Handmade 2012: a really late post.

Last year I attended Handmade 2011.  It was a celebration of all things craft, held over Queen's Birthday weekend.  I learned how to create dresses, bags and aprons out of pillowcases and had a generally fantastic time.  It was mostly fantastic getting some time away from the kids - at the time I think that it was the longest I'd been away from my then ten month old daughter.  Prior to attending I had done a little sewing, and over the last year I have quite enjoyed making a hobby out of sewing.  I now attend a community sewing group and have made a lot of clothes for the girls over the last year.

But I'm still quite an amateur when it comes to sewing.  Every now and then I'll be working on something and will do something quite wrong - I just don't have a lot of basic technique under my belt.  So I thought that it would be good to do another sewing class.   I enrolled in a class where we learnt how to make padded bags for storage.  The day before Handmade began I was fortunate enough to win tickets to a Masterclass with Linda Hallinan from NZ Garden.  I was thrilled.  I'd seriously considered attending this class as I love her writing style and her enthusiastic approach so free tickets were very appreciated!

The bag class was great fun and has been a good way to use up some small ends from my rather amateur curtain making.  It was quite easy to make one bag in the two hour time slot and I cut out enough extra material to make two more that night (I figured that it would help me to reinforce what I learnt).  I had a bit of a disaster trying to add the handles myself - something I hate about sewing is all the complexity that comes when you are sewing things inside out (and it is worse with lined objects) as my mind does not visualise this kind of thing well. Oh well.  Good practice I suppose (gritted teeth).

I had thirty minutes BY MYSELF between classes (if you are a parent you will understand).  I had trouble dealing with the freedom, but enjoyed an interruption free lunch and a look around the gift shop.

The masterclass was awesome.  Lynda Hallinan is a great speaker - managed to make the session feel very intimate and friendly even though we were in a large theatre.  She brought along her damson plum gin (amazing) and quince gin to try.  She also brought along ingredients to make a ginger beer bug and packaged it up for everyone to take home.  I learnt a a lot - I have about ten pages of notes!  Much of this information, and the recipe for making a ginger beer bug is on her website.

I've made the bug and actually grown some bug babies.  I've read online that bugs can improve with age so I'm keen to see if that worked.  The first batch was very fizzy - it seemed simply dense with bubbles.  I've got a batch from my fourth generation batch brewing right now and I'll see how that one works.

New favourite shop for birthday party and craft supplies

When I was at 'Handmade' last year I overheard a snippet of advice.  Apparently, in Auckland, shops ending in 'emporium/ imporium' were great places to get craft supplies.  I wasn't aware of any in Wellington, but did note with interest a place called 'Pete's Emporium' in Porirua a couple of months ago.  Yesterday we had only the baby at home so we ducked out to explore the shop and to take in Dressmart as well.

I could spend an hour in this store.  There was a huge fabric area, with hundreds of buttons (more than Spotlight), rows of trim and all kinds of sewing accessories.  There was a huge aisle of birthday party supplies/ stocking fillers and the biggest collection of wigs that I have ever seen.  They must stock 100 different styles of wig.  It was like a much more interesting version of a $2 shop.  They had some fairly decent toys and I got a couple of small things to put in the activity bags I'm assembling for school holiday entertainment.  They had a huge selection of costumes and Halloween accessories.

The store is located near Countdown in Porirua.  It is massive and kind of hard to miss.

Cherry Blossom moshi

This post is mainly written to act as a thank you for a very cool tutorial I came across on a blog I subscribe to, Indietutes.  It is pretty cool.

My four year old will only wear dresses at the moment and it is kind of annoying and practical.  But she is cute and has wild hair and she pulls it off!

In one mad weekend I made three of these peasant dresses using the Indietutes tutorial as the basis.  I later made really cool denim versions using awesome fabric from Stitchbird on the arms.

Anyway this is the 'Cherry Blossom Moshi' dress as it has been christened.  The more I try to understand what a moshi is, the more I fail.  But it means something to four year olds!  The fabric is really lovely.  My husband purchased it as lining for a shirt he had custom-made.  I think it is quite sweet that they match!

Sewing baby clothes

Now, the philosophy of a 'make-do' Mum naturally lends itself to buying baby clothes, but I felt like a new hobby and we had a sewing machine.  I tend to be about the destination, rather than the journey so have mostly avoided actually learning any techniques, and seek out only easy patterns with free internet templates.  I lie, I have learnt one technique, french seams.

I continue to be amazed at the talent of Mums all around the world.  They come up with these patterns, create tutorials and post them on their blogs.

I will not be coming up with tutorials.  I will though link to some cool ones.

Today I've made a cute little crossover smock for DD2 Crossover smock for a six month old  

It was pretty straightforward and I got to use some leftover denim and chop up an old pillowcase which felt very thrifty.  Unfortunately when it came time to use the buttonhole device I'm sure I did something incredibly wrong as I managed to dramatically bend the needle.  Oh dear.  I considered using domes but then decided to persist with the $%&%**@##$ device.

Edited to add a photo: