a little koala

February 16, 2015 Lilyapplique

After working my first weekend – which really, from a nursing perspective, is no different to working a week day, it’s just that sense of knowing that my family and most of the community are enjoying their rest from the working week whilst I’m still working on – today was a much appreciated home day. It was a little cooler than it has been. The dining room was full of pretty light. The house was quiet and tidy. And there on the piano, was my little koala, started way back in October I think, and still in a scattering of pieces.

I haven’t used a commercial pattern. I’ve drafted it myself – from scratch, over and over and over and over. There have been several versions – some of them truly funny in their dreadfulness. I finally settled on this design – and set about preparing the body for the arms, legs and head.

My idea was to machine sew stabilising patches – like joints – on the inside of the body, then machine sew the back of each of the limbs onto the front of the body – through the joints. Thus protecting the limbs from being prone to tearing off.

And it worked really well!

Until my final head turned out way too small. Argh! Abby tells me – she of the immense doll making experience – that even if the drawn head looks more than fine on the drawn body – and even if the unstuffed head still looks fine on the stuffed body – it will look like a bad case of microcephaly once stuffed. Apparently you need to make the head BIGGER because when it is stuffed it sort of shrinks. So the first head had to be discarded. Bum! And the body unstuffed. Double bum! It was soon after that, that the koala found herself abandoned on the piano.

But today, I was determined to finish her off. So much time and effort had gone into the creative process, and the fabric was so pretty. It just had to happen. Thus, the knitting was laid aside. A cup of tea was made. A story tape put on. And off I set with my stab stitch and blanket stitching.

And as often happens, when projects have been left idle for a loooooooong time, the finishing off was nowhere near as arduous and lengthy as I expected. However, it did require an unexpected trip to Winterwood for stuffing. Oh well – I’ve never been one to say no to a trip to the lovely Winterwood :-)

Finally, with the late summer sun just tilting over the trees, my sweet little koala was finished and ready for photos. Isn’t light funny stuff – she looked positively spot lit in the setting sun – I was waiting for her to burst into operatic song.

Here’s the back – I ladder stitched her head onto the front of the body. I like this construction – will definitely do it again.

And here she is in a tree! Looking right at home, I might say. Even if it isn’t a gum! We don’t actually have any gum trees near us – all very European – oaks, elms, birches, and ornamental fruit trees. There are some gums down at the Caulfield Park but they are sooooo tall there are no branches even remotely low enough for me or my little koala to reach.

Never mind. It’s only another 11 months and we’ll be in the beautiful Bega Valley and there will be PLENTY of gums for her to spend her days in. And next – I have the fabric for a little wombat, a black wallaby, and a whale. They’ll be the Bega Valley Collection. And maybe I may even write up the patterns – with stories. Now that would be truly lovely!

a wooden spoon :: sugar plum fairy

November 10, 2014 Lilychatter

Oh my! Have I been having fun!

Now, I’ve had a Pinterest account for a while – if you’re interested, there’s an icon for my account in the left hand toolbar – but it hasn’t been until recently that I’ve really practiced the fine art of spending hours and hours trawling through the amazing creativity of others and pinning all my favourites onto an ever increasing number of boards.

Oh the things I dream of doing! I need an indoor staircase so I can wallpaper the risers. I’ll need a couple of kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms so as to use up all the loveliness I find. Hundreds of quilts – of course. Exotic things in the garden that will require far greener thumbs than I possess. Then there’s the new skills I need to acquire – lino cutting, print making, papier mache sculpting … I almost begin to hyperventilate and I can’t decide between sitting and looking, or rushing away and doing.

Sunday morning saw us gathered in the cosy corner of the kitchen; Julian home (for just 30 hours – can you believe it! – home at 3.30am Sunday and gone again Monday at 9.30am) – sliding fresh expressos and creams across the desk every 1/2 hour or so, Abby by my side – saying “Oh! There! There! Pin that! That one!”; and me having a blissful time looking at so many beautiful handmade dolls …

Until I could bear it no longer and simply had to make a doll of my own. A lovely amalgamation of so many dolls I saw and loved. A wooden spoon doll with pipe cleaner arms and a little bit of corriedale roving for the body and hair, a wee crocheted bodice, a gathered skirt …

And because Melinda is so lovely and asked how … here is a little demonstration of how I made my sugar plum fairy. Hope it makes sense … and inspires you to make one of your own!

