Another day, another adventure

Here I am, aged about 23 or 24, sitting on top of a mountain in the Lake District in England.  I'm nonchalantly crunching my way through an apple, looking for all the world like I walk up mountains every day.

 If I remember correctly, the climb nearly killed me.  I think there were tears. 

Here I am, ten years later, in Florence, looking for all the world like a natural Irish redhead on a relaxed holiday.

The months leading up to this trip were difficult, difficult times and the maintenance on that auburn do was a full-time job  (because I'm not naturally a redhead ...nor am I Irish).  You'd never guess any of this from the photo, would you? (And those 3 weeks in Italy were fabulous).

When I think of adventures, there's always a background of something overcome...  darkness before dawn,  little engines that could...  GETTING THERE is what it's about and it makes everything worthwhile.

Tomorrow I'm off to Sydney, to the AQM and to teach some classes.  Nervous-Nellie-newby-driver that I am, I'm driving up BY MYSELF.  (I plan to take lots of breaks, lots of snacks and a couple of audio books).

I'll show you photos when I get there.

On my iPod this week...

Yeah, yeah... music (a very weirdly eclectic mix).

This week, it's been all about the iPod camera, which I'm still trying to get to grips with (but keep finding myself without any other camera to use).  So it's all low-fi and badly-composed around here. 

 These Shell Purse pics were some of my earlier Instagram experiments.... and I realised today that I forgot to take any other pics of this purse before it went off to be a display model in... ummm... Addicted to Fabric or Bargain Box Mornington... or somewhere.  Time I recorded them on the blog, methinks.

 On Friday, not only did I forget my camera, but I took VIDEOS instead of photos of all the images I thought I was photographing... except this one.  It's the cute little box that my gourmet lunch arrived in at my Treehouse Textiles class.

On Saturday we spent some rare and much-needed family time, and took a day-trip to Castlemaine.  The amazingly colourful Beanie Affair was on in the market building in the town centre.  There were lots tables full of hats to try and buy - knitted, crocheted, felted and sewn - but unfortunately we were not permitted to take photos of them.

 The tassel-making section was another matter altogether.  The local Steiner school brought in HUGE cones of yarn and encouraged involvement.  The wee girl found a spot to get tassel-making and someone to show her how (thanks Jane).

 The proud finish photo is decidedly low-fi.

Since we've been home, a goodly portion of Auntie Wilma's yarn stash has been transformed into woolly tassels, to decorate the house.

There's been a bit of low-fi sewing going on here this weekend, too.  I brought my machine and half of everything I need to finish off some samples for the trade show next weekend.  It's been a comedy of mismatched threads, an absence of the right size/colour zips and a late-night dash to Safeway to get sewing machine needles (...and I was right to follow my instincts about cheap supermarket sewing machine needles and buy two packets of them.  They go blunt faster than they sew!).

Last night, I was wondering why the bag I was making was looking so "home-made"...but I kept on sewing.  This morning, it occurred to me to check the pressure on the presser foot.  Yup - it was still in machine-embroidery mode. Great.  And I have a wonky bag to show for my perserverence. 

Looking forward to a slightly more hi-fi week....

Fancypants Hobo

If you're looking for me today, I'll be at Treehouse Textiles, teaching in a gorgeous Australian bush setting, eating gourmet food and feeling a bit fancy.

 For the rest of the forseeable week, I'll be chained to the sewing machine, buried under a pile of new samples I'm sewing up for the Australasian Quilt Market and my classes in Sydney the following week.  Not so fancy.

 I've finished this new sample, which has somehow been dubbed "The Fancypants Hobo".... it's a bit special with those two exposed zippers in the front.  They're there as an example of how to use one of the techniques in the zipper class I'll be teaching at Peg's Pieces (and back at my studio in Melbourne later in the year).

 Mind you, the Hobo was always was a bit fancy.  The instructions teach lots of bag-making tricks that bridge the gap between beginner and intermediate bag-making skills -  all in a gently, gently sort of way, of course.

I must fly... time to find my way through the wilds of the eastern suburbs to the serene south.  I believe there's a lemon tart with my name on it there.

Take a scroll through the Treehouse Blog. (I feel a bit calmer just LOOKING at it...)

Textures

My felted-jumper (sweater) stash has been getting a little out of control lately.   I've been gathering them to play with a few bag/teaching-related ideas in mind, but haven't got as far as putting the ideas into action.

