living on the crafty side of life

ribbons galore news...

There are so many new ribbons now available at Ribbons Galore.

Above is the retro owls on brown ribbon (15mm wide). Also available with a red, turquoise and lilac background.

The little hedgehog family ribbon is available in three colour ways.

And the deer love ribbon is available in four colourways.

Another fun ribbon is the flying chickens ribbon:

There is a new range of German double sided flower ribbons:

One of our popular ribbons, Little Red Riding Hood, is now available with a pink background:

Other ribbon collections with new ribbons and re-stocks are:

• Fancy stitched grosgrain (new ribbons)

• Tiny cakes jacquards (re-stock)

• Funky jacquards (re-stock)

• Oh Christmas (re-stock of designer jacquards)

Ribbons Galore has also made an appearance in the latest Australian Homespun (Vol 10.9). The little birdies on yellow ribbon is pictured on page 12 in the pretty Window Shopping feature on Cherries.

Sarah Fielke also featured Ribbons Galore in her "Favourite Things" section of her new website, SEWN. Thanks Sarah.

Thanks for visiting.

Cheers

Fiona x

paper lanterns

Just thought I'd show a photo of some paper lanterns I made recently.

 

Each lantern is made from a sheet of 12" x 12" paper. I made them up in about half an hour to decorate our family room for Emily's birthday recently. They looked very pretty, and Emily's friends were suitably impressed!

So my beautiful girl is now 14! I don't get too many photos of her these days, but here is one I managed to take of her a few weeks ago. My gorgeous and talented girl... working hard at school and her music (yes, she's still drumming and has taken up singing as well).

 

My other gorgeous girl has been keeping us busy too. One of her acheivements from last week was winning the 11 year old age champion trophy at the PSSA Sydney North zone athletics carnival. A couple of weeks ago, she won her school 11 year old age champion, so she now has a matching pair of trophies. We're now off to regionals soon, there she'll be competing in the 800 metres, long jump and shot put.

 

That's about all for now. Thanks for dropping by.

Cheers

Fiona x

quilt top is finished...

here it is...

 

with my gorgeous Prints Charming fabrics.

 

I'll be sending it off to be quilted soon, so will show it again when that's finished.

I have one more lesson to go, and I'm making a couple of cusion covers from my left over materials.

Cheers

Fiona x

patchwork class

Last week I went to the first of my patchwork classes over at Prints Charming.

 

It was a nice day surrounded by fabric.

After trying a few different combinations of fabrics, I finally chose some fabric which I'm really happy with. The fabrics I picked are actually quite different from what I thought I'd pick, more earthy than the usual brights I'm attracked to.

 

All my pieces are cut, I just need to start some sewing now. I'll show more as I get to work on my quilt.

Cheers

Fiona x

maya road projects

Just wanted to share my last Maya Road projects which went to CHA recently.

This is a tabbed chipboard binder mini book, covered with some of my favourite fabric, Park Slope by Erin McMorris:

Some new cute stamps which I used for some card making:

This was a small coaster chipboard album coloured with some Maya Mist. This book contained some photos of Phoebe's fundraising efforts recently:

Thanks for visiting.

Cheers

Fiona x

prints charming embroidery class

Last night Emily and I went to an embroidery class over at the Prints Charming studio at Annandale. We had a lovely evening stitching and chatting with a lovely group of ladies. Here's our stitching pieces in progress, we both need a little more stitching to finish off our pieces. I'm very pleased to say I have finally learnt how to sew french knots correctly.

 

Below is Emily's piece. Her chain stitch was so neat and even (as was all her stitching)...

 

Any my funky flower piece (which is actually a bindhi design). I came home last night and continued sewing while having my cuppa tea.

 

The little hand printed motifs used in the class can be seen/purchased HERE.

The girls at Prints Charming are holding some fabulous classes over the next few months. Join their mailing list to be kept up to date. I so happy as I've booked into one of their patchwork/quilting set of classes for next term, so looking forward to that.

Hope you have a good weekend. Thanks for visiting.

Cheers

Fiona x

australian homesewn update

It seems the magazine is now available.

Ro has just emailed me to say she's spotted AUSTRALIAN HOMESEWN in the newsagency in the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney today. It arrived this morning apparently. Thanks for your email Ro.