So I started with a small wooden spoon – bigger than a teaspoon but not a dessert spoon – the sort you buy in a packet at party supply stores.

And one long pipecleaner – also in a packet from Winterwood – it’s about 12 inches long. I used the technique of wrapping the last 2 inches of each end of the pipecleaner (as perfected by the incredibly gifted artist Salley Mavor) with embroidery floss – I used DMC perle cotton no. 8 – in your skin colour of choice. Start 2 inches in, winding the thread firmly and neatly – make sure you check both sides so that you don’t leave any gaps – to the end of the pipe cleaner. Then fold the wrapped end in half so that a little hand is made from the the bend and wrap the raw end to the pipecleaner so that it is covered. Fasten and trim. I leave an inch of floss which I’ll later cover with the arm wrapping.

Now – position your pipecleaner evenly on the spoon with its 2 wrapped hands out to each side. Twist the pipe cleaner around the spoon handle, making sure your arms are at an even height – you don’t want wonky shoulders.

Next – because I am in a crochet mood – and because I saw an amazing bird cage made from a large whisk which had had its wire loops crocheted over, crochet a single row along each arm – from the wrist to the back – making sure to keep the stitches firm (not tight) and neatly lined up. There are your sleeves! This was a bit fiddly and really, the end result was pretty much like blanket stitch – which will be precisely what I do next time.

Crochet a little bodice. I used 4 ply cotton thread and a size 2 mm crochet hook and followed the same stitch layout I am using in Attic24’s Stripey Blanket CAL. You should check out Lucy’s tutorials – they are so incredibly clear and helpful and Lucy is the Queen of Colour. I made my bodice 18 chains long after deciding on how rounded I wanted my doll’s bodice.

Pull the Corriedale roving into long thin strips and wrap the upper half of the spoon handle, making it the most rounded around her bust and tapering it off past her waist. I then pushed the doll’s arms through the crocheted bodice – there’s always a gap somewhere – overlapped the back and sewed it shut.

I used a scrap of quilt binding – cut at 2 3/4 inch – for her skirt. I machine sewed my skirt’s ends together (1/4 inch seam) then pressed up a quarter inch hem and machine stitched it. I handstitched a gathering thread around the waist and pulled it in to fit my spoon doll with her roving bodice – tie the gathering thread ends together, push them through a needle, and then pull this through the roving and trim. Use a few hand stitches to fasten the waist of the skirt to the roving and pull the bodice down over the top of the skirt waistband.

Night fell, and dim light precluded any more photos so now we jump to the finished doll!

Next, I added a bow to the waist – I just cut the ribbon to the desired length, tied a bow and stitched it onto her bodice/waistband/roving body with a button.

The hair. I used more roving to create a beehive. I started by covering the top 1/3 of the spoon’s bowl with white glue which I wrapped the roving round. I tried needlefelting but really, I just kept hitting the wood with the needle, so I just lightly poked it until it was all attached.

Then I added this lovely single ply yarn that has a lightweight wire centre. It’s kinda smooshed on. Nothing flash – poked the end into the roving best I could. Then I added the sequins – each one attached with a little crystal bead. I mostly used these to attach the yarn to the roving. I added a button with a sequin and bead – piece de resistance! – to cover the still visible end of the yarn/wire.

Finally, I painted the face. Very simply. Terrified I would completely stuff it up. The mouth’s a bit wonky – but then again, I think it looks like my lipstick these days! Bit of a problem with straightness these days ;-)

And here she is! Miss Plum! My little wooden spoon – sugar plum fairy. I’m certainly making more of these little sweeties for the Christmas tree. I was also thinking they’d make a nice mobile. Oh! You could stick them in a cupcake – how pretty would that be! Tsk! Can’t believe we’re not having a birthday party this year – these wooden spoon dolls would make lovely party favours for the guests – don’t you think?! Course they would.

I love how the afternoon light would sometimes glint off her so prettily – clouds scudding by and trees bending in the wind and all – but Abby thought the darker photos were nicer. So I put in both – Abby’s photo, my photo – Abby’s photo, my photo.

