Sex anyone?

•January 28, 2012 • 2 Comments

My daughter’s teacher went on maternity leave this week and I made her a little ribbon lovey before she went. I wanted to make sure we gave her a gift now because I’m an out of sight, out of mind person. If I didn’t do it while I was still seeing her every day I feared it would never get done.

There was a minor hitch in that plan though. The teacher didn’t find out the sex of her baby so the gift had to be appropriate for a boy or a girl. Now anyone who has taken a look at children’s clothes recently will know that most things seem to be manufactured with a gender in mind.

In the 70s when I was little, it was perfectly normal for baby clothes to be quite unisex. There was a lot of red, yellow, orange, green, and brown and mass produced clothes didn’t have the modern proliferation of bows, butterflies, flowers, trucks, aliens, and dinosaurs that mark them out as boy or girl.

On the weekend I looked through my stash and to my dismay, most of the fabrics are really gender specific. When I stopped by the fabric store early in the week it was really obvious. The only gender neutral colour was yellow, and even then, it usually had a picture that favoured one sex. Even the stripes and polka dots have a dominant color that feels gender specific.

Luckily I was privy to a little information about the recipient. Her favorite color is green! So I took a remnant of blue polka dot fleece and some green and backed it with a green and blue striped flannel. The best part is that my daughter really got into this and helped me pick all the ribbons. We ended up with a lot of purple and burgundy which kind of neutralized all that blue a bit.

I decided to experiment a bit on this one, so I added a stuffed cloud detail. This was the tricky bit though. I didn’t do a very good job sewing it on, so I embroidered around the edge. I’ve never done that before and for some inexplicable reason I decided to just wing it instead of going online and finding out how it’s actually supposed to be done. Much frustration ensued, but I think it turned out all right in the end.

Posted in Sewing
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Stash creating

•January 9, 2012 • Leave a Comment

I have a bit of a problem.

I think I’m addicted to shopping.

For a while it was getting clothes for my kids, then it was at the drugstore which was the only place open when I could finally get out of the house on my own at 8:30pm. These are purchases which feel relatively altruistic. They’re for my family after all. But now that the kids have enough clothes in their current sizes and in the two or three future sizes too, I have moved on to craft supplies. I have a great bead stash! Just look at my gallery.

When we lived in London I frequented some great bead stores and I bought a lot of great stuff. Right before we moved back to Canada I even discovered an amazing area just off Leather Lane where I got silver findings direct from Italy and pearls direct from Taiwan. A large part of my bead stash was actually bought when we were on vacation in South Africa. The guest house we stayed at in Cape Town was amazing and the people who owned it were lovely too. They had some jewelry out in the dining room for sale and when I admired the beads and told the owners that I made jewelry too, they called the artist and asked her where she got her materials. Through her I found out about a wholesaler of materials. This place was a tourist attraction where people could ‘search’ for their own rocks and watch them make, drill and polish the beads. It also had a store where you could buy finished jewelry made on site. I was told to just go upstairs and tell them that I had a business, luckily I didn’t need to prove that. My husband and I were taken into a huge space where they had any bead that you could imagine. I kind of went hog wild. The prices were amazing. When I was done I had a huge bag of stuff and I had spent 1/4 of what it would cost in Toronto or London.

Now anything that I make with those materials is definitely one of a kind. Unless of course, I go on another South African vacation. Since I have lots of beads and I have now started sewing too, I seem to have moved my shopping habit over into the realm of fabrics. I can’t get out of the fabric store for less than $50 and that’s with everything I buy being on sale or clearance. The last time I went I got a beautiful rainbow fleece.

That brings me to my next project: E*’s baby blanket. A very good friend of mine is due in April with her second child. She can’t tolerate wool or flannel so finding blankets for her kids is actually a problem. My plan is to make a double sided fleece blanket. One side rainbow and the other side periwinkle blue with a 3d effect (I haven’t decided what effect to do yet). Stay tuned for the results. In the meantime, here are the materials that I have picked.

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Posted in Beading, Crafting, Materials, Sewing
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Welcome…take a look around!

•January 8, 2012 • Leave a Comment

Welcome to my new site! I’m just starting to get back into creative endeavours after the birth of my second child, it only took me a year. I’m so excited to show everyone all of the jewelry I have had sitting in storage and to talk about all the new stuff that I’m going to make from the materials that I’ve been collecting!

I have also started doing a lot more sewing and knitting that I can’t wait to share too. This has been mostly scarves, baby blankets and ribbon/lovey blankets. I have to say though that any crafting endeavor is addictive. It’s not just the crafting part, it’s all about the stash. One of my favorite things about my hobbies is shopping for all the materials. Finding a bead, a fabric or a ribbon and imagining all the things that I might be able to do with it just makes me happy.

Posted in General Stuff
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