spent my life collecting and I love are... all in storage... so that meant I had to buy a new one (oh dear, what a shame).

I've found about half a dozen patterns that I want now.  Most of them are around the $18 mark so I'll be waiting till someone has a pattern special for those.  For this weekend I settled on New Look 6779.  It has a fairly simple shape, but hopefully enough shape to look decent over my "shapely" bust and spare tyre.

So then the hunt was on for fabric.  Shorting after getting into Lincraft I found an awesome retro style purple/black/light grey print. Then I was stuck as to what to use as a contrast.  I would have loved to use purple but of course getting exactly the right shade of purple was never going to happen.  There was always black but I felt bad choosing black because I'm still trying to get over my "everything must be black" mindset.  So I sat and looked at pattern books and waited for my Creative Consultant (my hubby) to arrive.

He agreed that black was probably the best option, then found a lovely cotton lace style fabric (I'm sure it has a proper name but I can't remember now).  Then we had to decide what to back it with, since I didn't really want the peek-a-boo effect when bra straps were involved.  We settled on plain black so it gives more of a texture look rather than a lace look, but the black isn't quite as deep so it will show up the lace quite nicely.

The lacey fabric was a bit dearer than I'd planned to spend, but it will be a good dress that looks funky, that I can wear to work on hot days.... and if I finish it today then I can also wear it to the party we have tonight which is a purple and black theme!

On a mostly unrelated note, I can't wait to move into the new house and actually be able to get enough light to take a photograph without needing the flash!  Looks like we might get the keys this week though, so almost there!  Just have to wait till carpets etc are done before we can actually move house.

Not so much craft

Nothing been happening at my house the last few days other than gym and sleeping, so no time for craft (or photographing finished craft).

I have however found a few new books at the library of interest so have a few more projects on my to-do list.

We had walk through on the house yesterday afternoon. We should be moving in 2-3 weeks if the bank doesn't hold us up again! Then I'll have a REAL sewing room again!! WHEEEEEEEE