Cheers

Fiona x

a phoebe for my phoebe

 

During one of my recent visits to the Central Coast (Phoebe's sports have been taking us far and wide of late) I managed to sneak away for a short time to visit Blueberries. [Yes, any opportunity to surround myself in crafty stuff when I should be watching sport I will take.] My goodness, Blueberries is such a beautiful store. I wish it was located closer to me with it's gorgeous selection of fabrics, although that could be very dangerous to my budgeting. I did buy a couple of Melly & Me softy patterns which I'd been wanting for a while now.

One pattern I bought is Phoebe the Elephant. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have this patten. It's very, very cute. I showed it to my Phoebe. I told her I'd make one for her birthday. I let her loose on my fabric stash. She picked out some blue fabric and I started making and stitching.

 

I quilted the little blanket and edged it with rick rack.

 

I usually hand sew little details, but I wanted to try using the blanket stitch on my sewing machine. I need to practice a bit more, but liked the machine stitched look.

 

Phoebe is a very cute elephant. And my Phoebe loves her.

 

Fabrics used (all from Hello Betty by Chloe's Closet for Moda Fabrics):

• Berry Blossom Blue

• Order Up Blue

• Order Up Yellow

Thanks for vising my blog.

Still no news on the release of Australian Homesewn magazine, will keep stalking the stores.

Cheers

Fiona x

australian homesewn

A little while ago I was thrilled to be asked by Mel Goodsell to create a project for a new publication, Australian Homesewn. Last week my copy arrived. It is just lovely, with so many sewing projects for kids, the home and of course, us girlies. Mel has created so many gorgeous projects for the magazine herself.

My brief was to create a stationery set with a matching pencil case, covered note book (which you can see on the cover, above) and a laptop bag. 

 

I wanted to make something colourful, so I used some fabric from one of my favourite fabric collections, Park Slope by Erin McMorris, and mixed it with some lime chenille

The covered note book was fun to make with a place for your pen on the cover.

 

The pencil case....

 

and the lap top bag...

 

One of my favourite little details on my sewing projects at the moment, fabric covered buttons.

There are full instructions for these three projects included in the magazine.

Australian Homesewn is published by Derwent Howard. I've emailed Mel to find out when it will be on sale. To be honest I haven't ventured out over the last week to see if it's in stores yet, but when I find out, I'll report back here.

And in other news... 18 months ago I had braces put on my teeth. A little know fact to most and something that has not been well documented in photographs. Well, tomorrow I'm having them removed. YEAH!!! They've done their job. I'm not sorry to see them go, to be honest, but I did get a little sentimental this afternoon that I didn't have much photographic evidence of their existence. So this afternoon I dragged Phoebe outside to have a photo. Yes, a self portrait taken with Phoebe's little digi camera, a quick snap shot, a little memory captured of this little stage of my life. Bring on tomorrow!

 

I seem to have lots of other little things to report on, but have been really busy with family life and birthdays and Ribbons Galore. So I will attempt to post some more little projects very soon.

Thanks for dropping by.

Cheers

Fiona x

new ribbon pouches

New ribbons pouches/pencil cases/make up bags are now available at the Handmade store at Ribbons Galore.

Some pouches feature new German ribbons. This Babushka Dolls ribbon is just beautiful. 

 

Some pouches are decorated with some of my favourite Portuguese ribbons...

 Little Red Riding Hood ribbon.

 

 

And Flying Dolls ribbon.

 

 

There have also been some changes over at Ribbons Galore.

• I have replaced the Ribbons Galore blog with a WHAT'S NEW page, where I'll be adding news as it happens.

• The IDEAS GALLERY has been replaced with a new look gallery.

• I have also added a TESTIMONIALS page. I receive lovely feedback about the Ribbons Galore website and the ribbons, so I thought it time to give these a home.

While I'm giving a Ribbons Galore update, I have also created a Ribbons Galore group on Flickr. If you have a creation using ribbon from Ribbons Galore, please feel free to add it to the group. I'd love to see how you use Ribbons Galore's ribbon.

Thanks for visiting. Have a great weekend.

Cheers

Fiona x