Last week, while trying to magically transform our busy, creative family home into a display house for inspection (no mean feat), I realised the old couch cushions needed a bit of a spruce-up.  Funny, how I hadn't noticed the shabbiness until I saw them through strangers' eyes.

One evening after work, I pulled out some heavy denim (from Rathdowne Remnants) and a few felted jumpers that matched our floor rug, with the intention of making one side of each cushion in wool and the other in denim. But when I cut the arms off the jumpers, I was inspired in a different direction altogether.

I fell in love with the juxtposition of the different textures and the contrast of the denim blue.  It broke up the matchy-matchiness of the wool cushions and the wool rug. The circles of felted-jumper-arm suddenly looked like the remnants of shells, clinging to a rocky shore. 
 
I especially liked that they were REALLY QUICK to make.
 

To date, they haven't impressed any prospective house buyers enough to buy the house, but I quite like them.

Make it in May Skirt Sew-Along

When the lovely Ms CurlyPops announced that she was having a skirt sew-along in May, I immediately signed up, with great hopes for sewing up a skirty storm in preparation for winter.

 Since I forgot to take zips to Sewjourn (and, let's face it, was looking for any excuse to make a scrappy quilt...), the manifestation of the planned skirts has been somewhat delayed. 

The only skirts I've made this month have been samples for GJ's shop display....Ooops - in MY SIZE..... how did that happen?

The fabric is the new decor weight sateen Parson Gray (by David Butler) and IT IS A DREAM to sew and to wear.  The pattern is my A-Line Skirt pattern, which began life as a skirt I designed for myself, as a good basic wardrobe-builder. 

I love a skirt with a yoke...it sits firmly without cutting in to the waist, if you know what I mean, and kind of holds in the belly a bit. It can be made short or long, in winter or summer fabrics and it can have a feature fabric panel, or not.  I'm a bit of a long-skirt-with-panel kind of girl. 

 And since the most common feedback I get about this pattern is "THIS IS MY BEST EVER INVISIBLE ZIP!" I thought to take a photo of mine. Nice zip - shame about the badly aligned fabric print...oops.

 And I made another one in a knee-length style... and goodness me, it fits Georgia (Ms GJ's, herself).  Fancy that.

 And I took a photo of the famously well-finished invisible zip from the inside.

You can have a closer look at these at GJ's while they have Parson Gray fabric in stock.  After that, they'll probably each be put to use in someone or other's wardrobe.  Waste-not-want-not and all that.

Check out Ms Curlypops blog to see the other skirts that people have made in May HERE.

A weekend at home.... the other one, I mean.

Ah... Sewjourn....

Each time we go to Sewjourn, it feels more like home. 

It's a haven where time and routine don't exist.  Or... at least not until about 2pm on Sunday, when the buzz of sewing machines takes on a somewhat desperate pitch as we all silently begin to realise that it's nearly time to go back to real life (... but not yet....I just want to finish this...).

Despite Lara's husband's advice, it was actually perfectly alright to stay up too late. 

And it was also perfectly normal to be up at the crack of dawn, sewing in pj's.  (Some of us were up quite a bit later, having been sewing until ridiculously close to the crack of dawn.)

 And it was absolutely bloomin' marvellous to be able to sew all day! 

There were loads of finished garments and lots of sharing of ideas and knowledge.

Lara's scrap box was the scrap box that kept on giving.....

Annie was quilting up a storm ...and a rather fetching grey knit top (not from the scrap box).

Megan was paper-piecing an amazing shades-of-red piece, which I failed to photograph adequately.

 And I somehow found myself slipping to the dark (and scrappy) side.

Oops.

Thank you - once again - to Kathryn, Rachel, Annie, Lara, Megan, Karen and Tanya - for being the remarkable women that you are.  I can't wait until November so we can do it all over again.

Lara has some lovely photos of the weekend here.  

Zipping along....

...on the sewing machine, at least.  In real life, it's all butter-menthols and early nights (and a few hot whiskeys).

 While I'm not quite running on all eight cylinders, I'm using my limited energy to sew up samples, using the zipper samples I've made for ZIPPERS FOR BAGS workshops.  Next task is to cut and make up a new batch of zipper samples for classes.
I'm adding zips to bags where zips were not originally in the pattern, just to show you what's possible when you know a few zippy tricks.  The pocket configuration in this Laptop Bag is nothing like the original design, but could serve a different range of pockety needs.  (Yes - I just made up another word.)

