A pettiskirt for Darcy

It turns out that Darcy's birthday is the same day as Austin's, so that seemed like as good an excuse as any for making her a pettiskirt. And I figure the more I make the easier they get????? So much so I have gone back and revised my original tutorial...

My earlier attampts were never as full as the ones you can buy, and the only way around this is to make the bottom layer longer. In my original pattern I had 6 pieces in the bottom layer - ie about 9.6m of fabric. This time I put 8 pieces in - ie 12.8m. The only limitation is the amount of fabric you have and your patience.

You are rewarded with a lot more swing:

And the happy recipient!

Biscuits for the Greenwich Public School election day cake stall

Saturday 21 August 2010 is Federal Election day in Australia, and as my son's primary school was a polling booth, the P&C decided to have a cake stall to raise funds.

I spent Friday afternoon and evening baking and packaging (chocolate chocolate chip biscuits, peanut butter biscuits, passionfruit yo-yos [melting moments], and, in a fit of enthusiasm, apricot and orange  muffins the next morning!) and the P&C had requested we label items with an ingredients list.

Inspired by a recent posting by Emily of Saltwater Kids, I decided to make really nice labels (and I wasn't about to write out an ingredient list 5 times for my 5 bags of  chocolate chip biscuits!).

Because I had a lot to say on my labels, I only printed and cut 2 from each 10x15 photo (which I printed at home, as it was the night before!).

Thank you Emily, and thank you Craft Gossip for pointing me in her direction.

A sundress for Fiji

Spotlight (left) had some jersey fabric, shirred at the top, and hemmed at the bottom. My friend Sarah bought the red and white stripe, which inspired me to buy the navy and white for a sundress for my Fijian holiday.

Sarah kindly marked the hem for cutting (as I stood, as generations of women having their hems taken up have, on the coffee table - Sarah says with wine glass in hand, but it's not true!).

I used the (copious) offcuts for the straps and frill.




Then off to Fiji for some serious location modelling!

Rainy day photoblocks

Usually when Dad visits he gets to replace all the blown halogen lights in the house. This left me with a stack of these:

I'd been thinking about making some photo blocks for while, since seeing others on CraftGossip.com, but didn't want to make them out of fabric.  Nor did I want to make them from wooden blocks, as did Missie Krissie, as my youngest is a "thrower". So small square cardboard boxes were just the ticket.

If I was doing this again I would start by covering the boxes with plain paper and glue, to give a plain base to work on. As it was, I simply sized photos to fit the side of  the four boxes, then using PhotoShop, cut the photo into quarters, and "spread out" the photo on the page before printing. This was so I would have paper to wrap around corners when I was sticking it on the boxes:

Choosing photos was fun. You don't often get photos with the subject isolated; often there is another head in the photo. This can work well, and make the puzzle a bit more tricky, if there is a quarter of someone else's head in the shot too.

They came together pretty quickly, and as a final step, and to protect the print and the paper, I wrapped them in clear packaging tape.

(Left) Austin in a photo block;(right) Austin gets to grips with the photo blocks. 

My $21.90 Missoni Scarf

20cm of Missoni Big Jagged Spring @ $89m:  $17.80       

20cm pink jersey @ $20.50: $4.10                              

Wearing your new Missoni scarf to the supermarket on a Sunday: Priceless!

Happy Birthday Letitia

Letitia invited me to her birthday party and I volunteered to make the cake. The "party" was in fact a sit down lunch, but after spectacular entree and mains, people wondered what dessert would be. That would be Bronwyn's cake! Lucky I made a big one. My first ever double decker cake!

Yo Yo biscuits (melting moments)

My Mum is famous for these, so I want to preserve the recipe for prosperity:

6oz Butter

6oz Plain Flour

2oz Icing sugar

2oz Custard Powder

Cream butter, then add all dry ingredients.

Mix until it forms a cohesive dough; this will take a while. For 5 minutes you will be thinking "there's not enough butter!", but eventually it will come together.

Use a teaspoon to pick up small pieces of dough - about half a teaspoon full (they will expand by about a third on cooking).

Roll dough in your hand to make a smooth ball.

Put on tray.

Use a fork to push ball down and make an indent on the back - but not too firmly.

Bake in a 180degree oven for 10-15minutes, or until they start to brown underneath.

Remove from oven and cool on a rack.

Make icing - icing sugar, little knob of butter, hot water, and your choice of colourings or flavourings (half a passionfruit added to the mix makes a delicious icing).

Put a dob of icing on a biscuit and push another on top - but don't squeeze too hard.

This is why they are called YoYos.

Eat and enjoy!

Now for something completely different

Can you spot the difference in these photos?

Yes, that's right, Princess Leia has a head!

A couple of months ago the Greenwich Public School in Sydney, Australia, held its annual "Drinks by the Harbour" fundraiser. The theme was "white". My friend Jean was persuaded to go as Princess Leia in the ceremonial scene in Star Wars: A New Hope; ie:

(and see this video on Youtube.)

By "persuaded" I mean that I pointed out that she has the hair and the cheekbones, and I would make the dress and the necklace if she would agree. So that was that.

Turns out we aren't the first to try this - see Kay-dee's page (thank you Kay-dee for the detailed information) and Padme's closet.  We used a white maxi dress from Supre (an Australian chain store a bit like UK's Top Shop), a bit of white georgette from my fabric stash, silver lame for the belt, and cardboard and tin foil for the necklace.

Working with the white dress as the base, I made wide straps to cover the shoestring straps of the dress, and also to give me something substantial to sew the georgette sleeves onto. I simply cut large bell sleeves and sewed them in. It is not an accurate copy of the costume (as Kay-dee has made) - more of an homage!

There are lots of suggestions on the web for making Leia's necklace - along the lines of modelling clay or getting a metalworker to beat some metal pieces for you. My idea was simpler and cheaper - cardboard, white glue and (craft) foil.   

Simply cut pieces of thick cardboard into pieces roughly the size and shape of the pieces in the necklace, and cover with splodges of white glue - thickly. When dry they will look something like this:

Then, cut pieces of craft foil big enough to wrap around the cardboard, and press into the contours formed by the glue. Then string the pieces together - I used a needle to make a tunnel at the top of each piece of cardboard, under the foil, and threaded tiger tail filament through, finishing with a clasp so I could open it.

Here's another view of the finished necklace:

Finally, I couldn't resist trying it on before I gave it to Jean (we made a better belt than this, though).

And here's Jean rocking the look on the night:

But wait, there's more!

Mary Ann doesn't like chocolate, but she likes white chocolate, which made the decision about which cake to make for her birthday easy - more (white) chocolate butterflies. Maybe more than strictly necessary, but then it was a big birthday, so I tried to do as many butterflies as she was years old!