Hottie Challenge Exhibition July 1 - 24 2011

This friday marks the opening of the "Hottie Challenge" exhibition and I am looking forward to getting out of the house and talking about non-baby and kid stuff!

The purpose of the exhibition is to raise money for the Margaret Pratt Foundation ...

The Margaret Pratt Foundation Heart Lung Transplant Trust is a registered charity whose aim is to encourage, develop and maintain Australia’s world class expertise in the field of organ transplantation by supporting research that addresses the problems faced by children and adults after heart and lung transplant.

How can you help? Head along to the exhibition and either ..

a) buy one of the many Hotties for $50 or
b) vote for your favourite Hottie by putting money in the dedicated money box for each Hottie

Open Draw is open:

Monday, Wednesday and Friday 10am – 5.00pm
Thursday 10am – 7pm
Saturday and Sunday 10am – 4pm
Closed Tuesdays

Head on over to the Opendraw web site and forward the pamphlet to all your work collegues and lets see if we can raise lots of money for a worthy cause.

Kaos Hottie finally finished!

I have to zip off the post office this morning to post my Hottie Challenge to Curlypops so that Cam receives it on time ..

I really enjoyed doing this and I feel even better that the money raised from this initiative will be benefiting others.

All of the hotties will be exhibited and be for sale at the

Open Drawer Art, Textiles & Learning Centre

1158 Toorak Road, Camberwell

Melbourne

July 1st - July 24th.

Proceeds will go to the Margaret Pratt Foundation

(research for heart and lung transplants).

Luckily for me I have some felted jumper left over so that I can make a nice cover (similar design) for my heat pack ...

My hubby the model ...

I didn't take this, but I had to share ..



Two of my favourite things in the whole wide world ...

Autumn Leaves ideas in Spoonflower

I've been bubbling away with some design ideas for ages in Illustrator, every once in a while dipping my toes into Spoonflower and then I let the ideas sit and ferment. I have been inspired by Lara's fabric journey, so I am going to take a leaf out of her book and see what happens if try and translate some of my ideas into fabric.

The lovely Mrs Beckinsale facebooked that Spoonflower have free shipping on Monday so I am excited about ordering some free swatches to see what the fuss is all about. Given that Nicholas wants to be held today, computer work is about the only thing I can do!

My hottie design, is the one that I have formost in my mind at the moment, so with that in mind, here are some ideas that I have .. what do you think?

I want to order a test swatch in the Cotton Voile for this one, as I think it would make a lovely baby wrap. No doubt there will be some refining to do when I see it "in the flesh".

And of course if you are quilting, the idea would be to integrate a denser design in with the more open design ...

Of course, no fabric collection is complete without some dots in the same colour way ...

Some refining still needs to be done, but I am looking forward to making things with my new fabric (shhh, did someone say Fabric Diet?)

My Creative Space ...

My creative space as been filled with the obsession of felting an old jumper for the Hottie Challenge over at Curlypops.

The first jumper I got didn't really felt, there might not have been enough wool in it. All the tags had gone and it was only a few dollars, so I thought I would give it a go. I used my front loading washing machine on a 90 degree, heavily soiled wash.

I got a bit rough with the second one. Having used up all my dirty jeans for the attempted felting with the other jumper, I threw in a pair of Tori's old canvas shoes. I figured that the weight of the shoes would give the woolen jumper the pounding that it required to felt. I know that I could have felted over the stove top, but I have a 4 year old and a 4 month old ... the "hand" approach was never going to happen in my house.

Reasonably happy with the felted result, I have cut out the shapes and now I have to work out where to put my leaves and the embroidery.

Strings of Diamonds

Yesterday morning we were up early and the morning was particularly foggy. Looking out of our back window, the Orb Weaver spiders webs looked like strings of diamonds.

We have one Orb Weaver still standing. Not sure where 7 of 8 has disappeared to, but her egg sac is still with us *sniffs*

We know that their days are numbered, but we have their spiderlings to look forward to in the spring.

Lunch Bag with Pear Applique

We had a three year old Birthday party today and I decided to make a fruit bag for the birthday girl. But it arrived with books in it.

In my mind, it could be used when going shopping with Mum. A small bag, but still hardy enough to be thrown around and if it gets all yucky, it can be thrown into the wash.

The pear on the front was using the application method that I am using for the Hottie Challenge, Freeze paper designed and then transfered over onto fabric.

Long Weekends

Long weekends are for sleep in's and watching TV in your Jimmy Jams ...

Hugs from big sisters on the couch while watching Playschool ...

Or kicking back and having some fun .. who is that gorgeous boy in my mirror?

What are you upto on your Long Weekend?

Hottie Challenge Inspiration

I've been bouncing around ideas in my head for the Hottie Challenge and wanted to do something bold with strong colours and some embroidery. The colours that have appeared in my garden over the last few weeks is where I am taking my inspiration from.

Picture via Stan Zimney

I've been doing lots of applique lately and wanted to try Curlypops idea of using Freeze paper in my inkjet to make my applique shapes. I want my hottie to have lots of different autumn coloured leaves on it ..

Picture via Steve Greaves

I love the variations of colour from Yellow, to Orange and Red. I have a secret wish to make a quilt with these images for my living room .. I'll add that idea to the UFO pile ..

Process: Using MS Word and the Nature Bats Dingbat Font, I have a sheet of Maple leaves for my applique adventures ... What I did do differently, is change Font Style to "outline" so that I am not using up all my black ink.

I want to applique the shapes and then use perle to accentuate them, some soulful embroidery for those colder nights.

There are lots of gorgeous Hotties making an appearance in the blogosphere; I'm lovng the creativity that everyone is showing in this challenge. I'm not sure that my submission will be earth shatteringly creative.

I've been slow to start the Hottie Challenge as things have been busy in the Kaos household, with a big Furniture Tetris move underway.

Lots of shuffling and de-cluttering will hopefully result in Nicholas having his own room to scream in at night (which means he will be out of my room). But unfortunately it means that I will have to vacate my lovely sewing room .. but I will be relocating the machines to the smaller study now inhabited by computers and modelling tables.

So whilst I will end up with less room, I will end up with a new space to decorate and furnish! That has to be a positive, yes?

Upcycling old bathmats into baby changing mats

A while back Mum passed onto me some old bathmats to use as changing mats. I had some time spare on Sunday for some therapy in my sewing room ... I needed a quick project!

I pressed them, then trimmed the large hem off the bathmat and squared it up with the rotary cutter.

Next, some bias. Two strips of 2 1/2 inches of fabric, sewn together to make a long strip. You can either run this through your bias maker or fold half, sew to the bath mat and then press and sew again (like you would for a quilt).

Next some applique ...

And some more applique ..

And now the finished product. Some funky changing mats for the boy, to either grace the changing table or something to be thrown into the nappy bag.

I'm rather happy with the result!

Farewell Autumn

Can't believe it is June already, almost half way through the year ...

Tori is enjoying the show that mother nature is putting on at the moment. Collecting leaves and playing with them along with glue and paint.