Bird in the dots

I made this bag last night, it was great fun and I couldn't stop before I had it finished. I had these scraps with Vliesofix on them that I wanted to get rid of, they became dots and then there had to be a bird. And then it lacked something, a carrot of course? Seems to be my favourite vegetable, proof here and here. Have a nice day! Eat vegetables!

Poooh!!

Anyone else getting tired of Winnie the Pooh? I don't mean the book and drawings by A.A Milne, I mean the postcards, toys, books, children's clothes and so on decorated with the Disney one. What is it about that bear, really? I have been trying to find stuff with Moomins on for a few swaps and you would think that it's easy to find Moomin products in there home country. It's about 100 times easier to find stuff with that Pooh bear on, and they have the same stuff in all shops. I guess you can find them where you live too. From now on I will try to be a consious consumer and buy local stuff when it is possible. Really. I hate not to find anything local in the bookshop! I was looking for elks the other day for a swap with my lovely new friend Didine in Belgium. I thought I had seen some nice Swedish linen fabric with elks printed on it in the local fabric store. -No, we haven't got any of that, but we do have a fabric with the Koda bear on it, and look, there is a few elks on it too!! Sigh...

September has been like Summer here, big E picked beautiful flowers in the garden in the weekend. Global warming? I hope not beacuse we are enjoying this weather!

Today I finished two more house bags, to send to my Mum's new shop. She sold one of my pouches yesterday! Curious people keep dropping in to look at the stuff though they haven't really opened the shop yet... A good sign anyway :)

Life is a mess

Do you think all other people have nice and clean homes all the time? I do. So I was very happy to read Alex of Moonstiches post about the threadening situation in their house. The bad thing with flickr is that people (me included) only show the beautiful and clean parts of their homes. I will not show you any pictures either, I just want to tell you (and maybe comfort someone) that while I am sewing my kids play with their toys everywhere in the house an leave them there for several days until I feel I've had enough. We often leave our plates on the table after eating because I am too lazy to put them in the dish washer or too eager to run to my sewing machine. We have a messy kitchen and piles of paper and clothes here and there. And we have threads on the floor. The threads are acctually the least probem, they are just proof of someone being creative here. But that kitchen, I would really like it to be nice and clean. But I just have so many better things to do all the time...

Like making bags for my mum's shop (I wonder when it will have a proper name), this is another housebag in progress, I made it a little smaller this time. The door is made form a piece of fabric I recieved in a swap with PatchworkPottery, she also helped me finish my Autumn wallhanging by sending me the beautiful leaf button. Swapping is great!

Talking abot swaps, is there anyone of you Moominfans out there that would care for this thrifted pillow case? I bought a bunch of them beacuse I liked this and this, but I am not too fond of the pastels in this one. Please tell me if you want it and I'll be happy to send it to you! Moomin is (almost) on his way to Portugal and is no longer available!

Sewing not cleaning

I have been trying to finish a few projects to send to the new shop so this household looks very much like 'call before you come to visit me or I will not let you in'. Tomorrow has to be a cleaning day or else... Instead of showing you messy corners of my home I chose some close-ups of my finished objects. Clever me. I had a piece of elk fabric lying around and I had been wondering what I bought that toile print for? So why not combine them and let the Scandinavian travel to Paris. (Do you think anyone in a small town will buy elk-goes-to-Paris pouches?). I've been admiring this log cabin pillow so I wanted to make my own version. Acctually I made it for my own sofa, but with this shop project coming up I'm sending that as well. Need to make more, it was great fun combining fabric strips.

Thank you all for the kind comments about my robot jacket in my guestbook! I'm planning to make wall hangings for the boysroom with robots, rockets and... When I have the time.

Great news!

