making...

when we were in bendigo for christmas, my father-in-law gave me huge bundles of the most gorgeously fragrant lavender from his garden. i dried it and ended up with quite a large amount of delicious smelling buds, which got me thinking about ways to use them. i had it in mind to make some child sized, microwaveable heat packs but with the hot summer weather and a million other things going on, the idea got shelved. i was catching up on a few blogs earlier this week and one of them mentioned their kids cozying up with a quilt and a heat pack when they were feeling poorly (forgive me, i can't remember which blog it was - i can't even remember what day of the week it is lately. let me know if it was yours and i'll add the appropriate link 'cause it was a really nice post) - it sounded so lovely to me that i finally started working on a pattern. it's so great to work on something new, something smallish and relatively quick to finish. and oh, they are fun to make, what with the choosing of fabrics and creating lots of scraps for future quilts : )


i say they are child sized but they're not itty bitty or anything, they fit nicely around the curve of my neck so they could be used by anybody.


they have a removable, washable cover and i used cotton sherpa for one side so they are super soft and cushy, nice to snuggle with or keep toes warm in winter beds.


lots of covers waiting to be filled...

more coffee please.

you know that kind of tired where your eyes feel all burny and scratchy, your limbs feel like dead weight and your head seems to be clouded in a dense fog? that's me lately, especially yesterday and today. the combination of cramming in as much sewing as possible, eating quite lightly to someday possibly fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans and a gorgeous little baby whom i love very much but still wakes me up 2 or 3 or 4 times a night and then fights all attempts at napping with tired yells and tears, seems to be catching up with me. boo.

ah well, i'm getting some kick ass work done, if i do say so myself. i'm nearing completion on 14 special edition oobee bunnies, specially made for the stitches & craft show, out of gorgeous, super soft wools and a wool/cashmere that i've been hoarding for far too long. i have plenty of well dressed oobees cut out and ready to come to life. and i scored a great deal on the rest of a bolt of natural 50%cotton/50%linen at spotlight last week, which allowed me to get the cot quilt i had brewing in my head out of there and into my completed pile.








i took square and rectangle scraps and framed them on all four sides with varying widths of the 50/50 linen cotton blend, then randomly sewed the resulting squares and rectangles together, whatever shape fit with whatever shape, to form the quilt top. i backed it with a turquoise pinstripe cotton and bound it with some joel dewberry chestnut branches. i'm loving these unplanned quilt designs, love seeing what comes out of a combination of instinct, great fabric and pure chance. and i love that i can use this same technique again and again and never have two quilts come out the same. because there will be more, my friends, oh, there will be more. and more coffee to make it all possible.

squeeeee!

the fleur playmat was featured on ohdeedoh, a super prominent kid's design blog! just made my whole day : )

i spy

when i look down from my sewing table i see this...


mae has almost half the room set up as her play area with quilts and playmats and an array of toys at her disposal. she's surprisingly happy playing by herself, with the odd chatter at the dog or me thrown in.

or this...


i never thought i would be the kind of person who finds my kid with food all over her face "cute" and photo worthy but there you have it : )

(i never thought i'd buy a garish baby seat/toy either. and i didn't - it's a loan from our neighbour and super ugly but man, she loves that thing)

or this...


plotting some serious mischief with the mirror.

and when i look up from my sewing table i see this...


basket of works in progress.

and this...


cot sized, pieced together freeform using scraps from previous quilts. possibly my favourite cot quilt ever, although i think that about each new one i finish.

and this...


pure deliciousness from amitie's blog vip mailout. soooooo happy!


and it's all good. i'm loving these days, no matter how hectic they are : )

::fleur playmat pattern now available::

yippee! the fleur playmat pattern is finally complete and available in my shop! with mae cutting her second tooth and my husband away fishing for four days, it was touch and go as to whether or not this would actually get finished on time but i worked on it every spare second i could and feel such a sense of accomplishment for having it in the shop the day i said i would : ) as i mentioned, this is a pdf pattern and also includes a new, never before seen pattern/tutorial for a fleur pillow so you get two patterns in one. i'll also have print versions of this available at the stitches + craft show here in melbourne next month. i'm dying to see what people make from these, what colours, what fabrics will be chosen... it's all so exciting!


mae doing a little product testing during our friday afternoon photo shoot.


style assistant, baxter, takes a break.

answers

i thought i'd use this post to answer a few common questions i've been getting lately, not because i don't want to get emails (although it may take me a couple of days to get back to you so bear with me) but just in case there are other people out there with the same questions who are too shy to ask. here goes...


