now at 696!

Exciting news - Pocket Carnival is now stocked at 696!

696 is an awesome gallery at 696 Sydney Rd in Brunswick (right near the corner of Sydney Rd & Albion St).

It's full of amazing art, zines, clothes & accessories - it's very fun & vibrant, and is like a dream shop for me. Very happy to be able to sell there!

window shopping - Joanna Rutter

Another new love found online - Joanna Rutter creates gorgeous, beautiful & amazing jewelry from silver. This beautiful Bird Table ring is from Dawanda.

Calico

Another new little clutch - made of patchwork & calico. I go in & out of calico phases, but at the moment I'm pro-calico, inspired by my quest for natural colourings. Which is good, given my recent purchase of 30 metres of it.

This clutch is available at my Dawanda store.

Enjoy your Sunday!

old school embroidered

I was helping my grandma clean out some of her old sewing stuff awhile back, and found a gorgeous embroidered tea towel that was only half finished. My grandma didn't want it anymore, and I thought my cousin might appreciate the sentimentality - not being much of an embroiderer I decided to cut it up (sorry!) and turn it into a clutch. It's made of embroidered linen & denim, and lined with calico. I like the mish-mash of old embroidery styles and the dark denim. A neat little vintage button for closure.

I'm giving it to my cousin tonight for her birthday - hope she likes it!

window shopping

Have been having a good day today, on this it's-almost-winter day. Have been sewing away this morning, then went for lunch at my favourite all-day-breakfast cafe near my house - they have masses of artwork all over the walls and little random mosaic patches on the floor, And good coffee.

This evening I've been doing a little online window shopping - my current lust-after is:

Gorgeous Moeko Pendant, from Howlin Doggie at Etsy.

Fern

More with the vegetation experimentation... ferns. These are ones I used to print on to calico - painted the ferns and then printed.

This clutch is made of calico & green linen.

Blackberries & Flying Pigs

I thought I'd try something new this weekend - I was looking in Borders and saw a book on natural dyes so I thought 'I can do that'. I experimented with a few different natural dyes, the first one is blackberries & beetroot leaves used to dye unbleached calico.

The experiment:

The result:

I don't think I'm quite ready to give up fabric made with synthetic dyes just yet... it's a nice colour though! Will show you what I make with it and the other pieces I dyed.

Hot off the sewing machine: sweet Pigs can Fly coinpurse, at Dawanda.

project runway

Ooh! All I have to say is I'm watching Project Runway Season 2, and I'm up to the Makeover challenge. And I am very much overexcited.

todays news

My work gets 2 copies of the Herald Sun delivered every day which makes for a bit of light entertainment, but can get a bit frustrating given the lack of actual news, or journalistic standards, within its pages. So today I was pleased that in the middle Tuesday fashiony section (City Style or something) there was a big article about Gaye Abandon and Pip from Meet me at Mikes. Yippee!

There was even a little section about etsy.com.

pirates & patchwork

This is three of the clutches I've made - the top one is my favourite, patchwork & denim with a little toggle to close it.

I tried to scan this but my scanner gives me nothing but errors - I lost my sketchbook ages ago and was all in a grump, however I've been looking through some old sketches I had in a folder and I think this is my favourite. Pirate King Jr?