Thrifted Tuesday....

Is open for business over on Flickr......
Feel free to join up and share your Thrifty Finds.....
You can find the group Here.
xxx

They Try to Make Me Go to Rehab, I Say No, No, No....

Thrifted Tuesday!
Again, on a Thursday......
Turns out, I've got a Partner In Crime.....
Evil Thrifters... taking over the world in second hand shoes and refashioned frocks....he he he

Anyways, onto the goods...

For the price of half a metre of quilting fabric from my local quilting shop - this whole pile of brilliant cottons:

I'm especially fond of the blue and white spot with the green cherries......oh and That Leopard Print - I'm a sucker for animal prints, I love their trashy, nouveau-riche socialite value....brilliant..

Second up is a simple polka-dot t-shirt for work, paired with some plastic/fantastic yellow beads:

I swear, I'm going through a Second TennagerHood...... I've been a Melbourne Influenced Black is the new Black wearer for years (augmented by my large stage as a Punk), and now suddenly, it's all about colour, and plastic stuff, and bright shoes, and skinny jeans.......lord, what's happening to me?????

Anyway, harkening back to my roots now, my little heart leapt when I saw this, for $1:

Think of the Ginger Fluff Sponge, people!
I learnt how to cook out of books like these - simple, economical food for country people, stodgy and weird - things like trifle and christmas cakes full of booze, pavlova and sponges, bread and butter pudding, the works.
Being vegetarian, the meat section is truly terrifying, but I love it nonetheless.....

And there you have it... the thrift haul o' the week.

In other news, I've been rearranging the kitchen, making way for my new purchase:

Which neccesitated a complete rearragement of the Teacup Collection:

Taking photos of which was just an excuse to share a snippet of the vintage crockery collection!

I've also branched out in the knitting stakes, and puchased a new pattern from Six and a Half Stitches, a gorgeous flap front babies' cardigan with fabric details - a true favourite amongst readers of Alison's Blog. I'm going out on a limb here, knitting with a pattern and all, so expect lots of call-outs for advice! Hopefully I'll manage to get a passable version knitted for the new addition to the family, via my sister, who is due sometime in October......

Phew! A big post after a little break!

The blog moving plans are still going ahead, and I'm expecting to move very soon, plus the quilt tutorial is on it's way, but I'm going to save it for the new location.......plenty of plans in the works...

Cheers m'dears - Leah xx

Oh, and the lyric in the title? Amy Winehouse. I cannot get her songs out of my head.....

Thrifted Tuesday....

Yep, on a Thursday, again. Seems that bloggers are quite flippant with the days of the week...

Todays finds?

Four spools of lace weight yarn, in gorgeous warm tones...$1.75 each:

Not sure what I'll knit from them, but I'm keen to see how the light weight yarn works on the needles....

A little pile of mismatched buttons + a good length of nice and soft light grey wooly flannel that I think will end up as a serious, tweedy-looking Nong....

Yet another present for my neice, who is getting packages-a-rama in the mail from me lately.....this is just a sneak peek for my sister, before I send it!

Plus, The Best Teacup In The Whole World:

It's not in the best condition, which is a damn shame, *but* it's red white and black (my all time favourite colours), comes as a trio, AND it has polka dots. What more could you want?

After trawling around op shops for the afternoon, I had an insatiable craving for cake.....so, for once, I actually made one myself....

Despite my love for vintage crockery, I'm not really a kitchen kind of person. I ADORE good food, and love to eat it, but I'm not a very good cook and I don't often spend time in the kitchen. I blame it on my lifestyle: working nights doesn't really lend itself to the whole cooking, sharing and eating thing, it's more of a grab and run affair. Pity.

So it was nice to make a cake for once; this one from a tried and true recipe of my Mum's - a basic teacake that doesn't call for masses of ingredients, and you can throw whatever you have in the cupboard into it, in this case, walnuts and nutmeg:

This be the recipe:

Basic Tea Cake

ingredients:

60g butter, softened,
1 tsp vanilla essence,
2/3 cup caster or fine white sugar (you can actually use any sugar you want)
1 egg
1 cup self raising flour
1/2 cup milk.


cream the butter and sugar, and add egg, a little at a time, beating in as you go. Gradually stir in the flour and the milk, alternating between them, and beat until fluffy.
grease your cake tin, throw in the mixture, and bake for 30 mins in a moderate oven.

