Singapore Style

My excuse for being quiet on the blog recently is that my boyfriend and I went on an amazing trip recently to Singapore and Malaysia. I think I'll be paying it off for the next few years!
I loved the typography in Singapore though. Everywhere you go there is something cool like a cute vending machines or signposts for a soya bean shops!




We got very carried away by the Japanese style toy machines!!

Robin & Mould go global...

Inspired by the success of my lovely friends Amy & Christian who run Robin & Mould I'm determined to return to the blogging fold! After my holiday I haven't blogged for a while, so I have a stack of things to post about including the baby bibs I've been making.



But while I'm catching up, I just wanted to say congrats to Robin & Mould for making it on to the lovely blog Bloesem Kids blog. It's a beautiful blog that we've loved for ages, so I'm super pleased they've featured the Robin & Mould cushions available on their Etsy shop.



As soon as the Etsy shop went live I got super excited and ordered myself a fabulous tea cosy and owl cushion. The cushion was supposed to be a gift but I've become too attached to it to give it away. I'll just have to buy some more...

• Robin & Mould blog
• Robin & Mould Etsy shop
• Bloesem Kids blog

My first attempts at embroidery...

During my blog surfing I came across this great website Sublime Stitching which has loads of modern embroidery patterns. When I was a kid I did some cross stitching but I've never had a go at embroidery. I suppose it has a rather old-fashioned reputation but after seeing some modern stuff on other blogs and the quirky designs at Sublime Stitching I was inspired to give it a go.


Sublime Stitching is a small independent company based in Austin, Texas USA with a great slogan 'This ain't your gramma's embroidery!'. This pretty much sums up their ethos with patterns that feature everything from sushi, tattoos and beach babes to work by upcoming illustrators and designers. The founder Jenny Hart writes her own blog and it really is great to feel that you are supporting a small independent business. Hopefully people will feel the same about my stuff if I ever start selling things!




I chose some cute designs by artist Julie West and my starter kit arrived packaged up with threads, a hoop, the all important stitching instructions and a great pair of cute pink embroidery scissors. And a tea towel to get started on. It really is as easy as Jenny promises in the instructions. All I had to do was cut out the designs that I wanted and arrange them on the tea towel and iron on the transfers. The special ink means that it only takes a few seconds to leave an imprint and you can use the transfers more than once. Genius!



So once I'd ironed on my design, I started with the chain stitch and it really was very easy and addictive. I really like the fact that you just follow the outline, like a sewing version of paint-by-numbers, which means it's a relaxing thing to do while watching telly or listening to music. I'm already thinking of ways to incorporate my own designs into future projects. This could be the start of something very exciting....I'm hooked.

Material Girl

So now I've made one pair of curtains (one down, one to go) I'm allowing myself to start thinking of other fun sewing projects. For a while now I've had my eye on some cute material in Beyond Fabric, a lovely little shop on Columbia Road. I've just been trying t owork out what to do with it and as I have two friends expecting little ones I've been thinking about making bibs and applique baby grows.

This gave me the perfect excuse to buy this at the weekend.

It's so sweet that I definitely want to make something like a purse for myself as well as baby gifts. Incidentally I've got my eye on the metal snap frame purse course at the Make Lounge but I'm just waiting until I have some money to go on it. 

There are quite a few lovely material websites that I've been lusting over recently and now I've decided what I'm going to make I think I can justify buying some more fabric. Yay!

Just check out these adorable fabrics that designer Jilly P has been working on with Hoffman fabrics. I'll post some of the finished baby stuff once I get around to making it. (Images from Jilly P's blog)

I've finally made some curtains!

Well it has only taken a year and a 3 months since I bought the material and I finally got round to making the lined curtains for our bedroom. After going on about how I was going to start sewing again my boyfriend very kindly bought me a lovely sewing machine last Christmas. And on a trip to visit my parents (who live in the Middle East in Oman) I came back with a suitcase stuffed with incense-scented fabric for a fraction of the price it would have cost in the UK. Apart from making a table cloth quite soon after we got back I never really got going on my sewing machine and I confess it has been gathering dust for a while. But I told myself that I needed to overcome my reservations and just get stuck in...otherwise I wasn't allowed to start any other craft projects. 

So I did eventually manage to make the curtains in a weekend and I wish I had lots of lovely photos but one of the main reasons I haven't been blogging recently is that I seem to have lost my camera.  I've been hoping it will turn up but as it's been almost a month now I might have to accept that the camera is gone (possibly left it in a bar/on a bus!) So anyway I thought I'd better start blogging again in the hope that it will turn up and I can add some great photos later.

So I do have some images from my iphone but as it only handles well-lit compositions I haven't been able to get a good shot of our bedroom. So I'll post the photos of the finished curtains when I get them sorted.

