Thankyou Pantone!!!

Did you know that there is this company in the US called Pantone that is the 'global colour authority' and at the end of every year they make a colour prediction for the coming year?

Well just look what they've picked for 2014:

Yes, that's right, they have picked my favourite colour!!!

Radiant Orchid is "an enchanting harmony of fuschia, purple, and pink undertones' and it 'inspires confidence and emanates great joy, love and health'.  It is also 'a dazzling attention-getter'.

Yipee!!!  There is so much of this colour in my wardrobe!!!

For I start I have these dresses that you might remember from Frocktober:

I have more lilac dresses...lots more... and capri pants, and tops, and cardigans, and skirts... and these pants that I made to cure my pantsophobia:

Gee my hair has gotten a lot redder since then...

And I have these fabulous bangles:

All but three of these are bakelite.  There are two lucite, and one fakelite.

Not to mention shoes and handbags and hair flowers!!!

Yes, I do have a pair for each of these shoes!

So its it just me or is a massive company giving me permission to indulge in my favourite colour???

Beccie
xxx

The way forward is now clear! (and CLEAN!!)

I must apologise and say I was swanning around over the weekend again and not sewing.  This time I spent the weekend in Sydney, specifically to go to the races and watch Black Caviar win her 25th race in a row.  She has since retired (announced yesterday) so I'm really glad we made the effort to see her.

And of course the thing everyone wants to know is 'what did you wear?':

Hat by Madly Hatted Millinery

Dress from Miskonduct Klothing

Mmmm curvalicious!  I felt a million bucks all day.  Unfortunately I did not win a million bucks....

The next day though we did do something productive!  Whilst in Sydney we took the opportunity to visit Ikea so I could get some shelving units to help me tidy up my sewing room.  You remember the mess - it looked like this:

Total pigstye!

So we shopped up a storm and left with all of this (for surprisingly cheap!):

Not all of the containers are for me - some are for storing things in the garage

Now a bit of a side note about my husband - as soon as he had that flat-pack trolley in his hands he wanted to stand on it and have me push him... or scoot along and then jump on it and ride it... This was through the accessory section of the store, where lots of breakable things are!!!  Common sense prevailed UNTIL we got into the carpark - then he went crazy:

Anyone else have a husband that doesn't act his age???

So, we somehow managed to fit it all in the car and get it home, where I left it in the capable (much more so than my husband's) hands of my Dad, who put the shelves together and delivered them to me the following afternoon:

What would I do without my Dad!

Then it was my job to tidy and clean.  I pulled everything that wasn't where it should be, or looked messy, out of my sewing room and into the living room, then I set about putting it all back in.  And this is where I'm at with it now:

Ta-DAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

(and yes I do sew standing up)

Here is a better view of the shelves.  I used this opportunity to move some things out of a bookcase in my bedroom, and now the bookcase can go to the charity shop which means more room in my bedroom! (vintage dresser maybe???)

And here are all the pretty details!

I feel SO MUCH BETTER about this space now - its pretty and its even more functional, and it smells nice thanks to the scented candles (Pumpkin Maple!!!!).  Every time I walk past the door I want to go in just to look at all the prettiness.  It makes me happy again - YAY!!!

For those of you out there that have commented that their creative spaces are as bad, or worse than, what mine was (you know who you are) you really should consider spending some time to make it better.  You will feel so much more creative in a space thats clear!

What do you think?  Does your space need an overhaul?  Do you think I'll be able to keep mine this tidy?  Should I ban my husband from Ikea?

Beccie
xxx

Let them eat CAKE!!!!!

Just not these ones...

Cause we know from a previous post that whats inside of them is styrofoam, and the flowers and ribbons are all stuck on with glue.  Might be hard to digest!

Late last week I had to deliver these beauties to the Sherbet Birdie studio in Sydney for their Marie Antoinette themed shoot day, and can I tell you that it was possibly the most nerve-wracking drive of my life!

After I put the cakes in the boot I packed around them with plastic shopping bags (I have about a million of them) to protect them and away from each other, then I closed the lid, crossed my fingers, and drove for two and a half hours, hoping all the time that no-one rear-ended me!

Thankfully all that finger crossing and wishing worked, and they made it there in one piece - phew!

And Sasha and Lucy were waiting very excitedly for me - not because of these cakes... because of these ones

Yes, I also made edible cakes for the lucky ladies who had booked for the Marie Antoinette shoot, and for the three of us!