I used Amy Butler's "Lark" for this bag, interfaced with a combination of Vilene S320 and H640 fusible wadding.  I find that for large areas of fabric, the low melting-point adhesive on Vilene S320's makes it a breeze to apply.  The addition of H640 wadding gives the bag a springy, self-supporting structure that is easy to manipulate around the sewing machine.  You can see that I've waxed lyrical about this before..

I've used the same combination of interfacings on my project for Australian Homespun's project of the month, which should be out very soon ( I thought it was the May edition...?EDITED TO ADD - it's the JUNE edition).  Again, the fabric is Amy Butler's "Lark" range.

You can see how smooth the surface of the fabric is, and how self-supporting this bag is.  That'd be the interfacing combo....

Right now, I'm sipping hot lemon, honey and ginger at home, but I'm planning more zippered bag variations as we speak.

Oh, and since my August Zipper Workshop has booked out, I've schedued another date for a class in my studio - November 17th.  Needless to say, places book up quickly, so get in while you can!

LATE-BREAKING NEWS -
 Pattern Review have posted reviews and a giveaway of my book - HERE.  This might be a good opportunity for those of you in the USA to get your hands on it!

A wee hot one...

I've blogged this recipe before, but it's particularly seasonal, so I think it's worth running again (this time with my own Instagram pic).  It's the Irish cure-all, and right now I godda gold.....

Hot Irish Whiskey (or "a wee hot one" as they say in some parts of the aul' sod)


You need IRISH whiskey - Scotch doesn't work with these flavours.

1. Pour a goodly amount of the whiskey into a sturdy glass.

2. Add a large teaspoon of BROWN sugar (has to be brown sugar... doesn't taste right otherwise).

3. Cut a slice of lemon, stud it with at least half a dozen whole cloves and put that in the glass as well.

4. Top up the glass with boiling water. Stir and let it steep for as long as it takes to be a drinkable temperature.

5. Drink several of these.... and you will feel NO PAIN and sleep like a baby. (Do it too often and you'll probably feel some liver pain, but your cold will be a distant memory!).

Oh - and this works equally well with Port, only you don't need the sugar.

For me tonight, it's a wee hot one and some knitting, and bed a-calling.

Tarting things up a bit

Yesterday's Customised Bag class was all about the fiddly bits that can be used to polish up a wide variety of bag designs.

There were hard bases and purse feet, super-duper straps and zippered closures.  

 There was ooh-ing and ahhing over crochet embellishments...

 ...and recycled Japanese obi fabrics. 

 There was delicious Croatian apple slice (ahem... which didn't last long..) and 'Grandma's cake' (a scruptious walnut-meal cake), thanks to Anonija, who happens to be from Croatia. 

Nobody needed the TimTams.  (Elephant stamp for Antonija!)

And special elephant stamps for Jo, who braved the pain of recent surgery and bomb-your-brain-out painkillers to come to class, and to Amanda who flew all the way down from Brisbane. 

Thanks for a lovely day, girls!

The next Customised Bag in a Day class is Saturday 4th August.

If you need to learn the basics of bag-making (before learning the fiddly bits), you might find that the Beginner's Bag in a Day class is more your thing (we cover the basics of interfacing, construction, straps and hardware in that one).

Restructure

Firstly, many thanks to the many wonderful people who left comments here or on Facebook or who sent lovely emails after my last post.  I've been quite fragile lately but you've made me feel stronger and a little bit protected from the blows of future criticism.

It has been mentioned before, that I can't leave well enough alone, once I gets me an idea..... 

So now, not only am I restructuring my business and lots of real-life stuff, but I can't seem to stop turning last year's knitting machine wraps into twisty-drapey winter woollies....

The few scarfy-shruggy rectangle-based things I made a little while ago got me thinking about other wrap-and-sew structures for knitted rectangles.  I decided to try this idea on last year's rectangles before I knitted up any new ones. 

I've been felting them a bit, too.  The blue one felted up nicely, but I think the red one might need a few spins in the dreaded front-loader to disguise all the little pulls and holes in the knit.

These two are based on a spiral wrap.   The back is lovely and snuggly-warm and the neck can be cowled and draped in a lot of different configurations.  I'm now thinking of other wraps and other shapes to wrap.....