One of our last flowering stems of lavender. Miss Plum has the perfect hand for holding a wee bloom. And said she’ll mind it til next spring. What a sweetie.

I’ve already started the next wooden spoon doll … a bigger version … a Wattle Fairy for the top of our Christmas tree … with a mantle of gum leaves … here’s a glimpse …

Ahhh … such delight!

hoppity-hoppity

September 30, 2014 Lilyapplique

Well! You’ll need to settle down with a lovely cup of something to read this one! The lovely and creative Rebecca of Needle and Spindle asked me to participate in this little bloggity hop, where we get to ramble on about the whole creative process as it fits into our lives. It’s taken me hours to collect all these thoughts and put them down in some kind of order, but I do hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did thinking about it, and perhaps it will add a little light to the creative chaos that is so often on display here at block-a-day :-) And once you’ve ploughed your way through this, you can follow the links back to read how other lovely, like minded folk approach their craft. It makes for inspiring reading.

What am I working on?

I always have so many different projects on the go. I adore planning a new project, and starting it provides a thrill that literally makes me smile and jig about and even squeal a little. But finishing – well, I can honestly say, it just doesn’t give me the same zing. Bizarre but true. I am definitely more seduced by the crafty doing than the crafty finish. Is this a good thing or not? At the moment I think it’s a good thing. Starting new projects is my way of recording all the ideas that swirl around my head. And you know, giving these started projects lots of time to marinate – moving them in and out of the doing zone – gives me a chance to refine them, improve them, adapt them to new purposes. All good things.

So – what am I working on? On the knitting front, I am currently knitting my Mum a grey and red stripey jumper (that has to be finished in time for her to take to Canada at the beginning of December), my Abby a vivid purple Lopi jumper that it is now too hot to wear (ah, there’s always next year), my Julian an argyle vest (truth be told, those needles haven’t been touched for months!), and a cinnamon coloured cardigan for myself that has a fair isle band around the chest and upper sleeves.

Patchwork – definitely the black, mustard and turquoise triangles. Started as a simple star that has just kept on growing and growing and growing. It really is quite addictive. And everytime I think, that’s it! no more rounds! I find another piece of lovely fabric and quickly start cutting. And my Spring House version of the Winter House. And my fox faces.

Embroidery – Working on my Norwegian Queen. I got heaps and heaps done last week in Merimbula and am really pleased with her progress. I’m keen to finish this one, because then I want to make a Norwegian King! I’ve also dragged out my Hawk Run Hollow Village cross stitch – quite the epic project.

Applique – oh the fox chair! I am completely in love with the fox chair. It’s been slow going but very very satisfying.

Upholstery – Putting hessian, lace and cross stitch together to recover an old English Oak card chair I found by the side of the road.

Crafty – I’ve recently bought Salley Mavor’s book “Felt Wee Folk: Enchanting Projects” and oh, it is truly enchanting :-) I’ve just made a wee doll of Lucifer – he’s part of a Michaelmas mobile – he’s been pushed out of heaven and is suspended amongst the starts and blackberry leaves and berries. I foresee many many more of these little folk. They are such fun to make.

Sewing – tshirts and skirts for summer. My first two tshirts- great successes – shrank when I washed them. So they’ve been handed down to Mum’s lovely neighbour and I’m now a devoted preshrinker.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I think the thing that really defines my work is my lack of concern for perfection or the “right” way of doing things. Soon after I became really interested in making in my mid 20s, I became obsessed with things being perfect. Lines had to be dead straight. Corners had to be precise. Errors were intolerable. Evidence that it had been MADE rather than conjured up out of the air meant I had failed. And I didn’t think anything I made could stand up to being touched or used by anyone. It was horrible. Stressful for everyone – I remember a friend taking me for a walk through the university garden one lunch time to show me that there were no straight lines in nature. And my husband declared that if something I made couldn’t be USED than it simply wasn’t of any use. After a few years of this my making ground to a halt because I knew I could not make things perfectly. I decided that the only craft I was any good at was cross stitch – making those little crosses neatly on strictly gridded fabric met my need for order and the perfect finish. I literally gave all my wool and knitting needles to my Nanny and declared that I would have to save my few finished quilt tops up until I could afford to pay an expert to quilt them. It was all rather crushing.

