Frazzy Dazzles

It seems like the last thing I can do without my little muse being at home is create.

Nothing seems to be getting done around here at the moment.

Sunday proved to be a day of difference though. With Scott out at the property I had the house to myself…well myself and the kids! Turns out that was what I needed to get cooking with thread. I needed my kids around me. The noise, the bustle and the company of their little voices.

I have an opportunity to do a bit of a collaboration with one of my friends. She’s an artist and we’re considering melting what we do together in a big ‘ol pot and seeing what we can come up with. So we need somewhere to start. We need to think of a wearable canvas or two to put her work onto. This little top was what I came up with on Sunday.

Obviously it doesn’t have her artwork yet…but there are a few blank and interesting spaces on this little top that should give us something to play with.

It’s been soooo long since I’ve drafted a clothing pattern and this is the ’sketch in cotton’ first draft of a very rough pattern but it came together largely how I hoped it was going to which is always a nice little bonus! Sure it still needs some tweaking but not too bad. All made out of scraps from the library bag and stash fillers. Oh and my old jeans!

The best bit was no sooner had I finished giving it a little press when The Little Bush Princess appeared at the ironing board with a huge grin on her face…’Can I wear it now Mum?’…How could I say no?

A few minutes later and she was fully accessorised (glam hat and brother’s old thongs!) and off for some photos.

Oh how I need my children to feed my soul!

Upstairs or downstairs or in my lady’s chamber?

I promise that rumours of my early demise are largely exaggerated. I know that I have a blog. I know that I should add to my blog…it just hasn’t happened for so many (and largely lame) reasons.

Since The Little Bush Princess started Kindy the pace of life has changed for me more than I could ever have imagined. If I said I missed her sooooooooooooooo much during the day then I would only be telling you one 16th of how keenly I feel her absence. I always knew that she was the constant voice in my day. What I didn’t realise was how much that little chirping meant to me. On so many levels.

I spent the first week of her absence walking around ‘down the street’ (which I think to the rest of the world means window shopping). I did this so much that my feet ached. That had to stop.

So then I moved on to cleaning the house. The problem was that no matter how much I cleaned it the house still looked largely the same. Mostly because I couldn’t bring myself to clean up the kids little games that they’d left when they toddled off to school.

Oh I could go on. You just need to know that every fibre of my being missed my kids, my husband was travelling and it was lonely.

This week just gone I went to a watercolour painting class. I think this brings my total of art classes since High School to three. I think I should do things like it more often. For the first time in weeks I felt like I had achieved something other than missing my family. I worked on the geese above (excuse the crappy image, our scanner is not cutting edge technology…it didn’t deal very well with scanning a white goose on a white page…oh and the geese have feet…and another goose…the printer just wouldn’t allow for them) and I look forward to doing more on them next month.

The follow on effect of the geese is that I’m now planning things to come. I plan to sit at my sewing machine (my NEW sewing machine) for the first time in weeks. I plan on picking up scissors and I plan on drafting up some patterns.

Can’t mope forever right?

In an attempt to avoid the fact that The Little Bush Princess was starting school I put off making her a library bag until the last minute. I have a horrible tendency towards pretending something won’t happen in the hope that it won’t.

It’s never proven to be a a theory that works…however it doesn’t stop me from employing it from time to time.

I had lots of ideas of how to go about a ’story book’ library bag. In the end it was her choice to have a Charlie and Lola bag. I might make her a few different ones to use up some of these ideas. We’ll see. Getting the first bag off the machine was becoming rather urgent.

I used the same technique that I used to make the Charlie and Lola dolls that I ran up for her last year.

I googled a few Charlie and Lola colouring-in sites and eventually came up with this illustration. I didn’t jot down the site’s name though…sorry…I do know that it was a French site though.

With some floor board fabric and some cherry little bunting strung up it came together quickly and easily largely out of scraps. Cheap and cheerful is always the best kind of sewing in my opinion.

 Did I tell you I have a new sewing machine? More on that in another post. I’m still learning how to use it to be honest and had to revert to using my old machine to conquer this idea. Too much fiddling makes my mind wander and I tend not to finish tasks that become too fiddly.

I love this little brother and sister duo. They remind me a lot of our children. Little fire cracker sister and ever patient big brother, blonde haired and happy.

I think the thing I found the most time consuming was outlining them in a black back stitch. To get the sketched effect I had to vary my stitch length and add the odd over stitch or wonky stitch. It’s hard to override that ‘make it neat’ bit in my brain!

Anyhoo…the bag came together brilliantly and on time. It’s had it’s maiden voyage to the library was a big hit with TLBP.

Can’t ask for more than that!

Well whether I was ready for it or not school has started for The Little Bush Princess…..

She has joined her brother in spending six odd hours of her day in her uniform learning the ways of the world outside our home.

I didn’t cry. I held it ‘together’ better than I thought I would.

I miss them though. I’m counting the days until the next holidays.

The older I get the more I see my life as a series of seasons. As one season ends another one starts. It won’t stop me mourning the loss of one part of my life but at least part of me looks forward to savouring what the new season brings.

For her it will bring reading and writing, friendships and experiences.

I need to strap myself in for the ride!

With that being said we hit the ground running. Three days into the term and we were already on the blocks for the swimming carnival.

Busy, busy, busy!