With two boys in the house we have A LOT of bumps and bruises. A couple of weeks ago my eldest son took an impressive fall in our hallway and ended up bumping his lip pretty badly. The first thing he asked for (learned from preschool) was an icepack for it, I floundered and gave him a bag of peas wrapped up in a tea towel to do the job and vowed I should probably come up with a slightly [...]

I LOVE Rashida Coleman-Hale’s new fabric collection for timeless treasures “I Heart”, not only because it features Robots (up there with pirates in my fabric stash) but because it features robots AND flowers… in pink! My uterus is yearning for a sweet geeky girl to make up some awesome summer dresses with pink and orange robots on, so you can be guaranteed that I will be stashing some yardage! I’m also going to be picking up some of the blue [...]

My biggest boy is getting to the stage where I can’t really trace a pattern from his current pants, whack some elastic at the top and call it a day when I need a quick pair of pants. He’s constantly reminding me how he’s a big boy now (and we have the 2012 Kindy enrolment forms to prove it!) and so needs some slightly more tailored pants to suit. I figured the days of sewing his pants were pretty much [...]

Megan from The Crafty CPA has been busy creating some beautiful embroidery patterns based around vintage cameras that she’s offered up for download. She’s just posted the final camera in the series of three and I can’t wait to get started, these would look awesome stitched up and displayed in hoops in a collection. Download the first camera here. Second camera. Third camera.

Maryanne on half of the sister team that writes Australian craft blog, SewTogether has put together this tutorial on how to create your own flat bottom zippered purse with angled sides, perfect for make up bags, stashing small toys in, or make it up in oil cloth and you could use it to carry snacks! Even better, Maryanne has given detailed instructions and diagrams on how to draft your own pattern, meaning that you can make a bag in any [...]

Does anyone in Aus do much for Valentines? I’m not keen on the whole sending cards thing, but I can’t resist the thought of decorating for the season in lots of pink and red! Jess from Craftiness Is Not Optional created this beautiful Valentines wall hanging from felt, and shared a tutorial so you can make one too, and it doesn’t have to be for Valentines, I think this would look awesome using the word “Home” and hung in an [...]

Sydney based blogger, Little Betty has shared her pattern and tutorial to make this adorable sunsuit, perfect for the heat wave we’re going through right now, just remember to put some sun screen on those little exposed shoulders! See the tutorial and pattern here. Buy the matching bonnet pattern at Little Betty’s Etsy store.  

We’re preparing to go on a car trip to Sydney in a few weeks for my husbands family’s annual picnic. Driving half way across the state with two kids who don’t deal with travelling AT ALL isn’t on the top of my list of fun things to do, so we always travel super prepared with everything we could possibly need to keep us all amused, and clean up the inevitable buckets of barf that come during any car trip that [...]

Jess from How About Orange created this very chic cushion using painter’s tape to block of sections of her fabric and then painting over the gaps with fabric paint and then sewing the finished design into a simple envelope cushion. I love the effect of the torn edges, my mind is already racing on what other projects I could use this technique in. See the full tutorial here.

I’ve been playing around with printable fabric recently, and have followed with great anticipation Curlypop’s journey to create something beautiful from a piece of fabric that she accidentally printed her Medicare statment on to. Cam over-printed a scan of one of her beautiful drawings to add more colour to the image, and sewed it up into a handy little pouch for those miscellaneous tissues and aspirin packets that lay around the bottom of every woman’s handbag. I love the process [...]