The chocolate one with the raspberry is a Tim Tam Tart (recipe here) and the other layered one is an Iced Vovo Tart (recipe here).  When the Iced Vovo Tart's were served to the clients, they were topped with whipped cream and shaved coconut - totally decadent!  And they received such rave reviews from everyone that I'm pretty sure I will be providing baked goods for shoot days in the future!

Anyway - back to the story!

As a reward for my efforts (and because I'm awesome) I was the test subject for the shoot.  Lucy practiced on my hair and makeup

And Sasha and I worked on the set, lighting and poses for the girls the next day

The shoot day itself was wonderful, and all the ladies had a fabulous time being pampered, and left looking very glamorous!  Sasha has only released two of the photos so far and I just had to share them with you all because they are just so beautiful!

 

 The beautiful Liz, channeling Marie Antoinette in the style of those 

gorgeous antique, oval framed, silk portraits

The fabulous Karen posing on a glorious couch amongst the Moet,

roses, feathers and towering cakes

So helping create this magic took up my whole weekend, so there was no sewing... sorry about that!  And my sewing room looks like a bomb exploded in it (again) so that is going to need fixing before I can sew anything.  Sigh!

Beccie

xxx

And now for something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!

Recently, my good friend Sasha from Sherbet Birdie (the best pinup photographer in Australia in my opinion) announced the theme for her next shoot day experience - the absolute opulence of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette!

I often help out on these shoot days as an assistant, and with costuming (remember the mermaid tail????) but this time I offered to make the fake cakes to decorate the set!  Fun!!  Now I've never decorated cakes, let alone covered styrofoam fake cakes with fondant, but I can do anything I put my mind to right???

Sasha visited a cake decorating supply store in Sydney and provided me with the styrofoam fake cakes, cake boards, fancy food colouring, sugar paste, and 7kgs of fondant (thats about 14 pounds for you overseas people)!!!!  She also gave me some flowers and ribbons that she had to help me make a start.

First job was covering all the styrofoam fake cakes with the fondant.  And can I say thank goodness for the internet!  I found instructions on how to roll it out properly, and more instructions on how to dye the fondant with the fancy food colouring.  After a few hours solid toil, I was covered in icing sugar from head to toe, had sore and tired wrists, and had these:

All I can say is thank goodness they only have to look good from one angle!!!

The backs on a few of them (especially my first one) are awful!!!

Now came the fun bit - making them pretty!  I went to Spotlight, which is my local go-to for crafting goodies, and bougth some fabulous fake flowers and some ribbon and other trims:

Then I cleared the big dining table, got out my hot glue gun, and went at it!!!

And this is what I created:

Aren't they fabulous!!!!!

Seriously, this was just so much fun!  It was so enjoyable to do something creative that wasn't sewing.

I hope you all had a lovely and peaceful Easter.

Beccie
xxx

PS. It was also my birthday AND my first wedding anniversary last week, so sorry if I was a bit absent...

Sew Grateful Week : I love you guys!

 

This is the post where I get to talk about how grateful I am for the sewing blogging community.  And while I am, what I'm really grateful for goes deeper than that.

I am grateful for the journey that has led me to this point - finding my vintage style, starting this blog, and meeting all of you guys - I love you guys!

Back a couple of years ago I was just your average person.  I took care of myself and liked to get dressed up, but found it really difficult to find things in mainstream fashion that worked on my body shape.  But as you do, you continue trying things because you don't think there is another option.

Enter a shopping expedition with my best girl Miss V - we were out shopping for outfits to wear to Melbourne Cup Day, and drove past a shop with a big chalk sign out the front advertising 'MAD MEN DRESSES'.  We were curious and the shop looked interesting so we stopped.  I walked out of that shop with a black Stop Staring dress that fit me so well it was scary.

This is me and my very handsom brother Matt.  I love this dress and I still wear it.

Then a family holiday with Miss V to Byron Bay - a coastal hippie-la-la town in northern New South Wales, Australia.  Whilst doing some shopping without the kids and the men, she and I stumbled upon a shop called That Shop - a kustom kulture shop that stocked Pinup Girl Clothing and other brands.  Once again I purchased an amazing dress...

Ok, so not the best photo, but you can see that I'm getting much more into the whole thing!

I realised there was a pattern emerging... and this was pretty much when I absented myself from current fashion and went back 60 years to the 1950s.