I got wonderful news a few days ago! My mum (who is the one who thaught me to feel passionate about fabrics and such) and her friend got a studio with a window at the busiest street in the town (Vasa/Vaasa ) where she lives. They are hopefully going to turn it into a shop/café in the future. AND I have a place to show and sell my stuff, hurray! The theme for the first shop window will be Autumn so I made this wallhanging for it. I loved Charlie Pop's mushrooms and had to try to sew some. I'm going to make more, I just need to get some brown fabric for the background. I have sent and recieved three swaps during the last weeks, the leaf button on the wallhanging came all the way from Canada, take a look at all the goodies I got from PatchworkPottery! Will show you more soon.

Autumn!

It's coming, you can feel it in the air! The beginning of Autumn has always been my favourite time of the year. It feels much more like a fresh start than a new year does. Everything is back to normal after Summer, the air is fresh and crispy but it's still warm on the sunny side of the street and the colours in nature are so beautiful (not yet, but anyway...). My ideas are flowing and it's just great. Mostly. I need new clothes, a year ago I was pregnant and now, after breastfeeding 11 months my trousers are too big (and so out of fashion, why do I hate fixing my own clothes when I love sewing so much?). I am really going to make myself a pair of jeans, I found a pattern designed by Lustwear that I had forgotten about that looks allright. (p.s. I don't mind being a few kilos lighter than I used to be, it's just that I don't like to shop trousers, somehow I just prefer to go crazy in a fabric store.)

The Autumn winds made me finish the robot jacket I started to make for little E last Spring. It got lost in the projekt pile when Summer came to stay. But now it's ready and it still fits him very well. I'm not that fond of toys these days, though there is a real boom in making soft toys, I guess I am just so tired of collecting toys from the floor that even cute ones are my enemies these days. One exception is this robot made by Bitter betty (maybe it's a toy picker).

Naive, me?

I haven't bought any fabrics during Summer, because I simply couldn't afford it (=to go shopping on the internet). I'm not very sad about this though, I think it makes me very creative to use what I have (the only negative thing is that I cannot sleep at night with all those ideas bubbling in my head). The fabrics I bought last year for a project I didn't have time to start can look much better somewhere else combined with a fabric I didn't even remember I had lying around. I have this strange relationship with fabric, I often get stomach ache when I see new fabric lines, but I also pity the poor leftovers that end up in the sale department... And I would like to think there isn't any fabric that wouldn't look good somewhere (I DO have a few pieces I think I will never like). I remeber how I always had to play with the ugliest doll when I was little, because I was feeling sorry for it. So I always give the cheapest ones a chance. For example I think I paid 2,98 $/yard for all the fabrics in this. Not too bad. And I love getting fabric someone else chose for me, it is so inpiring and challenging. I am waiting for three swaps, I hope they will arrive next week and I can't wait to create something of the goodies I will get, if I dare to cut in them...

I would like to have a blog I can be proud of so I am making this logo for it, but it may take a while to get it ready because I want to make something that I really like and that I can bring with me when I go to craft fairs. The picture gives a hint of what I'm making. The one with glasses is me, my daughter drew the portrait a few days before she turned four and I turned it into a redwork embroidery last night, cute isn't it?

Big plans...

Big E has started playschool again, so I am alone with the little one three days a week and it feels like I had all the time in the world... Little E's nap at noon is finally getting longer (used to be ½ an hour max), he even sleeps for two hours some lucky days! Now i will have some time to think about starting my own craft business, little E isn't that talkative yet, though he is learning. One of he's first words is "knapp" (button), as you can see we share a hobby. In the picture he discovers my drawer for fabric scraps :-)

My brother asked me what I wanted for my 30th birthday in October. I said I wanted to go to Stockholm so now we are planning to go the four of us, me, my brother and my two sisters together with my children. It will be so fun to do something together!! And there is a Kaffe Fassett exhibition at Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde!
I met Kaffe Fassett in person last year when my friend and I went on a Viking Husqvarna promotion tour (a cruise to Stockholm). It was very inspiring to hear him and take part in his workshop, but we where both very pregnant (one month left...) so we were quite tired all the time and I really can't remember so much of it, but I've still met the guy!