Other restructuring activities include the revamping of a few of my smaller projects: converting them into digital downloads.  You can find them over at Pink Chalk Farics.

So far, we have the Pyramid Purse, the Lavender Handbag (which also makes a cute little pincushion) and the Fabulous 50's Bib.  These are all my go-to "quick gift" projects.

The patterns have nice spiffy-new colour photographs and re-vamped pattern pieces.

There is still a lot to do here... organising the path ahead while bringing the tail end of the good ship YOU SEW GIRL around.  You can expect to see more revampings and restructurings.... and you can definitely expect to see more knitty wrappy things.

Please do not send me any more emails – your prices are ridiculous.

This morning, when I woke up extra-early to work on ROUND THREE of feedback/edits from the final testing on the Best Dress pattern, I also woke to a reply - a single line -  from a mailing list unsubscriber.

"Please do not send me any more emails – your prices are ridiculous."

Couldn't she have just said "please unsubscribe"...?

I must add that I'm at the stage with this (Best Dress) pattern where I know that no other pattern designer would bother.  I'm over it and want it finished ...and there is still another edit to do before we go to press today.

I might also add that I'm tired, stressed and emotional - and probably a bit too sensitive - right now, and this comment has cut to the quick. It's taken the shine off what would normally be a very positive post about the release of a new pattern that I'm very proud of.

I love this little dress and have poured hours and hours of my life into it lately, making sure that it will be a trouble-free and rewarding project for anyone who cares to make it.  I need to know that I've done my absolute best with it.

But, instead of actually working on the edits, I've spent the last few hours pouring out a lot of emotional energy.  I made a response to the criticism - to the unsubscriber and to anyone who isn't familiar with what my work is about.

"Hi ... –
I’m happy to unsubscribe you from the mailing list and I’m sorry that you regret having signed up to receive my updates.

I’d normally do this without any response to you, but the tone of your email has deeply upset me and I feel the need to explain that in Australia, my patterns are the same price (or cheaper) than any other independent designer pattern (Amy Butler, Patty Young, Oliver & S etc). The cost of living (and producing products) in Australia is much higher than in the USA, as is the cost of craft materials (for example, we’re used to paying $28 per metre for the quilting fabric that you can buy for under $10). By our standards, my patterns are a very fair price.

As far as patterns go, mine are so much more than just a sewing pattern. I’m a qualified, industry-trained designer-patternmaker – not just an uppity crafter who thinks she can make sewing patterns**. Each one of my patterns contains a 20-30 page booklet of (agonized-over, on my part) instructions that act as a sewing-class in a packet for the end-user – teaching all my hard-earned tricks of the trade. If you care to read some of the feedback I receive (much of it from US citizens who feel it’s worth paying the exorbitant Australia Post charges), you'll see that I’ve been thanked for teaching even the most experienced of sewers to become better bag-makers, hat-makers and dressmakers.

If you’re at all interested, here’s some background reading –
http://www.nicolemdesign.com.au/testimonials.htm
http://www.nicolemdesign.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/up-close-and-personal.html (an insight into the process behind each of my patterns. As an aside, I’m still tweaking the pattern in this blog post, based on the 3rd round of pattern-testing (12 testers), to make sure that everything is as fool-proof as it can possibly be).

I shan’t bother you further. You have every right to not be interested and to want to unsubscribe from the mailing list. I just want you to do so, knowing what my products are about.

Sincerely...etc...

Edited to add:  This line about "uppity crafters" is purely my interpretation of the implied accusation pointed at me.  It is by no means meant to be disparaging of any other pattern designer - trained or untrained - on my part.

So, I'm very sorry about the slight delay.... the dress was going to be ready for print by the time I got to work this morning, but it may be a day late.

It is a LOVELY little dress, and although I've pitched it toward intermediate sewing skills, I tested it on 10 beginners and advancing-beginners (as well as a couple more experienced sewing gals).  Although it was slightly beyond the comfort zone of beginners, they all learned loads and made dresses that they loved.  They felt proud of what they'd achieved and confident that they could (and would) make the dress again.

 

And the little girls ADORE it.  (It's very twirly.)

 

So... apologies for the slight delay.  The pattern will hopefully go to print by tomorrow, and we're taking orders for it now.  I believe it will be in Ms CurlyPops' shop as soon as it's printed. 

 

..And it'll be at the ridiculous price of $21.95.