My creative space.

In my creative space this week I am begrudgingly thinking about dressing the littlies for the colder weather.

Although I refuse to bring out the denim and cord just yet, long sleeves are definitely in order.

Please excuse the tangle of elastic, this photo shoot doubled as a fit test at the same time.

Have you ever sewn elastic into the binding?

This is my first time and I love the effect.

And of course my creative space is full of thoughts of pin cushions.

I am absolutely blown away with the response to my swap and am finding it hard to think about much of anything else.

So thank you!

Thank you too to everyone who has been trying to help me with the side bar button situation. To be honest, I just can't do it. So if anyone wants to put a button on your sidebar, its probably the easiest to do what Cath has done over at Chunky Chooky (look top right in her sidebar), and put the top photo from my sign up post into a picture gadget and then link it back to that same post.

Get it? Got it? Good!

To check out today's other creative spaces, click on over to Kirsty's.

Let's get swapping! CLOSED!!

Thanks so much for all your wonderful supportive comments yesterday. Blogland is so wonderful at making me feel normal in my chaos, or at least helping me see the humor in it.

Thanks also for your swaperama interest. A little part of me was nervous that I would set it all up and no one would want to play with me.

So let's talk about the swap.

Each participant will sew, patchwork, crochet or knit one pincushion for their swap partner.

The pin cushion can be any dimension and size you want, but please try to make it as gorgeous as you possibly can.

There are zillions of pin cushion patterns and tutorials on the internet, ask Mr Google and see for yourself. Some of my favourites are Leonie's, Leah's, Spud and Chloe's and Lion Brand's.

Check out your swap partner's blog. See what sort of colors and style they use and then make a pin cushion that you think they would love. Please don't let them know that you are making their pin cushion though. Let it be a wonderful surprise when your package arrives.

If you would like to add a little something like chocolate or a packet of pins that is entirely up to you.

Sooooooooo, if this little pin cushion swap appeals to you, please leave me a comment on this post.

After you have left me a comment, please write me an email to foxslane@gmail.com and let me know;

1. your postal address.
2. Your blog address.
3. any specifics you might have e.g. a favourite colour, a preference for where you post to..

Just to make it clear, I need you to comment AND email me. That way I will have all of your details and am less likely to leave you out.

I will leave the entries open until Monday when I will email you your partner's details. Your pin cushion must be in the post no later than the 16th of April (one month from Tuesday).

If anyone has any idea how to make one of those sidebar buttons that people can display PLEASE contact me.

I am aiming to have links to all the participating blogs on my sidebar when we get going so we can all check out the wonderful pin cushions as they start to arrive.

I think I have covered everything, please let me know if I have missed out on anything.

Swap ya soon. XX

Entries for this swap are CLOSED!!

Stuff & a swap.

I don't know where to start this post.

I feel like I have so much going on in my head but no idea how to get it out, let alone how to make sense of it.

I've spent the last few hours doing a tv shoot in the freezing cold and rain without a jacket (I didn't wear one for the first shot, so for continuity reasons was not allowed to put one on later on) and now I feel rattled.

I want to talk about how I find six years old the hardest age to deal with. Give me the sleep deprivation of a newborn any day. Six year olds have all these emotions and they can be mean one minute, divine the next, so mature in their rational but still so young and naive.

I want to talk about how I pressed reply instead of forward on an email to a glossy women's magazine editor. How I thought I was forwarding it to my Mum, telling her how excited I was to be having a feature in this magazine despite the fact that I have squashed banana in my carpet and texta drawings on my walls. I ended the email with lots of declarations of love and heaps of kisses. When the email came back from the editor saying that no you don't have to have a lovely home just gorgeous vegies, I almost died. When I finally had enough guts to write back and explain my mistake and tell her how embarrassed I was, I had no idea how to sign off. Regards didn't really work after all that love and kisses.

