Fading away

I have been a bit stuck with entering the whiplash comp this month, as just about everything I craft with is inspired and created with recycled materials, usually fabrics .
so I've been pondering over what to enter.
i ve been wanting to make a quilt for Arkie, and
I have so many little scrappy bits of fabric that i hoard, not so much because they are beautiful, although a lot of them are, but we dont have an abundance of lovely old fabrics around here and every little bit is treasured.
I make kids clothes from them for the market and dolls, so the left overs have gone into this quilt.

there are sheets, aprons, tea towels, rags, (bits of lovely fabric unapreciated by the op shop sorters cut up into rags), table cloths, pillowcases and trims .

i love how all these mix matched colours and tones work, the softness and fadedness seems to pull it all together I am now on the look out for some recycled wadding, i am heading to sydney and plan to check out the bower, maybe pick up a rejected doona/blanket. Has anyone ever quilted with something other than new wadding, i would love some tips if you have.

go the recycling, I am loving this whole shift in awareness at the moment, doing our bit for
Mother Earth

more dolls

I finally got some shots of the 2 new big dolls I'd been working on.

again....so much fun to make.

I didn't have any luck with them at the last market, actually I was really surprised as this time i sat and watched the crowd more, and it was actually pretty conservative.

Alot of tourists come to the market to oohh and aahh at the stuff but would never actually buy it to display in their homes.

When I say I didnt have any luck well I sold one to a sweet young girl and that made me pretty happy, she was so excited to buy her, remember that feeling going shopping as a teenager with mum and dad, money burnig a hole in your pocket, you really want to buy something great to mark the day, to spend the afternoon thinking about the great thing in your bag.
.

the dolls are in the shop too.......

I have a shop

I finally got something in my etsy shop, it wasnt so hard. Go and have a look.

a sweet little mermaid, again the inspiration came from coco, thank you coco.

i have another 5 on the go at the moment.

I'm also attempting a very quick quilt, I was inspired by kath red yet again over at whipup. my fabric stash is not all that great though and i am mostly using old sheets that i've collected over the past year in the somewhat opshop baren coffs coast, not alot of thrfting goodness around here.

it is still kinda lovely though

I want to blog more

I really do, I tend to blog in my mind too much, I have all these random great blogging material thoughts.
I am just going to blog.
I thought I would begin with telling some little happenings with the kids, some funny little stories. I thought about this yesterday when coco called out as she does that she needed some toilet paper

me: we've run out there's some newspaper there, just rip some off and use that.

coco: okay

arkie: coco, you can just go on the grass!

coco: I need to do a wee and a poo.

arkie: oh okay.

I love that this is not a big deal for them

well what else.........

coco particularly wants to understand everything at the moment, she is particularly interested in where the wind comes from. At first this started in the car, driving along heads out the window, yep just like dogs, I'm not very consistent with seat belts around town, and they wanted to know where the wind came from, well that wasn't so hard, the car moves along and that creates the wind, when you go faster it gets harder, slower not so hard.

a couple of weeks later on a windy day, well naturally cocos mind is ticking over well where does the wind come from now?

well damn good question girl.

I had no idea how to answer this one, really I made some kind of explanation, I don't think it would have satisfied me though.

now I'm starting to worry do kids ever learn this kind of stuff, is this what they teach them at school, this is the kind of stuff she wants to understand, I sincerely hope she is not disappointed with school this year. What if she is frustrated because she has all these questions and in the end there is nothing.

although she is going to an alternate school, where she will supposedly be treated with respect and seen as a whole person etc. etc. I worry that all this curiosity this desire to know and understand will not be filled.

I'm kind of out of inspiration with the kids most of the time, I try, I am conscious of it, but I am exhausted from it, 5 years of mothering and little else.

and even though I have the desire for other things and the drive some of the time, the ideas and I do believe the talent, there is so little time for it.

I have come across so many great sites and blogs lately and this is great

http://alysonfox.com/

I love this girls stuff her scarfs, kind of similar to the some that I have made in the last couple of weeks,ones I have felted.

I will save more links

I will blog more often

I will do this to make each day seem real somehow, not just pass me by.

I will catalogue my work

I will do this for above reason and also because I need to for work reasons

well this is a start

Felted purses

I love felting, wet felting that is.

I haven't actually done that much of it, but when I do I enjoy it so much.