It was my first attempt at curtains and although it was time consuming it was actually fairly easy. The worst part was measuring and calculating the amount of material I needed. I've never been very good at maths and I was terrified of making a mistake and ruining the material. I used a wonderful book by Catherine Merrick and Rebecca Day which I found really useful. Even when I made a mistake with my hem allowances, I still managed to salvage the situation and so I was super proud when I got to hang them. It instantly made the bedroom cosy and we could finally take down the bits of material we had put up as a temporary measure when we first moved in.

So even though buying in some curtains wouldn't have been very expensive and would clearly have been much quicker, I now get a warm glow every time I look at mine. It's great to know that I made them and I'm now much more confident with the sewing machine.  And it's given me the confidence to start planning many more sewing projects. More details to come...

Finally got my hands on a Rob Ryan lasercut...

Ever since my lovely friend Amy (who runs Robin & Mould) introduced me to the illustrator and artist Rob Ryan I've been lusting after his art work.
And as if I needed anymore convincing he opened his shop Ryantown on Columbia Road, practically on my doorstep. A sure sign that I was meant to own some of his work. As I'm often down at the Columbia Road flower market on a Sunday it's impossible to resist a little peek in his shop. The only reason I've not bought anything more than cards and bags as gifts so far is the price. The framed laser cuts in the shop start at a few hundred and go up to a few thousand pounds. Sadly out of my price range.


So when I was reading his blog last week I was super excited to see his post about a series of signed limited edition laser cuts he'd made for Valentine's day that were under £50. I thought overnight about whether I could justify the price when I'm supposed to be saving for a holiday, and when I checked back on his Etsy shop the next day they had all sold out online already.
The panic I felt convinced me that I should just go for it. Surely that's what credit cards are for? And anyway his work is going up in value all the time so it's an investment right??
So as soon as his shop was open last Saturday I grabbed the plastic and my flimsy justifications and made my way down there to get one. And I'm so glad I did. It's lovely and I can't wait to get it on the wall. Just need to find a frame that's the right shape....I'm definitely in love!

The Veil & The Wedding Day

My sister was convinced that she wanted to look a bit different on her special day and after we found her beautiful lace dress we started discussing vintage accessories.

I found lots of the American wedding blogs particularly inspiring as they feature lots of stylish retro weddings. If you're interested check out Wedding Chicks, Jesi Haack Weddings and Project Weddings. We decided that a birdcage style vintage veil would look amazing with the dress and would be a traditional touch without looking 'too traditional'. We saw lots of great veils on the always inspiring Etsy but none of them were quite right, and after making my own fascinator I assured my sister I could make her one. (Always over-confident!!)

After discussing some designs she found a wonderful vintage broach for the veil base while she was buying vintage jewellry to go with the wedding dress. We had a number of fittings at various stages and quickly realised that we must have very different shaped heads as the veil pinned at an angle on me looked completely different on her. This made it very difficult to finish the veil without her around. So I decided to leave cutting the veil section to the right length until the night before the wedding. This was also due to the fact that the weight of the brooch meant we were struggling to pin it into her hair and I was hoping the hairdresser would work some magic and come up with a solution! Fingers crossed!

However as is often the way we ended up catching up with friends and relations who had gathered for the wedding the night before and after drinking too much I confidently insisted we could just sort it out on the day!

So on the morning of the wedding not only had the crisp sunshine of the day before been replaced by a heavy fog, but I started to panic about the fact that with just hours to go I still hadn't finished the veil and cake. No pressure then!

So I went to the barn with my soon to be brother-in-law and the groomsmen as they were delivering the decorations and helping to set up. It was quite a relief to see at least one completed project arrive all finished. We had used purple and silver Christmas baubles as both name settings and wedding favours. They looked beautiful and festive on the day but had involved a good few hours of writing on the baubles and arranging them in gift boxes to look like mini Christmas pressies (photos to follow). After a nervous half hour stacking and then re-stacking the stars on the cake I headed to the house where my sister was getting ready. Luckily a few glasses of bubbles meant that she was showing no signs of nerves. And the fabulous hairdresser Sharon Wilkes-Burt managed to miraculously secure the veil with only a few expertly placed pins. Then the dreaded moment when I had to cut the veil to the desired shape. The nervous hairdresser and photographer looked on (being photographed while taking scissors to the veil wasn't helping!) and I hoped for the best, well aware that there wasn't a back up plan if I screwed it up. With a few pins and a few frayed nerves we finally got there.

My sister looked truly beautiful on her big day (she actually dropped over 2 dress sizes for the wedding!) and although making things for the wedding was hard work at times, it was a great privilege to be such an integral part of the celebration. And I learnt some important craft lessons along the way!

(Hopefully I'll have some better photos of the veil when the official photos arrive)