Q:: when will you have more windsees/fleurs/oobees available in your shop?
A:: i wish i had a happy answer for anyone waiting patiently outside of melbourne but, unfortunately, the next shop update not be until the end of march and i'm not sure exactly what it will contain. i've just signed on to be part of a very big, very exciting, 5 day long craft show in march and am now mildly panicking about the amount of stock i want and need to fill five days plus have a nice full table at mathilda's market (the same weekend - yikes!). whatever is left after the markets will be popped into my shop, i promise. and, as always, if anyone is really desperate for something for a special occasion or baby on the way, i am always happy to fit in a custom order, just drop me an email.

Q:: where do you get your fabric from?
A:: the short answer - everywhere. the long answer - i order most of my fabric online from specialty fabric shops and sellers on etsy but also pick up bits and pieces from thrift shops, fabric and quilting shops in melbourne, even spotlight. here is a list of where i've bought fabric from over the past couple of years:

::online fabric sources::
fat quarter shop
z & s fabrics
superbuzzy
reprodepot
ink & spindle
matatabi
sakura fabric
sonatine
l'atelier
starlit nest
ellie bleu
namolio
fabric supplies
the crafty turtle
fabric closet

::shops in melbourne*::
amitie
patchwork on central park
darn cheap fabrics
carmels

Q:: where do you get your labels made?
A:: i had the woven labels you can see in my header image made about 4 or 5 years ago through a label company i found online. it was so long ago that i can't actually remember it if was this place or this place, neither website looks like what i remember, but i emailed my design off to them, sent a money order to china and a couple of weeks later, a box of labels turned up at my door! i'm sure these days there are plenty of places offering woven labels, i remember searching for "custom woven labels" through google as i knew i wanted to design them myself. the labels i use on the oobees, windsees and fleurs are all designed and printed by me on my inkjet printer and then heatset to withstand washing. i have a tutorial about inkjet printing on fabric here if anyone wants more information on how to do this. let me know how you go if you give it a try!

Q:: do you have a wholesale pricelist? can i carry onegirl designs in my shop?
A:: thank you so, so much for your interest, lovely shops! it is beyond flattering and such a nice boost to my confidence that you would want to sell my goodies but, unfortunately, i don't offer my wares wholesale. i'm finding it hard enough to stock my own shop these days and there are just so many areas of sewing that i want to explore further, without getting bogged down in deadlines and filling large orders. i like interacting with my customers, in person and online plus i want to keep my prices reasonable - right now there is no way for me to lower my prices for wholesale and still justify the time and care it takes me to make things.



* this is not by any means a complete list of fabric shops in melbourne, just ones where i have actually purchased fabric myself.

no pictures, no words

i'm too consumed with worry and sadness about the bushfire situation to post about pretty things today. we are nowhere near any fires and don't know anyone specifically in danger but have been glued to the news, unable to look away from people who have lost their homes, friends, family, pets, livestock. please everyone, stop and think about how lucky you are to be safe and secure and reading this. donations to help those affected can be made here.

seen

around our house this weekend:


oobee blankees for the market in march...


a freeform quilt in the works for a new little fella in the northern hemisphere...


shane's pretty string of red hot jalapenos...


and these two monkeys being the best kind of silly.

good mail week

the postman did not let me down this week. a gorgeous swap package from leah with one of her awesome ginger dolls for mae and a bundle of fabric goodies for yours truly, two of my four magazine subscriptions (i also get gardening australia and delicious), my fabric from matatabi and then yesterday he turned up with not only my reprodepot order but two huge boxes of stuff for mae from her cousins in perth!



here's what i bought from reprodepot, (excuse random thread) good half yard chunks of each at nice sale prices plus i got a half pound bag of scraps for free. i like free. and i sheepishly have to admit placing one more fabric order yesterday, after seeing the alexander henry livingston seagull print on this fabric devoted blog. between the fabric shopper and true up, there is just far too much temptation before me... but i'm done now. really. for awhile.

boo.

i'm cool with the random, freely spaced line quilting but NOT COOL with the crappy basting job i did which has resulted in folds aplenty on the backside. so much unpicking and rebasting ahead of me, it makes me shudder to think. but i've already put such a good number of hours into the quilting, especially with unpicking, smoothing out and resewing bits of almost every line, that i just need to admit defeat and start over. the main problem is the lack of space to do a proper basting job, there is nowhere in my house to lay a quilt this size out flat so i tried to spread it out over our bed. didn't work. i thought maybe i could make it work by spreading the fabric really tightly as i quilted across but no, i was kidding myself, it's just too big. so. unpicking. lots of unpicking. and then i have some sort of plan to do a hanging basting job from our picture rail, with clips and hooks. shane has been brought onboard so it might just work but, for now, and again, this project is on hold. boo.