I have made most of my Christmas presents this year, fun fun fun, and I have two cousins 22 and 19 that I wanted to give a small gift to.

these little purses are a design a fellow crafter friend makes and I keep admiring, she suggested they would make great little tampon holders. I thought so too, and decided this was the perfect gift for them.

I made one square piece of felt and cut it down the middle, blanket stitched up the sides leaving a flap with a decorative edge.

the first one I added a tie that just wraps around and folds under, so cute,

and the other has a button.

I also got my 3 1/2 year old making apiece of felt, she had a ball with this, soap all over........

and I sewed it up into a slightly bigger purse
which perfectly fits a pair of sunnies, a present for her MarMar/gran.

making kids presents

I am starting to panic a bit about what to give my girls for chrisi, i want to make them stuff, I have been thinking about making other family members things and now i need to focus on making christmas special for them too.

and for me this means, not loads of commercial stuff, stuff that i cant afford anyway, but i just dont want to support all that commercialism.

i want to at least by local this year, that is from my small town, where there really is an abundance of quality goods.

but when it comes down to it, it really is just all stuff, so what to do?

i whipped up a skirt and top for each yesterday, and i mean whipped up, i would not be satisfied with the quality of workmanship for anyone else, but somehow i can get away with it for them.

i have a feeling she may not be into this top, but it is sweet, very 70's.

i looked at the skirt i made the other girl this morning and really there is no wow there at all so its ditched!

argh

I am getting so much enjoyment out of making these dolls

here are 2 more


if anyone would like to order a doll they can email me tiffinsing@yahoo.com.au and i can give you details, and i am working on getting some better shots to show.

the markets

the markets????

some girls and i are doing the local markets and attempting to set up and creative co-0p in town, hopefully to eventually get a premises where we can all come together and work.

woven doll

I recently did a basket making course, it was really inspiring, a room full of people and lovely smelling fibres strewn over the beautiful earthy space we were doing the workshop .

The majorty of the fibres were collected locally around Bellingen, which set my mind racing with ideas, it was like the idea of endless op shops to scour.

during the course of the next week my girls and I were collecting bits of palm flower frond and casurina and other fibres.

anyway, getting to the whiplash thing, I make dolls and have been working on one particular style, like this one below, inspired by a drawing by my daughter Coco who is 5. So when I began thinking about alternative craft, this was a classic whiplash for me, i just had to weave a doll.I really loved making this doll, the way the fibres do their own thing and seem to shape the doll themselves. I used palm flower frond and philadendron and some casurina in her hair, with a bit of felt.

here she is

a woven wind girl
I hope someone is inspired by this, thanks fellow crafters for the inspiration.

Cheers Tiff

welcome

what I've been doing,
gifts for lovely friends with new bubs
and some more root babies

Thursday

its thursday and I need to be sewing, I spent most of yesterday sewing and I am not motivatied to do it today.

instead I am distracted by the compter and taking self portraits and looking on the net at things i like.

Theres no wedding for us now but I still made Arkie a pretty cute skirt that she has worn to kindi 2 days in a row and even slept in it for 2 nights, I havnt even hemmed it yet and it drags on the ground and she loves that.

I have so many ideas running through my head............... yaha it is quite overwhelming, but i keep telling myself its okay to be feeling that, it's just how I feel at the moment. it helps a bit i guess, what i need is an assistant to do the sewing and i can design and adjust, the sewing just takes so much time.

anyway some shoes i am loving ..........








the shoes are from www.earth.us

Apparently when you where them it is like walking on sand and they are great for posture etc.

A cute Arkie shot

and a photo shoot care of Coco

wedding outfits

we are off to a wedding, it will be the first wedding for Coco and Arkie, so I have 3 weeks to make an outfit for each of us.

Not so easy, limited funds to start with and then, do I go with the flow of the child and make something not entirely what i want to create, i've got a few things in mind, all including bits of vintage goodness and trims and pinks and greens, and I also like red and white, maybe some dots mixed with patterns, a bit of rick rack here and there, big fabric flowers, or pinwheels etc.




Well it seems these girls are a little more conservative and like a little less rick rack and not so much cutesy vintage.

they want Cinderella, puffy sleeves, dress down the toes, prefferably touching the ground, etc.etc.

I will post some pics

soooo cold