Nani Iro gets a New Look

I originally purchased this Nani Iro double gauze to make the Oliver + S Jump Rope Dress, but changed my mind. I had ordered 150cm from Ballarat Patchwork (closing down in 4 days, 50% off all stock, get in fast!), but it turned out that there wasn't a full length available. I ended up with one length of about 1m and another length of about 115cm, meaning I had over 2m instead of the 150cm I had ordered. Since I had that much extra, I decided to make something for myself instead.


I have had the New Look 6891 pattern sitting in my stash for awhile, waiting for the right fabric, and decided that the Nani Iro would be perfect. Whilst this top is "growing on me", I kind of wish I had done a toile first. I chose the pattern size to match my bust measurements, but the model on the pattern is obviously wearing a couple of sizes larger than the size recommended; there appears to be more pattern ease than there really is. Had I done a toile, I would have made it a size or two larger.


The neckline is also quite wide. I need to add some little bra clips to this top as it keeps sliding off the shoulder and won't stay on an ordinary coat hanger. I love the bound neckline, but if I were making another one of these with double gauze, I would cut the binding wider and use some starch as it was quite fiddly with fabric that frays so easily. The rest of the top was a cinch to put together though, and I love the sleeve detail, and the little button at the centre front. The gathers around the bustline are also nice.


The pattern had a weird cutting layout, where you cut the whole piece in half and lay one half over the other. This suited me alright as I had those two pieces of fabric. There is a seam down the centre front and down the centre back, so no pieces are cut on the fold. It would make it really difficult to match patterns but I wasn't concerned with this fabric as it had a kind of randomness to the dots anyway. Whilst the pattern recommends woven fabrics, I am tempted to give this one a try with a stretch fabric as well - I love, love LOVE the double gauze, it is beautiful and floaty - perfect for a sunny spring day.


For this pattern, I used eight fat quarters.
SYST13 Running totals: in = 107, out = 103, total = +4

Crafty Hijinks

Last Weekend I got up to some Hijinks. Crafty Hijinks in Ballarat. The day was organised by Jodie and Gillian of Ric-Rac and Silly Gilly. If you are not familiar with their blogs you should go and check them out now. I promise I will wait here for you. If you decide to come back, that is.

Ballarat is not just a hop, skip and a jump from here, so when I first saw that the Hijinks was happening, I dismissed it as being unfeasible. But the idea was niggling away at me. You see, I really, REALLY wanted to go. When I eventually checked the train timetables, I could see that it could be done. So I got on it and booked myself a place at Crafty Hijinks, ignoring the fact that this would see me using/waiting for public transport for almost eight hours. I just told myself it would be worth it.


I left home at a ridiculous hour and upon arrival in Ballarat, I was met by Annie Flowergarden and Little Red Hen (Jan). You should go and check out their blogs too, they are lovely, lovely ladies. Annie and Jan were entrusted with picking up the 50 scones for morning tea. Ah yes, we'll have three coffees and fifty scones please :) Haha. And then we set off for Hijinks.

Everyone got a little "sample bag" at the Hijinks, it contained all sorts of little samples, some of which you can see here.


Everyone who attended received a door prize. Rebecca's and Cathie's daughters were barrel girls and drew tickets out of the barrel. We all had a number on the back of our name badges. When the girls drew out number 40, I won this awesome pack of Cosmo embroidery threads from Gum Valley Patchwork.


In addition to sample bags and door prizes, there was also a raffle. Tickets were only $1 each and the proceeds went to charity. There were seven prizes in total. Each prize had a bucket in front of it and we could choose which buckets our tickets went into. I put most of my tickets into the bucket in front of the lightbox and was very, very excited when my ticket was drawn out!


Another thing we did was have a take what you want table. Everyone brought stash items that they no longer wanted. I filled a suitcase with fabric from home. I was really good and only grabbed this small piece of fabric to take home with me. Some of the fabric I took is going to be used to make a rag rug. It will be interesting to see if any of the fabric I took shows up transformed on someone else's blog someday.


