Christmas Makes for 2013.

 Whilst still in this festive season I was in the mood for making gifts, but these will be for next year 2013 Christmas.
I have vlysofixed some lovely cotton fabric, fussy cut it out to turn them into pins for next year. Each pin has a back, some beads for embellishment and some lovely wool fabric to fuse it onto and then I sewed around the pink wool leaving an opening for turning and stuffing. Turn and stuff and close the opening with a ladder stitch. Embellish the brooch front and then sew the brooch pin to the back.

 These are all the fussy cut pieces sorted out and placed in a tin for later on. These will all be made into finished pins for the gifts to be handed out at my favourite stores.

These are kits for the ladies at my cloth doll club. 50 kits made. I will get some cards, add some instructions and stuffing and then they will be ready for them to assemble themselves.

Laundry Bags.

 At our Cloth Doll Club (A.C.D.A.). http://www.clothdolls.asn.au/ Christmas Party, we were given a fat 1/4 of fabric challenge to do what we like with, I made this 2 inch wide continuous strip of bias binding which I will use on the girls dresses.

This is what I have made in the past couple of days, 10 Aussie Hero laundry bags.

Fabric Giveaway.

 Skye Reve Fabrics is offering this adorable HALF YARD bundle including TWO adorable prints from Ann Kelles Girlfriends Collection for Robert Kaufman and THREE colorful,  Michael Miller Dumb Dot prints!
Would you like to win? Then go here. 
http://maureencracknellhandmade.blogspot.com.au/

Dress A Girl.

 Made this morning, 4 more dresses for the Dress A Girl Around The World Charity. This first one has my bias binding from my Christmas present. is so easy and so quick to make! I love it.

 Donated fabric.

 Donated fabric.

Donated fabric. I have made so far for next years charity stuff 31 dresses sewn. I will be making bias binding today then tomorrow for a change I will be sewing some laundry bags.

Gifts I have Recieved.

 I just want to share the lovely gifts I have received this year.  A large tin of biscuits, (love that tin) And look! A bias Binder Maker! Perfect! 

 How cool is this Kittie! Thanks Melody, Your stitching is exquisite.

 A mug in a tin, How perfect is that! I will be using it for my cloth doll club meetings.

 Some Choccies to share,

A couple of baking trays and purple tongs! No excuse not to cook in our oven now!
I hope you all got some lovely things from your family and friends this year.

Christmas Gifts.

 This is the front of the cushion I made for my friend using my hand dyed fabrics. Her favourite colour is blue.

This is the back, It has a wooden button for closure.

Charity Sewing.

 This is the first of 5 dresses I have sewn yesterday with the fabric donated by Melody, So Lovely and feminine.

 Fabric from Spotlight, all were $3 a metre. Perfect for the dresses, some will be turned into bias binding.

 A Brilliant scoop purchase from Savers, Brand new single cotton sheets at $5 each, Perfect for dresses and maybe laundry bags too?

Just some of that lovely fabric from Melody cut out and ready to sew for bindings and dresses.

2012 Highlights.

2012 Highlights.

This is just a snapshot of some of the things I have done this year,  Just some highlights of the school and charity stuff. I have not added the dresses because they will be going into next years charity stuff.
The year started with the Fantasy Chairs for the classrooms, the cushions for the Art room and the hand puppets too. Then came along the Fantasy Chair for the library, Aussie Heros and Laundry Bags were soon to follow, first by e-mailing and getting awareness, then hunting out fabrics and passing them on to groups to turn into quilts and blocks to now doing laundry bags myself, I am looking forward to next year to contributing more.The Trauma dolls for the cloth doll club, the leather thimbles and covered tape measures for fundraising, Premmie baby hats and crib covers for the Mercy Hospital, replacing the velcro on the pads for the Dojo, Having fun making costumes for my daughter in law. This is just some of what I have done this year. I am looking forward to seeing what things I can do for next year. I hope that you all enjoy this snapshot.

School Stuff.

 This is the finished apple for the year 6 school play. The play was a huge success, the kids painted the apple and added glitter to it too. Great Stuff!

This is the group of teachers at their End of Year Party, Don't they look a cute bunch!

Bias Binding Tutorial

 I had a few e-mails about the bias binding. This is the tutorial I used from
http://amandamurphydesign.blogspot.com.au/

http://www.amandamurphydesign.com/AmandaMurphy_continuousbiastutorial.pdf
There are many tutorials on how to make continuous bias binding. This is the one I used.

Today's Stuff.

 Today I fixed up Santa. This Santa belongs to my niece but he was not child friendly. He was packed with those really tiny lighter than air polystyrene pellets, Those have gone to a new home, no kids and no pets. He has now been re stuffed with fiberfill. He needed a belt so using materials I had on hand he now has one. (Just cardboard and a scrap of black fabric band for the moment). All ready to go for when my niece pops in.

