It's been a year, with not a lot of blog activity from me, but that's okay because we're all still here and we're safe and sound. I don't think I did a round up of the year last year, which is kind of a bummer because it's sort of neat to look back on the stuff that i sewed! A lot of what I sewed this year didn't make it to the blog; the whole photographing, editing, writing take a lot of energy which isn't something I've had a lot of this year. Here's hoping I can work hard to make all my dreams for next year come through for me!

2015 was pretty sad, but it's given me motivation to be even stronger than I thought I could be. This place isn't where I share those sorts of things though, so I'm going to focus on the best part about 2015 as far as my blog was concerned, and that was where I really found my style.





















What are your plans for the next year? Anything on your list you want to accomplish? I've taken up hooping again and I want to try a bunch more tricks with my hula hoop next year, and maybe go surfing again!

I'm such a sucker for Striped Swallow Designs patterns, and it's really not difficult to see why. All the patterns are super trendy little things to sew for your girls and although I resisted for about six months before buying my first one, I don't hesitate anymore and I now own the Wanderer Tunic, the Coachella Shorts and the Soho Maxi, although I bought those patterns in the middle of winter and am only now starting to think that maybe I should light a fire under myself and start sewing them up!


I've sewn the Wanderer Tunic up before, but I'm yet to get photographic evidence of it (hopefully this post will motivate me to pull it out of Eddie's washing pile and slip her into it!) but it's one of those garments that when it is clean I will put her in it because I just love it so much.


About a month ago, on the Striped Swallow Designs fb group, there was a Wanderer Dress sew-along & tutorial. It showed you how to change up the tunic slightly to make it into a dress and since I really wanted to sew this pattern up again I thought i'd do the right thing by Edison and make her another dress. She's growing, so I can justify sewing for her still because at the moment the kids just have WAY too many clothes (when did that ever stop anyone though am i right?).


The fabric I got from my Pattern Revolution sister Nicole as a gift because she's sooo damn sweet and I'm so lucky! It's a Joann's fabric print, which was exciting because you know in Australia we just don't get that ahah, so it was amazing for me!



It's a tattoo-style print, with mermaids, roses, butterflies and swallows - all that good stuff. For contrast I just used a black with white polka dot drill still in my stash. I did have a pompom trim between the bib front and the main fabric, but I was trying to be edgy and the brilliant orange pompoms looked no bueno so they had to go! I hate unpicking, but I wasn't going to deal with that crap on her dress so sayonara pompoms! Hopefully they'll make an appearance on something else. I've been buying all my trim and elastics on big cards off eBay, it's easier, cheaper, and I like getting parcels!



I love the hem of this dress, like a men's shirt, I love the wave. You need to only make it a tiny hem with a shaped hem like this otherwise the fabric goes cray. i remember learning that at fashion school and it just revolutionised my life basically, haha.



The pattern is a dream, I really love Striped Swallow Designs patterns and I've only been able to sew up this one (twice now!) so far. I've got the coachella shorts printed out on my desk (for the second time because the first time I lost half the pieces wooo go me) and I've got the soho maxi queued up. I've learned to pace myself, i cannot SEW ALL THE THINGS no matter how much i might feel like doing it at the time, and I hate having several garments cut out all over my desk because then when I come back to them I'm like, "I really don't wanna sew this nowwwww....." and give it the side eye. And then I feel bad and they accumulate but THIS YEAR I have made myself a promise and I've started to give my studio a big makeover, and a lot of my fabric, sewing books, buttons and trims and general crap that I was hoarding in there in case I made something from it has been turfed to the op shop! We've been living here for two years now and a lot of that was stuff I had kept from before Tim and I were even married. Yikes.



It's been a while since I've posted a blooper so here you go. Edison and our pup Bellamy Bacon!

This is going to be one of those posts with like five hundred photos (or just ten) because Eddie just nailed it with all her cuteness! I was supposed to do this post as part of the petit oiseau top blog tour but with the really traumatic birth of my neice and the wonderful wedding of tim's brother, life really got the best of me and threw me for a six. hopefully I can make up for my absence on the tour with this post!

It's another t-shirt surgery from me, I have a small cupboard full of shirts i've collected over the years and it's my go to when trying out new patterns! The Petit Oiseau top is the latest offering from Filles à Maman. It's dolman style, and you can choose the length of the sleeves and have it with or without a ruffle across it. Since it's summer here I opted for the short sleeves but kept the ruffle because what's life without whimsy?

The black is just stretchknit from my stash (I always have to have black in my stash because, well it's my staple/base for everything!) the top of the tee is black & white stripes scrap and the ruffle and the back of the top is from a fluro yellow muscle men's shirt I was originally going to resize for Vinnie. I placed the ruffle pattern right over the logo and cut that out, i really love how it turned out! It said something about having hope or whatnot.


This pattern was incredibly easy to sew and piece together, there wasn't anything that had me scratching my head or wondering what was meant to fit where. I only did one layer of fabric for the ruffle, but there are options for making it double-sided.


It wasn't just the sewing of the pattern that was easy, the pattern printing and piecing itself was an absolute dream. Sometimes, it's really difficult with PDF patterns to make them all fit together and make sure you have the right size, however with Filles à Maman patterns literally everything you need is on the pattern, it's easy to stick the pages together and print out the right size. They're a dream, I really wish that all patterns had as much detail as this baby does! Filles à Maman is a french-language pattern company but the pattern is in english so if you are as uncultured as me and struggle with dealing with even one language then you're in luck.



Can we also take a moment to appreciate how damn cute this little girl is? She's growing up (not a lot, she's still so short) but man her sense of humour rivals her brother's!


I left the bottom of the top unhemmed, sometimes I do that a lot with the kids shirts these days mostly due to laziness than any sort of fashion statement. Usually I'll had hem and sleeve bands to make it look neat, because i just can't stand the zigzag look as hems, i don't know why. I had no issues with it when I was first making kids' clothes but now it's just something i aesthetically don't like!


Hope you have a happy and safe holiday :) I'm planning on drinking chocolate milk and playing Fallout 4 (and also sewing up something pretty for Pattern Revolution!). What are you plans for next year?