Then, after finding the bloggy world of making and being so utterly inspired by so many incredibly talented people, I began making again. I also began blogging and strangely enough, that encouraged me to just keep going. There was always a new blog post to be written ;-) I began playing with many different techniques and genres and it was so fun that I slowly let go of that perfection. I wanted to be a maker – a sewer, a knitter, a crocheter, a doll maker, a patchworker, a quilter, an appliquer … I really worked at teaching myself that the beauty of making was in the making. I didn’t want to be a passive observer, I wanted to actively create.

So my seams are not perfectly straight and my points are sometimes missing. I cheerfully re-chop things if they don’t fit, and if I realise I’ve missed something on the pattern I can usually rejig it so it works. My quilting is higgledy-piggledy and I never bother with batting and backing (vintage blankets all the way). I don’t care what patchwork fabrics are the latest or what colour background the cool quilters are using. I cheerfully make my clothes out of old tablecloths and curtains. My quilts are made from fabrics gathered here, there and everywhere. My knitting is almost always dictated by what my local yarn store has dug up for the bargain basement this week. My furniture is gathered from the side of the road and brought back to life with elbow grease and Danish oil.

I just keep swimming the Lily way and when I’m finished, what I’ve loved making is free to be used and worn and dragged and squashed and crumpled up and that’s all good. If the candlewax drips onto the appliqued table cloth that’s fine. If the armhole stitches are wonky – so what, the jumper is still eminently wearable and cosy. If the little visitor dirties the felt doll, oh well, it looks loved. I don’t even blink when Mum’s old dog pees on my quilt or our dog wipes her chicken wing juicy chin on my crochet floor rug.

That’s not to say my work is clumsy or I am careless. But I think handmade needs to flow in a way that fits in with everything else that is going on. It’s not a precious art form that I set aside a few hours for each day/week or a finished item that needs to be guarded. My work is simply part of our lives, often created amongst the dishes we’ve just eaten from on the kitchen table, and as such, never needs to be perfect or cosseted. Just lovely. And useful is good too.

Why do I write and create the way I do?

You might have noticed, I have no problem with writing on and on and on (I have never been able to write to a word limit – such a constant problem with my academic work :-) and whilst my punctuation is sometimes erratic, my style is rather formal. But, this being my blog, I can write however I like. And I think it probably reflects both the constant chatter in my head, and my love of richly detailed, more old fashioned literature (oh Charles Dickens – you can take as many pages as you like to describe a house!) Honestly, I do talk to myself most of the time. I think it comes from spending a lot of time at home alone – first as a stay at home mum, and now living in Melbourne where I have no family or friends to visit. Instead, I potter about, doing the chores, looking after Abby and Julian, writing essays, or making – a constant stream of quiet chatter keeping me company. Describing what I see around me, what I could do next, how I could proceed with a project, what tack I’ll take on a paper, what I’ll talk about with Abby when I collect her from school, what I’ll write about on the blog, what’s infuriating me in the news, what my worries are for the future … And so my writing reflects this same tumbling chatter. If you were sitting here beside me, I would sound exactly the same in person as I do in writing :-)

Why do I create the way I do – hmmm … I like to do things the old fashioned way. I don’t like our society’s emphasis on new and modern, fashionable and sophisticated, fleeting and disposable. My grandmothers and mum taught me the basics of all my making. Nanny Cottam taught me to knit when I was 8, crochet in my teens, and her love of patchwork inspired me when I was in my early 20s. We went to classes together and have spent countless days side by side at her place, running up clothes, curtains, sofa covers, patchwork etc. on the machine, looking through magazines and books together, plotting our next projects and purchases … my dear old Nanny Cottam is without doubt the most important creative force in my life. Her admonition when the going gets tricky “Now, let’s just sit down and we’ll have a quiet look at it” will guide my creativity for the rest of my days.

