Falling in love again....

I've been playing around with Vilene S320 for making bags and I'm feeling a bit gushy and besotted again. I particularly like the combination of cotton quilting fabric, S320 and H640 wadding. Structure, flexibility and a smooth flat finish ...all in a lightweight, easy-to-fuse interfacing. I told you I was prone to gushing about it, didn't I...?

I'm also loving this Secret Garden range by Patty Young. It's been in the stash for a while.

Love makes the heart sing.... and makes me feel all generous and giving. I want to share the love around and give everyone a chance to experience the joy that IS Vilene S320.

This week - until 5pm Friday 5th March - we're giving 15% off the price of Vilene S320.
Get yours HERE!

I'm also giving this printer cartridge to anyone (preferably within Australia) who can use it.
Lesson learned - never leave the 4-year-old in charge of choosing the printer ink.... (I know!). She wanted to choose it so I said "No.8 pink -with an M on it". Obviously something distracted me from checking it until three weeks after it was purchased, I'd lost the receipt and damaged the packaging. The one I wanted was 8M - not PM. With no hope of returning it and $26 down the gurgler, I'm happy to see it go to a good home.

Hello to anyone who has come here from the Selvage Blog. Please do feel free to leave your name on the selvedge giveaway post. The stash is building up again after the first round of winners and I'll send more out soon.

On the subject of winners - congratulations to Carol Jones in Texas USA, who won the pattern of her choice in February's "spend over $50" prize draw. This month's draw prize will be a $25 voucher to spend in the shop.

Ain't love grand....?

Impromptu button hole gauge... and a giveaway!

Visiting my parents on the weekend was looking a bit tricky because I had a lot of Tulip Dress sewing to do. Solution: do both. I can talk and sew, and drink tea and sew. No problem.

While two of my older sisters sat neatly with their embroidery, I spread out with sewing machine, a pile of dresses and bags of buttons and threads. (In other words, assumed the position of my 16-year-old self on the kitchen table). The one thing I forgot was a tape-measure.

..but placing buttonholes is not a problem when there are paper napkins around!

Who needs a button hole gauge...? (...well, actually, that's the next gadget on my list!).

The Tulip Dress is in its final stages. See my Flickr page for a few more pics. You might also start to see some pattern testing pics popping up on a few blogs. Here it is at Matching Pegs and two versions at Thornberry. It's also here at My Black Cardigan.

If you'd like to go into a draw to win a pattern for yourself, leave a comment here. I'll draw the prize when the pattern is ready to go up on the website. For a second chance at the pattern and a chance to win a yard/metre of fabric from my stash AS WELL, you can blog about it and leave another comment to tell me you've linked....

If you have any stories about improvised sewing gadgets, I'd love to hear them, too (not a rule of the giveaway.... just for fun!).

Which brings me to the monthly spend-over $50 prize. This month's prize will be ALSO be a copy of the Tulip Dress pattern - hot off the press! All invoices over $50 for the month of January will be going into the draw. So... a few chances to WIN WIN WIN!

EDITED TO ADD - Thank you - the draw is now closed!!

Various Announcements

Recently I've discovered that there's a down-side to being all environmentally-aware and waste-not-want-notty....
A few years ago there was "The Great Make-Up Purse Disaster" here at Nicole Mallalieu Design - when a mutant pattern found its way into the Make-up Purse kits.

The pattern was not symmetrical and was a bit shorter than it ought to be... not that there's anything wrong with that (I'm a bit like that, myself)... but you know what I mean. The instructions were still fine - EXCELLENT, in fact ;) - it was just that the pattern wasn't what it promised to be.

Way back then, I carefully went through every invoice to find the people who had purchased a make-up purse kit and sent them a copy of the right pattern - just in case. I then went through all the unpacked patterns and separated all the wrong-uns from the right-uns.

THEN.... I thought, "Gosh, that's a lot of paper.... I could USE that for something!!" so put it in a box and forgot all about it.

Fast forward about 3 years..... and a box of make-up purse patterns is discovered and packed. Sent out to people....

OH DEAR!

If you have recently bought a Make-up Purse Kit that has the style number BO366 instead of BO385, please let us know and we'll send you the right pattern. If you don't have proof of purchase (invoice number, PayPal or bank deposit date) you can post us the actual wrong-un pattern and we'll make up the cost of your postage with a spare zip or something.

In happier (and slightly less stressful) news - the winner of the November Spend Over $50 draw prize is Sally Lamb from Queensland. Sally wins a $25 voucher to spend in our shop. To be in the next draw, all you have to do is spend over $50 in the month of December. You could win the hat pattern of your choice.

There will also be news soon of an exciting new hat interfacing.... Vilene S320 has arrived in Australia, and only at Nicole Mallalieu Design!!! Stay tuned for that one.


And lastly, the MOST IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT....