That's the basics, I usually add some cinnamon, top the cake with apple slices and raw sugar, or put half the mixture in the tin, top with custard, then the rest of the mixture, so the custard bakes in the middle....mmmmmmm

Tea and Cake. What could be better?

xxxx

Fabric, and where to find it.....

I've had a couple of people ask me lately where I shop for fabric, so I thought I'd share a few of my favourites with you....

Sourcing and buying fabric you like can be a little difficult, but perseverence does pay off in the end!
Patchworking or quilting fabrics are really popular amongst crafters, the 100% cotton fibre feels wonderful and is great to work with, the prints are many and varied, and it's easy to buy small amounts, stash it away, and figure out what to make from it later.

The main problem I have with quilting fabric is that I am VERY picky when it comes to pattern. I prefer bolder, brighter styles, have an aversion (in most cases) to floral, and despise pink. Many many many quilting fabrics don't fall into this category. Luckily though, there are some designers that favour bold prints, and the new generation of crafters are inspiring a greater variety of fabrics, rather than your traditional pinks, muddy colours, tiny florals and such.
One of my favourite designers, Denyse Schmidt, makes a gorgeous range of bright cotton prints with vintage influences that I really love. The fabrics are a little lighter in weight than I am used to, but the prints are GORGEOUS.

So, advice number one, find some designers you really like, and follow their collections. That being said, ONLY buy fabrics you love, or think you can love. There's no point buying a whole stack of Amy Butler prints if you hate the colourways. Buying designer fabric just because it's designer is just as absurd to me as spending the equivalent of a small house on a handbag just because it's a Vuitton. You might have fashionista cred, but your handbag will still be fucking ugly!

Tip number two: Buy Online. In Australia, the average price for quilting cotton is around 20 - 25 dollars a metre. Online, the same fabric sells for anywhere between US$5 - $20 a yard. In most cases, even including postage, exchange rate, and yards versus metres, The fabric I buy online ends up costing me about half the price it would if I bought it retail in Australia. This is a real pity for me, I would much prefer to go to the fabulous local quilting shop and buy up a storm, but the reality is, I just can't afford to.
Instead, I frequent a few select online fabric stores that come highly recommended by other crafters, and have always provided me with consistently good product and service. A few of my favourites?

Superbuzzy specialises in japanese fabrics, notions, books and supplies, stocks a brilliant range of weird and wonderful bits and pieces, and every time you order something, they send you some Japanese lollies as well! The fabrics I used in my pincushion tutorial are both from Superbuzzy - Some of thier fabrics are a bit cutesy-poo for me, but they do stock some great bright, graphic prints as well.

Repro Depot sell a fantastic rance of vintage and retro themed fabric, buttons, patches, trim and notions. They always have something on sale, and unlike other stores, the sale bin usually has something good in it, rather than just the ugly fabric no-one wants to buy!

Another fabric store I love is Z and S Fabrics. They sell lots of my favourite designers, have a good turnaround on new fabrics, and a range that is so big, I can't even get my head around it.

I have purchased fabrics from all of these stores, and can personally recommend them. There are loads of others, feel free to look at them too, but I'm sticking to places I have actually bought fabric from for this post....

Tip Number Three - Don't forget the Op Shop. Thrifted fabric is brilliant. It's cheap, varied, compatible with re-use and re-cycle ethics, and usually of a nature that you will not find anywhere else. Keep an eye out in your favourite thrift shops, it's amazing how much fabric is out there if you look for it.
Depending on what it is that you make, don't forget to rummage through not only the fabric bin, but the sheets and linens, tea towels and blankets. Clothing can be cut up and made into other things, especially fabric heavy items like skirts, sarongs, shawls and dresses. Wool jumpers or sweaters can be felted in the washing machine with soap and hot water, and used to make other things. At the op shop, anything is possible. Learn to see the fabric, not the ugly outfit. Some of my favourite fabrics have been found in the op shop, and you'll usually get much larger amounts of fabric too!

Tip Number Four: Your bog-standard fabric shop. I still routinely drop into Lincraft and Spotlight, and never leave Ikea without at least a metre of fabric under my arm. These places are full of mass produced shit, but sometimes there's a gem in there that you'll die over.
On one of my last Spotlight visits I got 5 metres of lightweight linen for $2 a metre because it was old summer stock.
The fabric at Ikea is big and bright and bold, cheap as, and heavyweight cotton drill to boot. Perfect for furnishings and cushions, things you might get sick of in six months and want to change. There's no shame in a chain store, just remember to ONLY BUY FABRIC YOU ACTUALLY LIKE!!!!! Same rules apply as for designer - don't buy it just because it's cheap! Only buy it if you really like it or you know EXACTLY what you're going to use it for!