I had fun with photo shoots and classes learning how to do my hair and things, and buying a new wardrobe.... Which lead me to sewing.

You see, it was coming in to winter and I saw this exceptionally glamorous woman wearing what I now know to be a princess seamed coat over her vintage dress... and of course I wanted one!  But could I find one anywhere that would fit, that was the colour I liked, and wasn't $5,000,000... No.  Sigh!

Not being one to be frightened of throwing myself in the deep end, I said to myself "I'll make one!".  I bought a pattern and some fabric, and the rest is history!

This is me in the Best Dressed competition at Rose Seidler House fair in 2011.  The following year I was modelling in the fashion parades!

Sewing led me to blogging.  I started my blog because sewing is a lonely occupation and I wanted to be able to share with someone ANYONE! what I was doing.  I'll admit that my first few posts were rubbish - it takes a while to find your voice I think.  But I've found it now, and I've found other bloggers who inspire me, and I've found you guys who appreciate what I do.

In all this, I have found myself, I have found my confidence, and I have found my voice.  And I wouldn't change anything for all the tea in China!

I hope you've enjoyed a glimpse into my life.  Just know that I am sew grateful to you out there for taking an interest.

Beccie

xxx

A Sewists Biggest Dilema

As sewists (ie. people who sew - I can't quite come at sewers, especially when I see it written down!), we have a few shared problems that just won't seem to go away.  Things like:

• A growing fabric stash that we don't seem to use;
• Organisation of said fabric stash so we remember what we have, how much of it we bought, and if we've already washed it;
• Keeping our sewing rooms or areas neat;
• UFOs (otherswise known as Unfinished Objects);

And the one I had a go at sorting out during the break:

• Organising our patterns!

I was storing my patterns randomly in a lovely two drawer bedside table, which worked sort of okay until I tried to find something I vaguely remembered I owned.  Then this would happen:

I would pull everything out until I found what I wanted, and if I wasn't in a hurry I would put them back in the same haphazard manner.  If I was in a hurry they would stay in a pile on the floor.

And if you've been reading my blog for a little while you will know that I have been in a bit of a hurry recently, so pretty much all my patterns were in a pile on the floor.  Obviously this is not ideal for me or the patterns...  So I put my thinking cap on and came up with an idea.

I went and purchased 40 of these:

I think I was kidding myself when I thought 40 would be enough...

Your new word for today, readers, is Doculope.  A doculope is a sturdy plastic envelope that closes with a press stud, in which you can store documents.  Document + Envelope = Doculope!

The good thing about these babies is:

• I can store the adjusted pattern pieces I make in with the original pieces
• I don't have to fold things up tiny again to attempt to get them back into the pattern envelope
• If I buy buttons or zips or something that I particularly want to use with a pattern I can put it in the doculope too
• They are a uniform size so sit together neatly.

So I got busy on the floor putting all my patterns in doculopes.  I wrote the make and number on the left, and the style on the right - like this:

So organised!

Oh, and while I was at it I photographed (with my fancy new ipad!) the back and the front of the pattern envelope so I can make an record of what I own so I don't buy it twice!  This also gives me the added benefit of giving me easy access to the amount of fabric and what notions etc I need when I'm out and about.

Then I put them into two plastic document filing tubs that I purchased.  So my new pattern storage system looks like this:

Ta-da!!!

My next little job is to sort them into styles - so all the wiggle dresses together, all the skirts together etc.

Then I just need to find somewhere in my sewing room to store the tubs.  Hmmmmm...

So - what do you think of my storage solution?  Is it similar to yours?  How do you store your patterns?

Beccie
xxx

Spring has Sprung!

Well the warming weather in Australia has started people talking about spring cleaning.  And since its just between you and me, I don't mind confessing that keeping things tidy isn't exactly one of my strong points... especially in my sewing room.  It just seems like I can't manage to clean as I go.  I mean, I chuck out snipped threads and unusable pieces of fabric just fine, but any tasks bigger than that seem to escape me.  Pretty much every usuable surface (besides my sewing table) has a pile on it of stuff that really needs to be put away.  But I just can't manage to be motivated to do it.

It looked like this at the start of the year... what a pig sty!  

Mind you, its never gotten that bad again...

Somehow during last week I managed to find some time and some motivation, and I decided to start by sorting out my fabric stash.  I really should have taken a photo as I was going, but I didn't.  I was too focused.

