So finding time to craft with a baby is pretty tricky when they only sleep 45 minutes at a time during the day.

But winter approaches and there are few size appropriate winter hand-me-downs in the vast collection of hand-me-downs. Of an evening, after buggins has gone to sleep for the night and after I've fed myself, some baby elephants have been forming on the needles. Based on In A Nutshell<\a> (Ravelry link), I made some minor modifications including swapping squirrels for heffalumps.

look at this 1969 video of Jum Henson Making Muppets!

(via Craftzine)

I made this shirt!

Like a densist, the recipient did not wish to show his head on the internet. However, that could be because of my uncanny ability to take dreadful photographs of people. I can assure you that he's very pleased to have a replacement for the shirt that was eaten by his housemate's puppy.

January was a fairly quiet month for me on the sewing front but I've been making steady progress on the cardigan that I'm knitting, done some small mending jobs, spent lots of time outside tending to the garden, cooking with the produce and adding to our household with four Wyandotte chickens.

A million years ago, I studied fashion. I was barely eighteen at the time and, as a sewing portfolio was part of the entry criteria, I was a little affronted that the first thing we were asked to sew was not clothing it was seams.

Straight seams. Joining two pieces of calico with a straight seam. then differently finished straight seams - overlocked, pinked, bound, flat-felled, french. Then we moved onto curved seams, sewn corners, hems and facings, a dozen different collars were sewn onto necklines, we sewed cuffs and pockets and set in zips using more techniques than I'd previously thought of.

By the end of that first year, we each had a burgeoning folder of sewn samples of dressmaking techniques to which we could refer. That folder represented a toolkit of techniques that we now had at our disposal.

It was this I was reminded of when I saw this pocket sampler quilt in my RSS feed this morning. The author's even included links to a tutorial for each pocket type.

Anecdotally, a lot of people have Teh Fear ^TM trouble sewing in zippers. For what it's worth, I'd recommend starting out on a sample sewing exercise.

A look through the Fashion Incubator archives will bring up a boatload of tutorials (including for zippers - centered, lapped, invisible, with a welted pocket) This fly-front zipper tutorial from Sew True provides a bunch of pictures and this one shows you how with the magic of video.

I still, from time-to-time and many years later, refer to that folder. And zippers? I can sew them in blind-folded and they still look neat. But that's practice.

Labels: tutorials, zips

Here I am.

Most days I'm glad about it. I like my life and I like keeping busy, pottering about at home and doing domestic things. Crafting and making are a huge and important part of my life. For the past few years, off and on, I've suffered from bouts of depression. Making offers me respite when my brain is persisting in telling me really dumb and unproductive stuff. The simple meditation in the making of stitches, mindfulness of the simple steps of the task at hand, turning raw materials into beautiful things.

I've been feeling better with the turn of the seasons. Melbourne's seemingly interminable winter grey has given into the clear blue skies of spring. The whole city feels lighter. But maybe that's just me.

I had a lovely weekend, I hope you did too. Here's some of mine.

Lionel Nichol made, by hand, buttons for couturiers for two decades during the glory days of couture.

There are some truly exquisite buttons, and I'm going to confess to acquiring two sets of buttons (neither of which are pictured below, though the third row of the second also tempted me sorely).



Just look at the detail on those peaches in the second button from the left.

or these, the third row buttons are only seven millimetres long!



Not that I have a particular use for the buttons but they are just too pretty.

Go and have a look at the rest of them, some will leave you breathless. Nichols Buttons

Labels: buttons