Nanny Dougall – who sadly died when I was just 11 – is another huge influence in my life. She was the queen of making do, making from scratch, using what she had, and appreciating beauty. She taught me to handsew when I was little – we made a wee doll’s quilt from little squares from her stash. She started me on my embroidery career – first with making wonky white crosses on blue gingham, then moving on to a Holly Hobbie embroidery kit. And whilst we cared for her during her last weeks, she taught me to make pompoms – I was so amazed with their cleverness. My little sister and I were devastated to wake up one morning and find that she’d died overnight – she was going to teach us to crochet that day. But whilst I never had the chance to spend the time with her that I have with Nanny Cottam, it is what she left me that helps shape my creativity. I have her crochet books, her carefully embroidered doilies, the beautifully crocheted and knitted jumpers and cardigans she made us, the fabric scraps she gathered, the spools of crochet yarn she inherited from her mother, pieces of pretty china, her piano stool, her tin chest. She appreciated what she had, she carefully gathered what was important to her, and she celebrated beauty.

And then there’s my Mum. She’s an exceptional seamstress. She sewed all our clothes when we were little and most of them when we were older. She sewed my school uniforms, my ball gowns, my pregnancy clothes, Abby’s bunny rugs … There has always been a sewing machine set up in the centre of the home, ready to go. Everything we’ve ever seen and liked is matched to the refrain “We could make that”. Mum gave me the invaluable belief that we could make whatever we needed or wanted, and we could make it beautifully. She also let me make stupid things really badly. When I insisted that WAS what the Vogue pattern said to do, she just shrugged her shoulders and said “alright” and I wore the jumpsuit with the lining sewed in with the seams visible and fraying. That was awesome parenting Mum!

So yep. I’m wordy, old fashioned, hopelessly sentimental, determined to do it for myself, and yearn for the days of old when people DID things instead of simply shopped for things.

How does my creative process work?

Hmmm … I think my work is very much shaped by my confidence with that particular genre. When knitting, I tend to stick very carefully to what the pattern says because at this stage in my knitting “career”, I don’t have a good understanding of how knitting patterns are created. All those shapes and increases and decreases are all a bit of a mystery to me. I mean, I know how to do them, but I don’t know how to put them together myself. Thus I am very happy to bow down to the creativity and skill of those that know so much more. However, I do spend a lot of time thinking about the magic of knitting – how did people come to think of winding yarn around sticks and pulling it in and out in different ways to create all kinds of wonderful stitches and build beautiful, warm, hardy fabric. I love that. It makes me feel incredibly connected to something that has intrigued, delighted and protected people for thousands of years.

In most of my other work, my increasing confidence with how things are put together has led me away from the patterns of others. I like to draft my own patterns and most of my projects are inspired by what I see about me, what my family likes or is doing, and especially thinking up ways to add extra handmade decoration to our home and the festivals we celebrate. I adore decoration – I remember seeing the film “Carrington” when I was at university in the late 1980s, watching Dora Carrington and her friends embellish everything around them, and thinking yes! That’s exactly what I want my world/home to be like. Colourful, rich, detailed, so very connected to the past, unique to me and my family (I have a loathing of the homeware catalogue look) and most importantly handmade. I want my work to please me and be lovely and useful for my family but I also want it to show the world what it is we love and value.

The grill door on an Art Deco block of flats in Fitzroy becomes a simple quilt. The photo of a fox in a English rural magazine marries the lovely rounded shape of a hard rubbish chair and becomes a piece of embroidered and appliqued upholstery. The lovely artwork of my Nanny’s Figgjo china collection inspires me to recreate it as embroidery. I see a pretty piece of fabric in the shop and wonder what it could be, what it could go with – it can be as simple as wrapping hebel bricks to make a bookshelf or trim a skirt. A book of antique samplers inspires the start of a huge and complex quilt with hundreds of tiny pieces and seams. A collection of coloured china on the draining rack makes me want to sew a quilt or knit a stripey jumper capturing just that light and colour. It comes from everywhere, my creativity

Most of all, it’s very spontaneous and cheerfully repurposes what was bought for another project because at that moment, it’s the perfectly right thing to do.