Well, that's it. The Mega Fabric Post!

My only last peice of advice is: don't be afraid to buy fabric, don't worry about what it was before, never mind if you don't know exactly what you're going to make out of it (as long as you love it, that is!), and when you get it home, don't be afraid to cut into it!

I hope that's been of some help to those of you who asked.....
xxx

Thrifted Tuesday...

This week, a few goodies from my rounds of the op shops....

A vintage bedsheet, in gaudy pink and red floral, some cute vintage sewing patterns, and some self-cover buttons, which I love....

I'm loving the fitted bodice and flared skirt on this little frock...

And even though, as a rule, I generally hate pink, I can see some girly Nongs being made out of this fabric....

And a beautiful, if rather battered, vintage copy of Little Women, which I haven't read since I was little....

I also managed to score a frock for our inaugural Mid Winter Ball at work, it's on Saturday, and I've been sewing away, making a petticoat for underneath, and making some minor adjustments to the fit of the frock..... I'll post some pictures of it once it's done!

Otherwise, tonight it's soup making, television watching, and costume adjusting......

Thrifted Tuesday..

Finally, I got back to a spot of op shopping this week! I've been taking a break from thrifting in order to hibernate the finances a bit, but yesterday the withdrawals got too much to bear......

So, on to the finds......

A whole pile of fabric, a bit of a mongrel bunch this time, but all individually quite good for what I plan to use them for....

But the fabric find of the year was this AMAZING vintage linen tablecloth, hand embroidered, and ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS, for six dollars.....

How on earth anyone could ever have the patience to embroider so well is absolutely beyond me!

And just for overload on the tablecloth - here it is in my kitchen...

After those finds, I was on my way home, when I decided spontaneously to pop into another op shop I haven't been to for ages, where I rarely have any real luck, just on the off chance that there might be something......

Boy, was there something!

The ENTIRE SET of Childcraft Library books, the lot for five dollars.

For those of you who are not familiar, the Childcraft Library series is like a set of encyclopedias for kids, from the seventies, with the best illustrations in the world. We had a set of these when I was a kid, and I spent hours and hours poring over them, learning stuff (I was, and still am, and unabashed bookworm), hassling dad to help me make stuff out of the "Make and Do" book, and getting my first dose of Greek Mythology (another of my loves) from the "Stories and Fables" edition.

It's on par with finding a whole set of Golden Hands, or Enid Blyton books, or something similar.....

Here's a couple of pages so you can see what I mean...

From Stories and Fables....

From Make and Do:

Love it.

Before I go, I just wanted to say a thankyou to everyone who commented on the pincushion tutorial.....having never done a tute before, it was good to know that other people found it useful!

I hope you're all having tea and cupcakes, wherever you are....! xxx

Thrifted Thursday!

Well, since my Thrifted Tuesday went so badly this week, I decided to have another go at it today, and man did I come home with the goods:

So, I'm sure you're like; how cute is that suitcase? But look! It's FULL OF FABRIC! I know, I know, I hit the jackpot today for fabric goodness... The suitcase was five dollars, perfect for adding to my vintage suitcase collection, and inside it is this brilliant stash of fabrics and linens:

My favourite so far is the yellow floral, but I'm sure my love affair with yellow has to peter out soon....(edited later: actually, I have just noticed that Blogger seems to cut the edge of all my photos off; in this one, neatly severing my favourite fabric from the picture. Does anyone know how to fix this? I don't want to post smaller photos....I want the page to expand to fit them! How??????)

Then, on my second op shop, I managed to find another stash of vintage sewing patterns, some vintage iron-on embroidery transfers, and this vintage sewing book:

Complete with gaudy photographs and loads of practical instructions on how to finish garments correctly, something which I can never seem to master....

And then, my favourite thing of all; two of these placemats, and some wooden fruit.

I tell you, I have been coveting some of this fruit for ages, and there they were, a pear and an apple, of all things, 50 cents each. Love them love them love them.

So if this wasn't even a picture heavy enough post for you, I'm not done yet! I've had four days off work this week, and the golden opportunity to do some sewing,and my first prototype for the shop is nearly done:

It's a girl's dress, size Three, completely reversible (obviously still unhemmed), and cute as freaking pie. I'm now completely decided on making more of these for the shop; though they won't all be reversible, but they will all have a contrasting facing in the bodice for extra cuteness inside. They have a pleat in the front, rounded shoulder tabs (which are hidden cause I haven't done the buttonholes yet) and vintage buttons on the shoulders.