We are closing for our annual Christmas break from Wednesday 23rd December to Tuesday 12th January. If you're planning to get up to crafty business in that time (as I am) you'd do well to stock up beforehand....

Presents

I haven't been very present in blogland of late. A combination of a hectic teaching schedule, working on secret-squirrel stuff and my WILTING in the hot weather (!!) have all conspired to keep me away (....and there's also a small matter of the home - read: blogging - computer being in a room other than the one with the air conditioner).

But I've had some lovely presents lately, including this portrait of me, made out of Hama Beads by Bec's gorgeous girl on Saturday.

These booky presents arrived, too. A present to me... from me. I needed some fresh eye-candy and these also double as "sewing library reference books". (Phew!...Justified that one!).


Edited to add: Yes - I had read reviews about errata in the Heather Ross book, but as I'm NEVER likey to use a pattern or follow instructions in it, I didn't mind. (I only have to look at something and can work out how it's made.... it's been my job for 20-odd years). I really did buy the book for its eye-candy value. It's also good for me to keep a finger on the pulse by knowing what's going on in craft book world.

And I've been giving presents, too... just forgetting to blog about them. We drew our October "Spend over $50" prize last week and Wendy from Heathmont (Vic) chose some new gadgets.

For the November prize..... let's say a $25 voucher to spend in our shop. All you have to do to be in the draw is spend more than $50. We'll random-number-thingamy the invoice numbers for the month of November - and the first over-$50 WINS!

Ok... I'm off to find an air conditioner.... and think about secret-squirrel projects.

News to me.. and to you.

I was about to give up on the new "DONE BUT WITH ERRORS ON PAGE" version of Internet Explorer (in fact, I still might...). Too many things that are supposed to scroll, roll and appear simply don't.... until you click this little button....

Apparently it's the "compatability view" button. I had no idea it existed... did you?

One little click and things magically work again! ....Sometimes. (I still can't get the Amazon "look inside" reader thingamy to work... which could be seen as a good thing for my visa card, but is slightly annoying because it worked perfectly on the old version of Explorer).

SO... I'm thinking of changing things here. If you have any hot tips for what I should be changing to, I'd love to to hear what browser you use for the internet.. and why...?

Anyway - the news to you is that the winner of the September "Spend over $50" draw prize was Gillian H in Canberra. She won a $20 voucher to spend in our squeaky-clean and nearly finished shopping cart website. (There are virtual "wet paint" signs and stepladders everywhere, but that's part of the charm, hey Gillian?). We drew the prize and told Gillian but I forgot to mention it here (sorry!).

Which brings me to this months draw prize.... If you spend over $50 in the month of October, your invoice number will go into the random number generator and you could win some haberdashery or gadgets. You can choose two from this list...

Clover yo-yo maker, Clover seam ripper...Clover iron-on transfer pencil, Clover white marker Pen...

Rajah cloth, air-soluble marker pen...

Saddlers punch or a packet of each of the sewing machine needles (two packets as one choice). And I'll throw in a little surprise something-or-other on top of that.

And the new shopping cart is close... very close... to completion. Yay.

Oops, I forgot...

I mean, besides picking my child up from kinder yesterday...

I forgot to mention that we've scheduled another Patternmaking for Bags course (and already three places are gone). We were over-subscribed for Patternmaking 1 and under-subscribed for Patternmaking 2, so...

We're going to run another Patternmaking for Bags 1 course on Thursday nights between the 10th November and 12th December. 6.30-8.30pm in my studio in Brunswick. $245. Places are limited to 6 people. Contact Leah (with a booking form) if you'd like to book a place.

The course will take you from the very fundamentals of drafting bag patterns to the methods for creating shapes like the Clutch, Baguette, Mod, Hobo etc. (Pleats, darts and more sculptural shapes are a Patternmaking 2 thing).

Oh - and another thing I forgot to mention was that Anabel Pantano won the monthly prize for spending over $50. Thanks Anabel - I hope you enjoy your free choice of bag pattern from us.

The prize for the September draw will be a $20 voucher to spend on our new shopping cart.

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And I forgot to take relevant photos for today's post. So here are more from yesterday, which I took instead of driving to the kindergarten....

Winners and Grinners...

The grinner would be ME. The Spec case is printed and will be packed by tomorrow. Woo Hoo! Yes - you can order it today and we can post it out tomorrow! It's the full kit and kaboodle - all the interfacing, support materials and the frame that you'll need to make one purse, as well as a paper pattern and an instruction booklet wich will mean that you can make LOADS more in time for Christmas! You only need to supply the fabric scraps and the glue to finish the purse, and once you learn the process, they're very quick to sew up.