The best part of Crafty Hijinks was catching up with all the fabulous bloggers. Some I had met before, and others who I hadn't met before, but felt like I already knew...


Rachel from Four Wise Monkeys



Lara from Thornberry and Karen from And So, I Sew



Brianna from Rolling in Fabric and Cathie from Melbourne Epicure.



Rebecca from Beccasaurus - Rebecca held a little hexagon workshop. Speaking of workshops, Jodie also did a rag-rug workshop at some stage, which I totally missed, and also Wendy of Harty Little Peaces did a bit of a workshop on colour theory.

It was nice at the end of the day to grab a lift back to Melbourne with Nikki of You Sew Girl. Thank you Nikki, I enjoyed talking with you. Thank you to Jodie and Gilly for organising the whole shebang and also, thanks to Annie and Jan for getting me from the train station to the Hijinks. And a really big thank you to all the businesses who donated items for the door prizes, raffles and goody bags - especially those prizes that I won! Thank you to those that ran workshops and thank you just to everyone who came because it wouldn't have been that much fun without you all. It was an awesome day and I have only just recovered from it.



The end result of my massive donation to the take what you want table is that I reduced my stash by 148 fat quarters. There was more fabric than that, but some of what I took was from a bag of stuff someone recently gave me. I will take that off my "fabric in" total rather than adding it to my fabric out, since I donated it, rather than sewing it.

SYST13 Running totals: in = 107, out = 95, total = +12

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

So, about that "Sew Your Stash Thin" thing I am doing...

It's not going that well, since the object of the exercise is to REDUCE the size of my stash, not increase it. But you know what? It's a win-win thing. If the fabric stash is getting bigger because of fabric as lovely as all this, then it can't be that bad, can it?

The fabric above was given to me by Jodie of Ric-Rac for helping her out with some pattern testing earlier in the year. It's a F8 pack which is the equivalent of 21 fat quarters.... I have decided to make a very special quilt using the fabric, and have ordered another 22 FQs which should hopefully arrive this week. Hey, you have to buy fabric to use fabric, right??

A couple of weeks ago, I was at Spotlight and happened to find this lovely drill fabric with the map of the world on it. Ok, I will admit, I heard about it from somewhere and I was at Spotlight during their 40%-off-sale actively seeking this fabric out. I had vouchers for my birthday and one of those scratchy things and I was really good and it was the only fabric I bought unless you want to count the sheer curtain fabric that I shortened and hung the very next day (so if we were to count it as in, we can count it as out as well, but I won't count it, because there wasn't really that much sewing involved). The boys are really into maps and flags and things like that at the moment, and I have a plan, so it's all good. The drill is craft width and I got two 60cm panels, so I would say that is about five FQs.

I had a little extra money after tax time and decided to treat myself to some delicious knit fabrics from Crafty Mamas Fabrics. This is what has come so far, but there is more on it's way soon. I love those Lillestoff Pirates! There is roughly the equivalent of twelve FQs in the image above, and I still have another six on their way to me.

I did some top secret pattern testing recently and received some of this gorgeous Hello Tokyo fabric from The Red Thread and some patterns as a thank you. The total amount of fabric I received was about five FQs. I promise I will tell you about the pattern I tested as soon as I can. You will love, love, LOVE it!

I also had a little spending spree in my cousin's shop Two Blue Birdies, along with some delicious felt*, some Heat'n'bond iron on vinyl and a bunch of brightly coloured zippers, I grabbed half a metre of each of these moustaches and glasses, adding a further 4 FQs to my stash. Yep, that's right, I now have stashes in my stash!

So, in summary, I have added an incredible 75 Fat Quarters to my stash in a very, very short period of time. Luckily, I have a few secret projects up my sleeve that I also haven't talked about - but that is worthy of another blog post (or several).

SYST13 Running totals: in = 255, out = 95, total = +160

*I am not counting felt in my SYST count as I am not trying to reduce my felt stash - it is under good control and fits in it's designated box.

Do you have a fabric addiction? Anything to confess???