Hodge Podge

How's your week been?

Mine has been on the busy side...

I had a few magazine stories to design/ make/write/photograph & my usual teaching schedule (& Family). It all would have been ok - except the weather was awful in Sydney - lots and lots of rain. Which made taking photo's in natural light incredibly hard!

Thankfully the sun came out eventually (as you can see in the pic) and today was a beautiful day - so good in fact that the kids and I left the house and headed to Balmoral Beach.

although

Yesterday was another story! - very dark and wet,four kids & me stuck inside. Husband working...... 

I'm trying hard not to start another quilt before finishing  my starry night quilt which is waiting for its backing material to arrive.   I also have two more big quilts being machine quilted that will need binding very soon.

With all of that in mind I started making a dress! I bought the pattern and fabric a very very long time ago....

Although I have made little girls dresses before - I have never before embarked on making clothes for myself. I chose a simple pattern, no buttons or collars, straight up and down!

I used some Nani Iro fabric that I had bought a while back from Calico & Ivy Balmain. It's a really lovely double gauze.

The book above is the Stylish Dress Book by Yoshiko Tsukiori in English. 

It has some really lovely simple dresses in it.

The pattern was surprisingly easy to follow, I did make some bits up myself - but It worked! The hardest bit was finding and tracing the dress I wanted to make out of the book, the pattern sheet had about five different dresses on it. 

I just have the hem to do, because of the shape and being short - It will probably be a beach kinda dress. Next time I might add in a dart at the chest to give it a bit more shape, being pear shaped I need things more tailored :)

and also this week

I finally printed up some of my photo's from my trip overseas in October this year! I've made a little book, very very happy with them. I'm still trying to work out what to do with them.....prints/framed/cards

Only so many holiday pictures (no matter how good they are) can be displayed at one time. 

I've been carrying the book around in my bag and getting it out at any opportunity :) Its like when I was young and made to watch someone else's holiday slide show...but now its my pictures.... lucky I have tolerant friends :)

I have also gone chalk paint crazy, more on that later in the week

anyway I'm glad the sunshine came out and the kids had a good run around at Balmoral - makes life so much easier when they are happy!

Fingers crossed the next week ahead all goes smoothly - weather/ work/ family, only two and a half weeks of school then christmas!

That really was very hodge podge wasn't it...

Xx Siobhan