The Worst Case Scenario

When I mentioned that I was afraid a circle skirt would be too big: this is the nightmare that lurked at the back of my imagination.

Via uglydress.com (be warned, some adult advertising — the owner organises bachelorette parties.  But she cultivates a fabulous collection of ghastly dresses).

 

Equal Love and Tulle Love

my wedding dress inspiration board…

My dress form — her name is Beuhla — stubbornly refuses to grow 6 foot tall and stretch in the torso,  hence the toile is a lot more squashed on her than it will be on me — see below.  The finished version will also be less hot pink than this too

Too sick to work this week.   Instead I gently played at dress-up for an hour or so at a time, using calico and some cheap pink tulle to figure out the basic structure of The Dress.

This first toile, with its cut out piece of calico for a bodice, is simply to get some idea of how I like the style of dress on me (answer : a lot!  hooray!).  It’s three pieces: a skirt, a bow, and a sweetheart bodice.  It uses a full circle skirt, which I am now reconsidering.  I think there’s too much fabric at the bottom: that once it’s layered in tulle it will be ridiculously large, and crazy-expensive too as I’d like it worked in silk dupioni with nice tulle.  I also have to learn how to construct a boned bodice.  (Any ideas, sewing mavens?)

It made me happy to start building my wedding dress.

Something that has been making me sad, however, is the Australian wedding ceremony.  We recently found out that our celebrant will be legally required to say that ‘marriage is between a man and a woman.’

I have very strong personal feelings about this meanness (I realise they will not be shared by everyone who reads this blog, but please bear with me, for I don’t often talk politics here).  Dan and I are currently looking at options like going through the legal rigmarole the day before the wedding.  In this way we can say what is in our hearts on our wedding day, not what is written in old man’s law, and hence avoid affirming unjust sentiments in front of dear friends and family.

This weekend, thousands of people marched in Melbourne for the right to do simple and joyous things like play with hot pink tulle and plan vows.  And for the so important legal privileges that Dan and I will enjoy because he is a man and I am a woman.  What’s more, my friend and photographer-to-be Jessie was there to commemorate the day for the over 65 (!!) couples who exchanged vows.  Do have a look at her beautiful photographs.  Some of them are just heartbreakingly lovely. Please go have a look.  If you’re not convinced that this is the right thing, ask yourself what you would lose, and what the world would gain, if a few more people were allowed to say in public,

‘I love you: I do.’

 

Cake Toppers

Bought this morning on Etsy from redlightstudios.  They’re so freaking cute I might just die of cute.

 

Wendy’s Wrist Wallet

Picture post!  Yay!

Wendy was the winner of my Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway, helping me out with some great advice for my little business venture.   And she showed perfect taste once again when she sent me this gorgeous creature print for a custom wrist wallet.

I lined it with red Kona cotton, to match the cut of fabric Wendy chose for her button.  I love the sense of chase, the hunt and play between cat and ball.

And she’s also kind, sending me just enough of this fabric,

to make this.  So pretty!  I have it sitting on top of my sewing basket so I see it whenever I walk past.

Thank you, Wendy.  I hope your wallet makes you feel as happy as this little flower is making me.

 

Little Shop Of …

If any of you Melbournians reading this live near Carnegie, or travel along the Pakanham/Cranbourne line, check out a great new shop opening  11am Wednesday.  The ‘Little Shop Of‘ sells only gift items made by hand in Melbourne and Victoria, costing under $50.  It’s so cute, furnished with owner Bec’s market finds and housing her studio out back.  And it’s right next to the Carnegie train station.

(The studio, late at night before a big delivery to this new store…)

The web site as it is now shows Bec’s handmade jewels but will expand to show prints, gift cards, baby clothes, softies, my vintage sheet cushions (hooray!) and more.  You’ll be able to shop online or pop in anytime from 11 till 6, which makes it a great stopover between work and a birthday party or a visit with some little ones.

Enjoy!

 

Heidi and Seek Hits The Big Time

Speaking of the lovely Hayley (see last post), she’s Etsy’s featured seller this week!  Have a read here and a look at her wonderful creations!  Be slightly intimidated at the fact that she creates these amazing clothes out of factory offcuts and thrift store finds, with a two year old in tow!

Hayley’s work is also on the cover of Handmade Melbourne this year.  As for me, I couldn’t be more excited that we wound up studying together   — of which more later.

 

It’s School, Jim, But Not As We Know It

Let’s talk about clothes!!  Specifically, drafting patterns and making glorious original clothes!

I found this course whilst idly Googling a few days ago, and hours later I was enrolled in the last-but-one place, Tuesday and Thursday nights.  What’s even more exciting is that my Etsy friend Hayley saw my Facebook update, and hours later she was enrolled too!

