Gumnut Baby Costume

I made this costume for my daughter's kindy book week parade. The theme was Aussie children's books, and I was determined to try and incorporate a green tutu that I had left over from last year's ballet concert. My sister was the one who came up with the brilliant idea of a gumnut baby!

 'Snugglepot & Cuddlepie' is a classic Australian children's book series written in 1918 by May Gibbs. It's about little fairy-like 'gumnut babies' who live in gumtrees and wear gumnuts and leaves as clothes, and have adventures with various Australian animal friends.

My costume is a sort of a cross between a gumnut baby and 'little ragged blossom' (they are all mostly naked in the books so I had to adapt it a bit and make it a lot less revealing). It was also a cold day and they were outside, so I put her in pink tights and a pink long sleeved shirt underneath the tutu.

The hardest part was the hat. I crocheted it using this pattern for a Christmas elf hat, but in yellow and green.
https://ashleemarie.com/double-loop-crochet-santa-beanie-pattern/
After scouring the shops for ages I managed to find some suitably fluffy yellow yarn to make the yellow blossom, but it's incredibly nasty scratchy stuff, so not a very comfortable hat in the end. Oh well.

Then I just cut some gum leaf shapes out of felt and sewed them around the tutu with little yellow pompoms to represent wattle flowers.

I didn't want her to ruin her ballet slippers outside so just put her in some other gold shoes she has. I used double sided tape to stick some more gum leaves and pompoms on them too but they kept falling off!

My daughter seemed to really enjoy wearing the costume on the day and got lots of compliments! We were able to use it twice more, once for the kindy Christmas pageant (theme: Aussie Christmas) and then for the school playgroup book week parade (theme: escape to yesteryear).

So I managed to get a lot of use out of that green tutu after all!

Doll House Renovation

A few months ago my sister texted me a picture of this unfinished doll's house which she'd found in an op shop:

She said "it's $20, interested?"
I said "YES!"

I love doll houses and have always wanted to decorate one, but lacked the necessary carpentry skills to actually build one, so this was the perfect solution.

It was clearly handmade, as there were a few dodgy spots where the doorframes didn't exactly line up and the screws came through the ceilings.  One room had started being decorated - there was felt carpet, banisters, window frames and a door with a tiny, perfect little brass door knob!  Whoever started it clearly had big plans.  From the pencil marks on the front I think they were going to do it up in the style of an English country cottage, the kind with a thatched roof and black cross beams against a whitewashed front.

Well, apologies to them, wherever they are, but I had different ideas.  I wanted to do it in a much more simple, modern style.  Colourful but pretty basic.  Not a realistic, meticulous scale model of a real house, just something fun to play with.

I started by cleaning it and ripping up the felt that had been glued down in one room and on the stairs.  I painted the whole thing white, first a base coat and then a top coat of white glossy enamel.  I didn't bother with the floors and back walls of each room, as I wanted to put down craft paper for the floors and ceilings, but I did the side walls to make the papering easier.

I also painted all of the furniture that had come with it, a hodge-podge of random different pieces, mainly chairs, tables and beds - no kitchen or bathroom furniture.  I bought from Spotlight two pads of craft paper, one had wooden floorboards or carpet type textures, and the other had funky patterns in bright colours that could work as wallpaper.  I carefully measured & cut them with a craft knife & glued them down with craft glue.

I also bought some glue stuff, a bit like mod podge I think, that was meant to be a 'protective coating' for paper surfaces.  I wanted to paint this over the paper walls & floors so that they didn't start peeling up or get ripped (my daughter has a tendency to find any loose edge & pick at it until it rips.)  It worked quite well in some rooms but in others, randomly, it made the paper go all puckery when it dried and looked awful!  I was so disappointed.  I had to rip off the paper from one room and re-do it all, which was annoying, so I didn't risk painting all of the rooms.

This is the finished outside of the house, which I left quite plain on purpose, because it's going to be facing the wall anyway and won't be seen.  The window on the right is blank because it's covered by cupboards in the kitchen!

Good quality doll house furniture is hard to find in Adelaide, I realised after looking around for quite a while.  The only stuff I could find was cheap, ugly & plastic.  I do like the stuff that's made for Sylvanian Families (which IS plastic, but nice quality & cute designs), and you can get that from toy shops here so I bought a few things, but the bigger Sylvanian furniture pieces aren't really the right scale for my house, so the kitchen & bathroom sets I bought from eBay.