 I had a lovely phone call today, Melody was in my area, she has been visiting friends and had some fabric for me for the Dress A Girl Around The World and some would be great for Aussie Hero Laundry bags and blocks too. Thank you Melody, Just lovely.
She also gave me a Christmas gift too, Just delicious. Check out Melody's blog, http://thehouseonthesideofthehill.blogspot.com.au/  Just delightful.

I spent the day yesterday making bias binding, I almost forgot to take a picture before I used it all, on  dresses today. The lovely thing about making your own bias binding is your colour range is unlimited and the results are nice and soft.

Dresses.

 I have been busy the last few days since I last posted making more dresses. This last lot make the total to 28 dresses, I have another 3 cut out ready to sew.
Yesterday I spent the whole day making metres and metres of bias binding.

Once the dresses have been made they are all put into this wooden box that I picked up from the Reject shop for $10, (normally it would have been $50, but the hinges were broken. I had a couple at home, (one good thing about hording stuff!) and it is all fixed. The dresses will be picked up in the middle of the year to go to the Philippines.

Bias Bound Dress.

In the last post I wrote about making the bias binding. This is the dress I have done today with that binding on it. In this way it finishes off the hem nicely and there are no raw edges since the side seams on the dress are french seamed.

Easy Peasy Binding

 This is an easy way to turn your strips of fabric into binding.
First fold your strip in half, iron, open up and you have your middle seam. Measure this and make a cardboard strip the size you want to turn in the sides and draw a line on the centre of your cardboard and line it up with your centre. fold the sides in and iron.

remove the cardboard, fold in half and spray starch and iron once more. Repeat all the steps then roll up your strip.

Crafty Stuff and Meggie.

 Meggie and Tilli, Love this food toy! A gift from my daughter and her husband.

 Unpicking some fancy braid so that I can use it in 3 ways.

I covered my table top ironing board this morning in the left over fabric from my daughters couch. I have ordered a sleeve board and that will be covered in this fabric too, Today is our Crafternoon day, the last one for the year, We will be having fun this afternoon.

Lily's Quilts Giveaway.

http://lilysquilts.blogspot.com.au/ is having a massive giveaway, for anywhere in the world, How lovely and delicious is this!Go to her site and check it out.

Dress A Girl Around The World.

 These are just some of the dresses I have made for the Dress A Girl Around The World Charity. All the seams are french seams so that there are no raw edges and the lace on the bottom is enclosed in the hem.

I am going to make my own bias binding this morning. 12 dresses done so far.

Costume Emergency.

Yesterday afternoon I got an emergency message for some help for the teachers End of Year Request for a Where's Wally hat. (Their party is on Friday) They were 1 hat short, so I whipped this up last night.

Christmas Shopping.

 Today my husband and I went out to do our Christmas shopping, Even mine! He gave me $50 to do whatever I wanted on it and straight away to Spotlight we went. I bought this lot of fabric for the Dress A Girl Around The World Charity at $3 a metre, You do the math to see how much fabric I got! This should keep me busy for quite a while.

This is our Christmas shopping, (for our kids though we give money in a card so that they can do what they like with it). The pet store where we get our cat food from (Pet Barn) is giving away samples of dried natural crunchies, so our two have their gifts too! Meggie is loving them!

Charity Sewing and Shopping.

 This is what I bought in Savers today. 2 lovely medium weight cotton sheets green and burnt orange and a cotton quilt cover. These will be turned into dresses for the Dress A Girl Around the World Charity. These are the patterns I will be using,
http://oliverands.com/blog/2009/08/popover-sundress-free-downloadable-pattern.html
and this one.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/38337162/pillowcase%20dresspattern_merged%20%281%29.pdf

I have cut out 14 dresses this morning so far. the pieces on the side are the optional contrasting insert bands.
I am making an early start on next years charity stuff because I think I will be very busy with the school later on in the year, More on that later!

A.C.D.A. Christmas Party.

 Yesterday we had our last meeting of the year and Christmas Party for A.C.D.A. (Australian Cloth Doll Club Association).  http://www.clothdolls.asn.au/
The committee provided the food and my job was to do the decorations and tables. It was a huge success and everyone had a lovely time, I had some lovely feedback for the table decorations too which was nice.

 Every year we have 2 swaps going, People can do both or one if they like. The top shelf is the pin cushion section and the bottom one is the Christmas Tree decoration swap.

 Some of our happy members chatting and catching up before they went to eat.

 Each month we have a Doll of the Month and those winners are then bought in for Doll of the Year. the winner of the Year was Doreen Backway, this is her link to her web page with the winning doll. http://www.rivendellstudios.com.au/default.aspx?ID=23&PhotoID=307&StartIndex=0

These are the pin cushions, always a delight, I forgot to take a picture of the Christmas decoration swap. It was a great party and looking forward to our first meeting in February next year.

Super Quick Christmas Decorations.

 I had this lot of pine cones for several years now, This year i have decided to do something different with them.

I have spray painted them with chrome spray for a silver look for the table decorations this year. This is with one coat spray, when it is dry I will add another coat and before it dries add some glitter to them. A quick re vamp.