If any of you out there have little girls, send me some comments on what you think!

Oh yeah, so, new dresses in mind, I also went shopping for new fabric:

Pretty much all of this fabric is for the dresses, except for the pink linen right on the bottom there - it was on sale, linen, for $2 a metre. I tell you, that's cheap in anybody's currency! As a general rule, I steer well clear of pink, I can't stand it. Blame it on a regressed childhood memory if you will, but I hate pink. But this stuff won me over cause it was soooooo cheap and I'm going to dye it so I don't have to look at it's fairy flossness til I throw up. Then I'm going to use some of it for the backing on the quilted baby blanket I posted about the other day.

And if that aint enough productivity for one day - I also updated the Ebay shop today too, with more to come in the next few days......

Whew! Now I need to have a cup of tea and cut out some patterns!

Thrifty Goodness.....

Phew!

After buying my new digital camera yesterday (a Nikon D40 if you're curious) and selling my soul to the local department store for the remainder of my interest-free period, I thought today might be a good day to splash around some of that birthday cash that I didn't put down on the camera!

And today was my lucky day....I found more stuff today than I have in weeks of Op Shopping, and I thought I'd share the results:

A gorgeous little brown tweed hard style suitcase...(perfect for keeping sewing supplies in)...$5!

A huge lot of colour themed patchwork swatch packages...$4 each (I bought four!)

A bag of mixed vintage green buttons...$2.

A lovely cake plate on a bakelite stand...$2...( I have been hanging out for one of these for ages...an excuse to have a tea party!)

And last but not least, this book by DAVID HICKS on ways with fabric! If you're not sure why this one is in the bunch, check out the Wikipedia entry on the whole saga.....living in Australia, this issue is saturating the media lately, and finding something lighthearted like a frivolous fabric book by someone named David Hicks just tickles my sense of the absurd.....

In other bloggy news, I have also signed up for Wardrobe Remix, a Flickr group where funky people post photos of thier fabulous outfits to share with other street-wise fashionistas!

I also managed to drop out of Uni today, eat my favourite noodle soup for lunch, catch up with a friend for a quick chat and some Chinese tea, and organise a bit of my fabric stash.... What a productive day!

Sustainable Fashion?

I read an article recently by a fashion columnist who was flirting with the idea of Compacting – which is basically a philosophy of not buying anything new other than essential items like food, toiletries and basic necessities. Being a self-proclaimed fashionista, she found the concept pretty hard to grasp, but thought she would try it for a month, and was surprised at how easy it ended up to be.

At the time, I scoffed a little at this “poor” woman, who had to go without her designer bags and fabulous shoes and crazily expensive frocks for a month…..what drama!

But the column got me thinking about my own consumption habits, and I was pleasantly surprised…..

Basically, in the past year, things I have bought new include:

1 pair of black boots (Doc Martens, for work and everyday wear…)

undies

socks

1 pair black jeans

5 or so plain t-shirts and/or singlets (for work again- I’m a bartender)

one or two pieces of Ikea furniture.

On the other hand, the things I have bought from Thrift shops/ Op Shops include:

Various t-shirts/tops

3 – 4 pairs of jeans

3 pairs of shoes

about 6 or so frocks

various belts

lots of headscarves

lots of random bits of jewellery, brooches, necklaces, etc

beads/ sewing supplies

sewing patterns

fabrics – made into clothing/craft projects

loads of books

various bits of furniture

a record player cabinet

a lot of old maps/paper ephemera

various handbags

and the list goes on……

Looking at my wardrobe, I can safely say that 90% of it is thrifted or handmade. I love the fact that most of my shopping is done outside of the mass produced consumer mainframe. I love the thrill of the hunt that Op Shopping provides, and the sheer joy of finding something fabulous in a sea of dross can keep me going for days.

I enjoy fashion, and I love clothes, and buried deep inside me is a woman who would love a handmade Fendi bag that costs the same as a small house, but all in all, it’s not necessary. My wardrobe is all the more creative, fabulous and eclectic due to the fact that none of it cost more than, say, $50, and that almost every cent of my fashion purchasing has gone to charities in my local area.

Who would want to shop any other way?

Welcome to my blog. I am a twenty-something bartender and Art History student living in Australia, and I’d like to share a little of my life with you. I have been reading and lurking in many craft blogs for a long time, and I thought it was time to come out and play. I’m looking forward to sharing my time and projects with you.