Here's the finished house!

The people are made by a French toy company called Djeco.  I LOVE all their doll house furniture too but it's extremely expensive, especially to order from Australia. I splurged on the people because they're worth it, but couldn't afford anything else.

The parents are apparently named Milo & Lila, or possibly Miles & Mila, I've seen various different alternatives, apparently it gets a bit lost in translation.  I also have the baby ('Sweetie'!) but the children were not given names so I'll let my daughter name them when she is old enough.

The kitchen is the room I am most proud of even though I didn't actually do much to make it look so good!  The beautiful cupboard sets, fridge & microwave all came from eBay.  The tiny food and utensils are from Sylvanian Families.

Milo & Lila's bedroom.  The wardrobe came with the house but was repainted.  The double bed I found in a wooden toy shop in Victor Harbour (the ones that came with the house were only single beds) and I repainted it and made the bedding from scraps of fabric I had.  The tiny suitcase I inherited inamongst a pile of old barbie doll things when my Nana died.  The cot came with Baby Sweetie!

The bathroom - toilet, mirror, basin & tub are from eBay - they are all real porcelain!  We had a porcelain bathroom set in my dollshouse when I was little and I simply couldn't accept anything LESS!  The other little details are from Sylvanians.

Sister's room - bed came with it (repainted, bedding made by me).  The teddy I have had since I was a child and can't remember where I got him.  The pictures and clock on the wall were cut out from an ikea catalogue & glued on.


It looks a little bare still so I'd like to find some more furniture or details for this one, maybe a rug for the floor or some tiny bunting.

Brother's room - again, a little bare, I'd like to add some more furniture here too.

Dining room.  Furniture all came with it, except Baby Sweetie's high chair and the little tea trolley (Sylvanians).  The food and utensils are mainly Sylvanian too but some of it was a gift that someone brought me back from Taiwan, miniature plastic food that they found there, who knows what it was meant to be for?

Living room.  The banisters and window frames had been put in this room so I left them there, although I probably won't bother putting them in any of the other rooms.  The chairs came with it but I repainted them and made the cushions.  The TV and cupboard it's standing on (including the teensy remote) came from eBay.  The fireplace was from the wooden toy shop in Victor Harbor and the tiny urn was a gift my sister brought back from Greece.  The tiny painting on the wall was made by my clever husband!

That's it for now, there are two 'spare rooms' upstairs which haven't really got much in them at present, but that leaves me a bit of scope down the track to add some more things later on.

Storybook Mural

We moved house recently!  This meant that I finally HAD to finish my mural.  I started painting this on my daughter's bedroom wall before she was born and (predictably) didn't get time to finish it once she arrived.  It sat there unfinished for a long time, but moving out gave me the push I needed to spend a couple days finishing it off.  We are renting our old house, not selling it, so even though I don't get to look at it anymore at least I know it won't be painted over.  Well, I  hope not anyway.

Here are closeups of the book characters featured:

Ratty's house by the river from Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Graeme).  The castle is not any particular castle, it could be from any number of stories.

Ronia from 'Ronia the Robber's Daughter' by Astrid Lindgren.  I read this book endlessly as a kid.  Ronia was so wild and fearless, I adored her.

Rupert (Fred Bestall) and Noddy (Enid Blyton, illustrated by Beek)

Ramona and Howie from the Ramona series by Beverley Cleary.

Anne from Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

The Cat in the Hat (Seuss) and the Magic Pudding (Norman Lindsay).  Two books I STILL find incredibly funny!  I re-read the Magic Pudding every few years, it never gets old.

Frances from Bread & Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban (illustrated by Garth Williams) and Dorrie & Gink from the Dorrie series by Patricia Coombe.

And Babar and Flora from the Babar series by Jean de Brunhoff.


I intended to slowly add more of my favourite (and her favourite) book characters over time but that dream will never be realised now!  Oh well.  Maybe one day I'll find the time to do one in her new bedroom.

One Hour Handbag

Made this handbag tonight, a very quick project!

The reason I made it was that I found this cute handbag in an op-shop a few years ago and have used it so much that it's started to look very old and grotty.

So I decided to make a NEW one! This meant destroying it in order to use its handles and get the pattern shape right, but oh well. It had its time. I probably could've done it without unpicking it and using it as a pattern, but it would've involved a lot more guess work. You CAN buy bag handles from the craft store but they charge ruinous amounts for them, which is an outrage. Might as well fork out for a new bag!
Anyway so once I'd chosen some new fabric and unpicked the old bag, I laid it out on my new fabric and cut the two halves of the inner and outer. Didn't try and follow it too exactly as this is a lovely forgiving bag that totally won't show any wonky seams!

