Hey-ho! I’m back – after a reallllly long break. I’ve had a lot going on since I last posted – moved house, overseas trip, Christmas, New Year….it doesn’t seem like that much writing it like that, but it’s all felt massive.
First things first – we’ve finally moved into our newly purchased, brand new house. It’s lovely to be in our own space and to be able to knock holes in walls if the desire to do so overcomes us. We’ve been busy bees decorating and arranging and rearranging bits and pieces (posts on some of this to follow in the near future).
Next – onto some sewing relating news. The only new things I’ve created with fabric and thread recently were Christmas gifts for loved ones. The first one was a felt grocery set for my gorgeous niece.
Felty yumminess
If you’re clever, you will have noticed that the red bag looks like it’s upside down…it is. After sewing the white recycling arrows onto the red felt, I stitched the red parts of the bag together without really paying attention to direction…by the time I realised I really didn’t want to unpick the stitching to put it the right way up. I tried to convince myself it was more unique (and thus more valuable) if it remained upside down. I still photographed it with the arrows the right way up, though…
The eggs started out to be a bit of a disaster…following the pattern instructions (bought, by the way, from this Etsy store), they looked more like onions than eggs (I vox popped random visitors to our home to gauge their opinion and they agreed). This, I’m willing to admit, might be because of my dodgy sewing, or due to the fact they’re made from brown felt). Anyway, not completely happy with them, I played with the construction a little until they looked more like eggs in my eyes (white eggs).
Next up on the gift-list was this awesome (if I do say so sew myself) piece of embroidery for my lovely. He is a DJ in his spare time, and years ago he designed a logo for himself that I decided to embroider for his Christmas gift.
DJ Dajarra in da house, y'all!
I managed to make this masterpiece by printing off the logo, placing it on a lightbox (which I luckily have access to through work, though a sunny window would work just as well) and tracing the lines with nothing more than a simple grey-lead pencil onto the fabric. I then spent a stupid amount of time sneaking around trying to finish it without the DJ himself discovering me. I actually ended up doing most of the embroidery on the tram on the way to work in the mornings, and in the process started up an accidental craft circle. After being given some strange looks by some tram passengers for a couple of mornings, a lovely older lady approached me one morning and asked if she could join my “travelling craft group”. I, of course, welcomed the company, and as she knitted and I embroidered, we had a lovely time crafting our way to work. Hello, knitting lady from the 86! (I never did ask her name…)
I’m quite proud of this piece as, though I’ve done a little, I’ve never really applied myself to any serious embroidery before. If you’re in the Melbourne (Australia) area, and in want/need of an awesome DJ who spins amazing old-school tracks, and is very handsome to boot, you should definitely check out DJ Dajarra. He is guaranteed to get everyone boogying!
Glow in the dark! Whoo!
The caption above might clue you into the fact that I used some glow in the dark thread. The white line of embroidery next to the thread actually glows in the dark! I read about this thread somewhere on the ‘net, and knew I had to somehow incorporate it into Dajarra’s piece as our dinner parties often devolve into dance parties in the dark around the DJ decks. The camera batteries are dead at the minute, so I can’t show you a pic, but I’ll update in the next day or two, just to prove it to you.
Happy new year everyone! xox