The pattern makes a lovely purse to protect sunglasses or spectacles in your handbag. It has stiff (but not rigid) structure to protect against minor bumps and major scratches, and can expand to accommodate even larger size sunglasses (although the really ENORMOUS blowfly glasses will fit better in the next size up... when I make that pattern). The purse is 17cm long by 8.5 cm across the base. The side panels can expand to over 10cms horizontally and to 6cms vertically.

Edited to add a big thank you to Nikki, Cam, Ann Marie and Carolyn for being fab pattern testers. (You can see Nikki's and Cam's spec cases here and here).

Ordering code: PFKSPE75 Price $36.50. Email, fax or phone through your order.


Now... the WINNERS! Thanks to my beautiful assistant Mr Random Number Generator...

The Spec Case Kit giveaway was won by Ambette.

The monthly spend-over $50 draw prize was won by Nedra Purnell in QLD. I'll be sending you a 75mm purse kit with some fabric.

The prize for the month of August will be a bag pattern of your choice. (This doesn't include purse kits). All you have to do is spend over $50 and you're automatically in the draw.

Small details

Nothing big happened today. It's all about the small bits right now - the details of pulling together new patterns, preparation for classes, accommodation for the Sydney Stitches and Craft Show.

Chipping away at lots of corners and not seeing anything forming yet.... spending more time organising activities to keep the wee one occupied (do you want glitter with that? ...sticky tape? ...you want to do footprint paintings?... whatever will keep you occupied, darling...) than I did actually doing any of the tasks I'd set for myself.

Little by little.... that's just how it is in these here parts. But we get there. And we collect a lot of fine child-art along the way.

Other small things I forgot to mention - the winner of our "Spend over $50" draw prize for June was Monika Griffin. She won a packet of super-fun inkjet fabric. This months prize will be a 75mm purse frame kit with fabric included. At the end of the month we put all the month's invoice numbers into a random number generator and the first invoice for over $50 wins a prize. Easy-peasy.

Meet my latest love... I mean PRODUCT.

I still love my paper-folder, but I ALSO love inkjet printable fabric - so much so that I'm now stocking it. It's $21.95 per pack of 5 (size A4) sheets and it's LOTS of fun!

You may remember the memory chest I made for my mother. It was done by printing out family photos on inkjet fabric.

For my next project, I photographed some of my 3-year-old's paintings....

...inserted the images into text boxes in a Word document, then played around with resizing them.

Then it was simply a matter of printing the document from the computer as if it were on paper - the fabric has a peel-away backing that keeps it stiff and smooth on its trip through the printer. That's ALL there is to it!! REALLY!

I appliquéd the LION drawing and made a denim pencil case (large style - to hold a ruler, calculator and notebook if necessary).

I made a little needle book.
And I'm VERY HAPPY with this brooch I made. My wee girl is also very proud to see me wear it. (Not sure what this creature is - its name keeps changing, but it always "has a sun on its tummy").

HOW did I make the brooch? I didn't think to prepare a turorial until it was all finished, so here's a brief run-down on the process.

1. I fused the some dense felted wool fabric to Fast2Fuse and satin-stitched around the edges with a dense machine zig-zag stitch. (You could use any old felt or fabric, and you could even hand satin-stitch if you're so inclined).

2.I fused the printed fabric to light interfacing and wadding and zig-zagged it onto the felted wool - using basting spray to hold it together while I stitched.

3. The back was made from felt fused to Vilene S520 (I cut the S520 about 5mm short of the outsde edges of the felt). The brooch finding was theaded through slits in the felt (and is therefore supported by the layer of S520).

4. Another squirt of basting spray and the back was held in place for the final machine zig-zag around the (pre-satin-stitched) edge. I did this from the underside (so that the brooch finding was facing upwards).

5. I pinned it on and wore it for the rest of the day!!

Does this sound like fun to you...?

If you'd like to order some inkjet fabric you can email or call Leah in the office. We already have it in stock and are yet to get it onto the website. It will be there ASAP.

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Alternatively, if you spend over $50 with us this month you could WIN some! Every purchase over $50 goes into the barrel for a draw at the end of the month. June is INKJET FABRIC month.

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The May prize of the make-up purse was won by Fiona in Southport, QLD. It's winging its way to her as we speak.

Good News Day

Take your pick Urszula O..... you won the April "Spend over $50" giveaway prize! We'll send you the bag or hat pattern of your choice.

In May if you spend over $50 you could win a make-up purse (made by me, especially for you).

Ok, so the picture above is actually a bowl full of coin purses, but I found it before the Make-Up purse pics and this is a bit of a rushed post. I have a date with Photoshop and an Excel spreadsheet..... Stocking up on midnight oil....

Oh - just a small note on the draw prize. I put the invoice numbers for April into Mr Random number generator and chose the first over-$50 sale. The first two "winners" were just under the $50 threshold, so missed out - sorry kids. I think there's a moral in that tale somewhere.