Wow! We made it to the end! Now. I am supposed to be linking you to another maker however, with the end of the school term, a quick holiday in Merimbula, and Julian’s departure on a month long work trip to addle my brain, I’ve not lined anyone up. I’m so sorry. However, I am sending out some emails right now so I will let you know where to visit next as soon as I can :-)

While you wait – go make something – it’s just so good.

catching up

October 25, 2013 Lilybooks

Oh my goodness! Has it really been two weeks since I stopped by! Are you still here?! I was chatting with Mum this morning and she told me to get on over here and write a post, share some photos, and say hi to all the lovely folk who visit block-a-day. She thinks I’m very rude.

So, being a dutiful daughter .. and missing you all (truly, the minute I sit down and start uploading photos I think, my goodness why did I let this go so long!) … here I am :-)

All is good here – the presentation went very, very well. The last essay was squeezed out of me last Friday – the very last words not hitting the screen until 1 hour before the deadline but hey, I got there in the end. Classes are over for the year and now I’m looking forward (ha!) to exams and placement.

Of course, in between those important tasks, there’s been lots more super fun stuff going on round Bootville. But nothing much seems to be getting to the final finished and ready for showing stage. I blame the crappy weather – totally dreary, grey, cold and wet. So uninspiring. So impossible to finish off painted projects. So easy to sit in the armchair by the window and lose hours with never ending yarn projects on my lap. So easy to think that nothing much is happening until I look on my camera and think “Oh yes – there’s been all that.”

So instead, let’s share some “doing”, huh? Good! And hopefully in the next few days, there’ll be some sunlight and warmth and this will lead to that lovely finishing we all enjoy so much :-)

Glorious marigold coloured paint …

… helping to transform an old hard rubbished bedhead into a blackboard.

Whilst celery green paint brightens an old thrifted and embroidered fire screen.

Lots of happy doll making

And lots of sideboard sanding and restoration … oh look at that – there was some sun.

Getting into the cross stitch – some new Christmas tree decorations from a beautiful book of Danish cross stitch patterns given to me by a sweet friend I met on Instagram – which led me onto the bay of evil to see if there were more such books, which of course there were, and now they’re here!

The finishing off and stretching out of a pair of needlepoints – the girlie being a mere 6 years old, the monkey a grander 10 years old – and do you know, it took less then half an hour to finish them :sigh: Now I just need to sew them up into rather sumptuous cushions. That’s coming … truly it is :-)

The quilting and binding of a recently pieced quilt top – very pretty this one – and oh so very cosy on these silly cold days and nights.

The rearranging of the living room and rehoming of this wee blue bookshelf, now in the bedroom. It holds most of the children’s book series we have – more recent titles like the fabulously ghastly Unfortunate Events, the marvellously detailed Roman Mysteries, Spiderwick, the Adventures of Tashi, several of the American Girl collections, and of course Harry Potter. As well as some awesome oldies like the Moomin Adventures, the Adventures of Green Knowe, the Wolves of Willoughby Chase series, Little House, Edward Eager’s Tales of Magic, the Borrowers … such good stuff. Truly some of the essential ingredients of childhood and I do so love looking over the titles each day. Remembering when I read them, when Abby read them, what we loved most, words and stories and habits that became part of our lives.

More doll making – my turn this time – inspired, at one of those moments when there were at least 20 more important things to do, to try recreating this dear little wooden doll in yarn. Mostly quite pleased so far – but of course she’s missing her arms, hair, scarf and her apron’s not yet finished … As for the strange arrangement with the kewpie doll – well – I don’t know!

The finishing of my Icelandic shawl which took for absolutely ever, being in lace weight yarn and all, and then I decided to add a crocheted edging in some Noro sock weight – which is now taking for absolutely ever to finish.

Now when Abby needlepoints, she starts and finishes as quickly as she can. I just don’t know where that comes from … odd.

The realisation that if I don’t put some serious hours into knitting this Stevenson jumper, it will not be ready to wear when we make our summer visit to Green Cape Lighthouse and I won’t be able to have Julian take some photos of me doing my best Kate impersonation.

And more visits from dear Sacha, accompanied by incredibly late night costume sewing and a weekend of playful hilarity and adventure.

Hmph! Looking back at all this is quite inspiring – I’d quite forgotten we’d done so much – I might even go sew up those cushions. Yes, I think I will.

a handmade life

stitch-cook-grow-love

Category: dolls

a little koala

a wooden spoon :: sugar plum fairy

hoppity-hoppity

catching up