I want to talk about the washing that is hanging wet on the line where it has hung for the last four days and the fact that the pile of washing on the laundry floor is taller than me.

I want to talk about the fact that I have shopping and cooking and baking to do but my sewing machine is calling to me and its getting harder and harder to ignore her.

I could go on and on but I'm not going to, let's do something a bit fun instead.

You see I've been crocheting love hearts for a swap I'm doing with Julie. And while I've been making them I've been thinking about how much fun swaps in blogland are. How much fun it is to make something cool and send it off and then receive something someone else has made especially for you. So many of the 'friendships' I have made in blogland are through these swaps.

So I want to organise one. I think I have a great and simple idea for the swap. Something you make from whatever medium you like to work in. I just have to iron out a few details.

So please come back here in the next day or so and join in.

In the meantime if you have any success or failure swap stories you think I should know about or swap advice in general please leave a comment or email me.

Bye for now. XX

Chill Out Parade!

I feel so proud to live in a town like Daylesford.

A town that is country one minute and the next minute is playing host to Australia's second largest gay and lesbian festival, Chillout.

I feel so proud to live in a town that celebrates diversity.

As I stood in the main street of our town this morning watching the parade go by I felt overwhelmed with emotion and I cried.

Whilst doing everything I could to stop my girls running on to the road to be part of the parade, I felt so happy with our decision to move here nine years ago. I feel that a town that has a festival every year to celebrate people that are given a hard time in other towns, is the place for us.

I love a celebration and a parade and this one had it all with its crazy characters, drag queens and kings, motor bikes, bands, parents, kids, cloggers and fire engines.

This regal couple were my highlight.

After the parade they stayed in character and posed for many photos.

Their costumes were made entirely of bubble wrap and were just fabulous.

But the thing I love most about where I live is that a four minutes drive from town takes us home and from here we could be in the middle of nowhere.

So Happy Chillout to you all!!

I hope you are having a wonderful, colourful weekend too. XX

The first tree dress.

I was meant to plant lettuces out all day yesterday but it poured with rain so I had to stay indoors and sew instead. Yippee!!

I made a dress for Pepper from one of the tree prints that I did the other day.

I sewed some ric rac I crocheted from this pattern onto the bottom hem.

I feel like this dress is a mixture of all the ideas I have been working on over the last few months; crocheted trims, screen printing and sewing clothes from vintage sheets.

I'm really quite pleased with the result.

I love playing around with mismatched panels and binding and patterns and colours.

It feels playful and fun.

I think I'm ready to make some bigger ones now.

I hope you have a great weekend what ever you are up to.

My creative space.

In my creative space this week I am printing a forest.

I used the screen I cut on Tuesday to print onto a whole lot of t'shirts, onesies and hoodies. (How funny that three out of the four last words of the previous sentence came up as typos and I am not going to change any of them.)

And then I started on this pile of sheets.

I love how strong the trees look on top of the faded vintage prints.

I feel like the trees have given them a new life.

I have plans to sew these treed up sheets into smock tops, tote bags and dresses sometime in the near future. But for now I'm happy just to pass by them on my way from here to there and occasionally change the order to mix things up a bit.

I hope you are having a creative Thursday wherever you are. To check out what other creative types are up to today, or to join in yourself, click on over to Kirsty's.

Cutting a tree.

So after a very brief stint in lino cutting I'm back to printing with the screen.

There was the nine year old's stabbed thumb incident, (I waited until it had stopped bleeding before the pic) and the fact that I have yet to get a clean edged print.

So today I'm cutting a stencil,

and Pepper is drawing a picture of Humpty Dumpty.

Thanks so much Jodie for buying and sending me this ace pattern book. I LOVE it!!

And thanks Wendy for choosing me to win your giveaway and sending my goodies all the way from America.

I'm heading back to the stencil to neaten up some of the edges and then hopefully get to printing some fabric today or tomorrow. I hope you are having a lovely Tuesday.