I’ve got almost all the stuff required (there is a loooooooong equipment list and I’ve had to re-purchase many items I already have in the ‘domestic’ version) and I can’t wait!  It starts tonight!  Bounce bounce bounce… it’s going to be quite a change from grad school.

 

“I left my jelly babies in the TARDIS…. They’re a delicacy I discovered on Earth.”

A bit of a relaxed blogging day is in order: enjoy the awesomeness that is my Mum and her knitting needles.  She made Dan this Dr. Who scarf for his birthday, and he won’t take it off.  Some days I come home and he’s wearing it in a heated room.

So of course I had to buy him some jelly babies!  (For those of you who are not nerds: click here for the scarf, and here for the show.  Tom Baker always carried jelly babies in his pockets which, like the Tardis, are bigger on the inside.)

 

Pins and Thimbles Inc.!

So here’s a blog post I have been trying to write for months: seems like the most momentous things are the hardest to blog about, and the last thing for which time can be found.

I’ve quit my PhD and I’m now sewing and designing for a living through Pins and Thimbles.  There it is, I’ve said it, outside safe, alternately worried and excited conversations with friends.  Phew!  Lest you (by ‘you’, I think I really just mean my Mum) panic, I am still working part time at the State Library.

I have a new job description, though I can’t decide on one perfect word: dressmaker, small business owner, designer, crafter.  All of those things.  I’ve also moved Pins and Thimbles off the kitchen table of our now-full share house and into a small studio space in Brunswick’s commercial heartland.  At 34 Breese St, it’s surrounded by Lebanese bakeries, discount stores, wholesalers, grocers and builders all carrying on noisily 24/7.   Here’s what it looked like on my first day of moving:

So, what’s the deal?  I finished an MA a couple of years ago, for which I sweated blood.  I was going to be a career academic.  That was the ruling passion.  Had been for years.  Somewhere along the line, amongst sickness, family dramas, and the growth of a committed and supportive relationship, I rediscovered other passions and the academic dream lost some of its gloss. 

I also remembered why I started studying Literature in the first place.  I was going to be a costume designer, but I’d decided I needed to understand the plays if I was going to be the best designer out there.  Even at 18 I didn’t lack for ambition or a work ethic.

So I took some leave from study, and a couple months ago I I tried to go back but the drive isn’t there.   And PhDs — my lord, you need to want it badly to get past all the rewrites and crazy hours and feeling like you’re not as smart or hard working as anyone else in the room.  Not to mention the long distances from friends and family even when they need you or you need them, or the uncertain years on casual contracts.  When I felt the burning need to write and to study, that didn’t bother me, it was all part of the lifestyle.  Now it just makes me feel tired.

It’s taken me a year of faffing around and worrying and changing my mind up and down and sideways to decide that I just don’t want the PhD enough.  Not now.  Someday.  Because I want something else.  And I want it so badly.

 

What I want now — every day, from the moment I wake up — is to create and to sew.  And to build something entirely new, my own business.

This is the studio from the outside: a rough diamond, no?  It’s up to me to make my 4×5m space cosy and beautiful for clients.  I feel up to the task

On the first night, an approaching storm, seen from my second storey window.  I love rain storms and I’m taking it as a good omen.  Given these terrible years of drought, how could a rain storm be anything less?

And finally:

Every new business needs a bouncy Maneki Neko and some organic peppermint tea.

This has been a rambling post, and there’s no use apologising.  Ten years of training as a writer and I still don’t feel able to sum up this change into neat paragraphs.  I certainly don’t have some pithy statement to finish on.  It’s too big and too complicated for that.  I’m content, though, to wake up in the morning, excited to get going once again.  To think, today I’m making somebody the skirt that will show her how lovely she is, or even just, today I’m choosing colours for a web page. 

Web page is on the way, and this blog will move when it’s finished but I’ll give you lots of warning.  Meanwhile you can become a fan on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Pins-Thimbles/191376465244 or follow me on Twitter and I’ll follow you back: http://twitter.com/pinsandthimbles .

Have any of you made huge life changes like this?  I’d love to hear your stories and chat in the comments.

 

Vintage Sheet Cushions

Vintage sheet cushions, how do I love thee?  Let me string together some photographs of the ways.

You’re a ray of sunshine on a white couch.  But you’re also happy stacked up on a duster, ready to go to a new home.

You’re pretty even from far away.

And you just don’t have a bad side!

You even have a great back side

I can’t stop sewing cushions.  Squeeeeee…. more, more more!   I’ve put some in the Etsy shop hoping that someone will love them as much as I do.  So that I can make more!!!!