I pulled out all my fabric - the stuff that was put away, the stuff that was still in shopping bags, and the rest that was sitting around in random piles.  And I sorted it all and put it all away!  I was so proud of myself!!

But I did end up with a washing basket full of fabric that I hadn't pre-washed.  Normally I like to put it in the machine when I get it home from the shops (or the post office if its come from far, far away) but some of it never made it.  During the rest of the week and on the weekend I washed a whole heap, and last night I ironed it all while I watched some TV

I'm sure you can imagine this took forever - I think there is about 40 metres here...

And can you see the fabric on the top?  I managed to find some DIVINE border print Christmas fabric - just over 7 metres of it!!!  It was interesting finding somewhere to hang it to dry, and then ironing it...

 

Thank goodness its narrow - wouldn't like to do this twice over!

And after all that washing and ironing, there is still more to go!

Sigh!

It was also our local Council elections on the weekend, and I had promised a few hours to a friend to hand out 'how to vote' flyers at a polling booth for her and her party.  Funnily enough, my Mum had handed out 'how to vote' flyers for the same party in 1975, and still had her tshirt.  So I washed it and wore it!

 

Thats Mum on the left with Rashi the afghan, and me on the right

The party is called the Liberal Party - hence why this tshirt is funny.  I really enjoyed wearing it, and telling everyone its connection in my history.  And by wearing something vintage (even 1970's vintage) I felt that I was still being me while representing my friends political party... and it did get attention!

Anyway, in amongst all that I did manage to get some sewing done believe it or not!  But more on that later in the week...

Beccie
xxx

Rose Seidler House 50s Fair 2012

So, all that frantic sewing of the coat and the matching dress was because the Rose Seidler House 50s Fair was coming up and I wanted to wear my new outfit to the fair.  You see, the original coat I made 12 months ago made its debut at the same fair in 2011, and I thought it would be fitting for the red coat to have its first outing at the same place 12 months later.

However, a wonderful spanner was thrown in the works by one Pia Andersen, who I've met recently.  She asked me to model in the vintage fashion parades on the day - and who says no to that kind of opportunity!  Not me thats for sure!

Rose Seidler House was built in 1948-50 by internationally renowned architect Harry Seidler for his parents Rose and Max.  It is located north of Sydney on a large estate of natural bushland.  The house, contents and grounds have been carefully restored to the original 1950 look and are now a museum owned by the Historic Houses Trust.  You can read more about it here.

 

Rose Seidler House

 A photo of the house from 1951

There were three parades during the day - Sunday Best, Swimwear, and Cocktail and Evening Wear.

 

Sunday Best - thats me on the left

Entire outfit owned by Pia Anderson (jealous!), photo by Louise Whelan 

Swimwear - my vintage suit, Pia's bangles and glasses

Photo by Brent Wilson 

 

Evening Wear (thats me on the right) and the whole outfit IS MINE!!!

Photo by Louise Whelan 

Well, all mine apart from the fabulous rings - they are Pia's

Photo by Louise Whelan

As part of the parades we would rove through the crowd for half an hour after each turn on stage.  The six other models and I would split into groups and just walk around, having our photo taken umpteen million times by everyone that wanted to take one.

This all meant that I got very little time to put on my outfit and shop in the vintage market!  I only really wanted fabric or patterns or buttons... or some bakelite bracelets.  But, thank goodness - I did get a little bit of shopping done - and this is what I bought:

I may never refer to this... but you never know!  

And it was only $10... I saw the same thing selling on etsy the other day for $48!!!

These fabulous buttons - I love vintage buttons!

These AHHH-MAZING buttons!

 I love this dress pattern - the shoulder detail is fabulous

The original mail order envelope is gone though, and I can't find a brand name anywhere.  It does look like an Anne Adams or a Marian Martin by the illustration.  Anyone know?

This looks to be a jumpsuit!  And the label is a small Australian pattern house from the 50s.  I bought it because its a bit of an oddity - I will probably never make it up.  I don't think jumpsuits are my thing...

I'm always searching for a nice blouse pattern and this one has enough detail to be interesting, but not too much that its painful to sew.

And this peignoir and robe pattern - so beautiful!

Its amazing what you can find in half an hour!  Rose Seidler House 50's fair is a fabulous vintage day out.  I'm already looking forward to next year.

Beccie
xxx