mae's pram quilt

whoopsy, missed a day already... mae is teething and had her six month immunisation yesterday so i was basically juggling and trying to teach baxter how to jump through hoops to keep her happy all day. note to self: remember to schedule immunisation for later in the day next time, leaving less hours of grizzly baby before bedtime. once i got her to bed all i wanted to do was jump straight onto the sewing machine to work on the queen/king quilt that i finally basted on the weekend so the computer got a miss.







this is the pram quilt that i made for mae by randomly piecing together scraps from my stash in pinks and blues. it's my first completed freeform patchwork top and i quilted it up with a square grid pattern. i have to admit, i'm completely in love with this little blanket, it came out so much better than i had even hoped. i love taking quilts out of the dryer that first time and seeing them as they are meant to be, crinkly, soft and warm. it's my favourite part of quilting, and i'm pretty fond of all the parts (remind me of this later tonight when i spend another 3 hours machine quilting the queen/king quilt).

happy half birthday

maesey mae,

you've been with us six months now. six months! sometimes i look at you and can't quite believe you're here, a smiling, laughing, rolling, animated little soul in our midst. you have changed so much, especially in the last four weeks, and i don't just mean the little mohawk you're working on growing or the little top of a tooth that just yesterday popped through. you've always been a very alert baby, people comment on it almost every time we go out, and now you respond to everything those big eyes take in with your myriad of facial expressions. you laugh easily and often. you reach out for any and everything that is within your grasp but will inspect it now for a moment or two before shoving whatever it is in your mouth. you'll look around wildly for baxter if you hear his paws clipping along the floor. you greet me every morning with a huge smile and always have one ready to shine on your daddy.

things are so much easier lately, you're so much easier. you're taking bottles and have started eating solid food which, as well as producing the sweet little rolls in your arms and legs, has made going out with you so much more pleasant. i try to get you out of the house for a couple of hours every day, a little change of scenery and new people to smile at (or furrow your brow at, whichever). we've managed to get you used to sleeping without being swaddled up tight and you're getting some longer stretches in now, sometimes only waking me up once, more often twice a night. now if we could just get you into a regular napping pattern...



there is so much i want to say but don't know how to express, about being a mother, your mother. how even these short six months have taught me so much about myself, about patience, about trial and error and trusting my instincts. about how much a heart can hold... so, so much more than i ever imagined. i didn't really know about babies, how charming they can be. how absolutely charming you are. my maesey, munchy woo, little ganoush.

love,
mom
xox

pink+green

the completed pink+green cot quilt, all finished up to take to mathilda's market in march. i had about three other posts all vying for attention in my brain today but i'm too tired to type much tonight so these pics will have to suffice. have a lovely, cool evening, everyone, see you tomorrow.

don't cry for me

in case anyone was getting worried that i might be running low on fabric after my little giveaway, let me reassure you that there has been some major stash enhancement going on over here for the past few weeks. i don't know what has come over me, maybe it's been the heat, maybe it's not having bought any for a few months due to our crappy dollar, maybe it's the little paypal balance just sitting there taunting me but i have well and truly been on a fabric binge. there was a shipment from z & s, plus goodies from several etsy sellers (the above old school amy butler included), an order placed with reprodepot, a trip to darn cheap fabrics and then yesterday i had the pleasure of spending a good three hours or so in the company of some extremely lovely ladies at my favouritest of fabric stores, amitie. there was chatting, sewing, shopping and oh so much browsing and coveting. i limited myself to this:



plus twenty of the little 1/8th squares they sell (i just love digging through those bins of little fabric bundles). and then, yes, then i came home and ordered another couple of half yards of the kei honeycomb in grey and aqua from matatabi after falling in love with it in a quilt displayed at amitie (they were sold out). it's shameful, really. shameful. i am ashamed. now i'm just going to go roll around in my new fabric and wait eagerly for the postman to arrive tomorrow.

coming your way...

kt mac and cindy, you're the lucky new owners of bundles one and two respectively! it took me a couple of tries with the random number generator to get people who were in australia and who weren't ME (yes, i answered someone in the comments and then won my own giveaway) but happy homes have finally been found. thanks to everyone who commented, it was great to visit so many new (to me) aussie blogs and, of course, hear from my old faithfuls : )

and i've been thinking, i have a bunch of stuff backlogged to post about so i'm going to try a post everyday in february, even if a few of those days it's just a photo and caption. anyone care to join me?