Then I sewed four darts along the top on the outside pieces. I used the old bag to line up where to put them but didn't measure them very exactly or check they were all the same size. I pressed all the darts facing out from the centre.

I sewed the two outside halves together and gave those seams a quick press. Then I folded the bottom two corners outwards, sewed them flat, and trimmed like so:

closeup of corners in case you're confused...

That's just to give the bag a nicer shape, you don't necessarily have to but it's a bit sort of 2-D if you don't.

Next I made a pocket for the inside, which pretty much just involved sewing two rectangles of the lining fabric together, turning inside out, pressing, & sewing onto one of the sides like so:

Then I sewed the two lining halves together & clipped the corners, same as the outside except no darts. Also I left a big hole at the bottom seam, for turning it inside out later. Has to be big enough to fit the bag handles through!



Right, now we come to the two hardest bits! First, you have to put right sides of the bag together and sew them at the side seams here:

This is mainly only tricky at that middle junction where four seams are trying to line up together, you'll probably have to do a bit of clipping in the corners to make it lie flat. Don't stress too much about it, if it looks puckery you can always unpick it later when the bag's finished and hand-sew it.

The next tricky bit is sewing in the handles. You have to insert the handle and THEN sew the final seam, because the handle's circular so it won't work any other way.

Don't forget to fold the ends out so that they will be under when the bag is turned right way out.

 Then it's pretty much done! Turn it all right way out using the hole at the bottom of the lining and admire. Then sew up the hole in the bottom of the lining. If you wanted it to look perfect you could hand-sew it, but if you're bone idle and lazy like me you could just pinch the seam together and sew it wrong-way-out on the sewing machine.
The final step is to tack the fabric close to the handles. This pretty much has to be done by hand but it's fairly quick, you just slip the needle in between the layers and then come out every now and then for a stitch to pull the fabric in close to the handle.

Ta-daaa! Pretty pleased. Looks even better than the old one.

Lotus Applique Cushion

A friend of a friend (Danielle) commissioned me to make her a cushion cover with an applique picture of a lotus flower on it.  She provided the fabric but gave me free reign to come up with a design.  What a fun project!  I was quite impressed with how it turned out.  I started from this picture:

And sketched out a basic pattern which looked something like this (only needed half as I wanted it to be symmetrical):

I cut out the pieces and laid them all out and it was looking really great, I was super excited.

Then I started sewing and realised a few things:

1. I should’ve used interfacing on my base fabric because it was all wrinkling up and looking terrible. 
2. I needed to cut some pieces out much larger than the bit that would be showing, so that they could lay underneath other pieces – otherwise the green background would show through the flower petals.
3. I had sewed a few pieces down first that should have been placed last 
4. I had sewed lots of seams that didn’t need sewing because they were going to be underneath other seams

So I decided to use that first attempt as a practice and work out exactly what to do and which bits to sew, and then do a final copy.  Luckily Danielle gave me way more fabric than I actually needed.  I also bought some stuff from the craft store which is like double sided interfacing, you cut it out to the size of your applique piece and you can iron it down first so it doesn’t shift at all when you sew it.  This stuff is brilliant and I highly recommend it for anyone attempting applique, it makes the end result look so much more finished and professional.  So then I interfaced my base fabric and started again, with much better success:

Oh, and I added some little French knots to the centre thingy which looked really cool, but I can’t take credit for that idea, Danielle suggested it when we were initially discussing the project.  Here is the practice one for comparison, ha ha!  It looks hilariously bad.  Although to be fair, once I decided it was a practice I didn’t make much of an effort to sew it nicely.

 Anyway, so then I sewed the real one all up with the piping Danielle provided around the edge.  I found this by far the hardest part as I haven’t had much experience with piping before and it’s tricksy stuff.  Keeps shifting around like the devil while you’re trying to sew it down – my corners were a bit wonky I think.  Also I’m not sure about the dark green piping, it’s a bit TOO dark.  But still, it looked ok. 

The end result!

Anyway, she was very happy with it so that’s the main thing.  Sometimes it’s hard when someone asks you to do something and they’ve got a picture in their head which they can’t really explain but whatever you do can never live up to it.