Modern Retro Textiles

Danger, danger! High likelihood that I will be buying fabric and patterns from the online shop I am looking after for a couple of weeks! Heard of Modern Retro Textiles? I am taking over this online store for two weeks, so if you order anything during this time it's being packaged by my little hands and lovingly sent off to you!

Jim & I know the lady behind it (we live near her- her partner works with Jim), and I was pleased to find out that she sold fabrics and patterns that I love. It's not often you come across this type of coolness and quality merchandise out here in Gippsland, usually you'd have to venture further into town. Then she tells me she's going on holidays and would I like to take over the store for her? Um, yes thank you, I would love to pour over the fabrics and patterns. I feel like I have a mini fabric store in my very own house!

And what is making me feel like the world is a little smaller is that I have been blogging for a little while and feel I have come to acquire some "internet friends" including Kate from Never Enough Hours and Kristen Doran from Cheeky Beaks, and now I am selling their stuff from my house by internet-unrelated coincidence!

These are the products I have my eye on at the moment...

Such sweet Heather Ross unicorny fabric, ooahh..


Funky nappy cover pattern..


Kristen Doran stuff!


Gorgeous Colette pattern..


This skirt is way cute..


Japanese pattern books are always so calming to look through..


How awesome would this fabric look just as some simple cushions?


Oh, and this fabric is just beautiful. I really would like to make Stevie something with this. I am loving yellow shades at the moment (this is more like orange but it still fits in with the hue I am adoring of late)..


Lovely, lovely stuff. And cheap postage rates too for Aussies. I may not be able to sleep tonight because I will want to look at fabric & patterns instead. Joy.

Sewing & Knitting for Stevie

I have been meaning to post these new creations for a while now. The first creation is a dress from a pattern from Ottobre magazine. The first is a picture of the dress in the magazine, but I kind of had different ideas for it, inspired by some cute fabric I had already in my stash. I am a bit of a novice when it comes to sewing clothes, so I do admit that I had some help from my Mum. Thanks Mum! Knit fabrics are not the best fabrics to sew as a novice so it really does help when you can take your mistakes to your Mum and she fixes 'em up on her industrial sewing machines ;)


So here is the dress after I decided on the different fabric choices. I did want a different ribbing colour, but Spotlight in Narre Warren is sadly a let down when it comes to fabric variety. If I had one wish for my home town it would be for a great big stocked to the rafters Spotlight store...

So after it was sewn up, I picked out one of the trees in the fabric and hand painted it with fabric paints onto the front. Now we just have to wait for some warmer weather to show it off! (Cute toy made by one of my buddies.)


I also made a little pants with attached skirt from the same mag with some fabric that I would've loved to make myself a skirt from, but I did not have enough. Then took about one million, give or take, photos trying to get a good one to post here. Babies are not good camera models, they do not stay still! I got her in the end!




And some booties knitted! My first efforts of two-colour knitting, I forget what the technical-proper term for it is. Do not look too closely to see the holes and uneven tension. I think I did alright for my first attempt. Booties are nice and quick to make too which is a bonus. (See Stevie is wearing them too in her photo shoot!?)


It looks like I have been busy but these projects probably took me more than a month all together. And they were done weeks ago and I have not really made anything since. My studio is unheated but now that the warmer weather is coming I am looking forward to doing some more stuff out there at night.

Well, I shall be off, I have been in rush mode writing this post as I have a slight underlying anxiousness that Stevie will wake soon... she is having one of her extremely rare long naps! And I'm thinking, quick get this done, get this done, finish it before she wakes, quick, quick, quick! Nearly there, nearly there!!! She's still asleep!!! Amazing. See ya soon.