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the dolls of the house are scoring this week

With Audrey sick there's been a lot of sitting around the house this week. It's doing my head in a little, to be honest. I think we all need a change of scenery. It's been a good week for finishing a couple of rogue projects, though.

This doll quilt was started over 3 months ago before Henry was born. Audrey chose the frog fabric and I worked from there.

I asked if she wouldn't mind wrapping her doll (this one not a Sarah, but Peaches) and holding it up for me to take a photo of her, doll and quilt. She wrapped it, but wasn't really into the photo idea. On the up side, Peaches looked rather nice all cozied up, after being dumped and abandoned in preference for a Charlie & Lola dvd. Cést la vie, Peaches!

on my desk: the other one

Toward the end of our renovation frenzy & room switcheroo last year, I finally got my own work room. One thing I'd really looked forward to was buying a new desk so I could separate my craft stuff from computer. It's not the best photo, but I love this little corner and I'm sure the keyboard will live a whole lot longer now it's not subjected to fabric fluff every day. There's a little inspiration wire above it with some favourite images by Ana and Camilla, Audrey's art, and a favourite piece of Liberty print (the one with the little houses, can't find a picture online).

On this desk today? Um, Audrey - still home sick from kindy. Miscellaneous stationery, framed photos of Aud as a baby and of my brother, a stack of white Ribba (sensing a pattern here?!) frames waiting for me to get photos printed. That pinkish blob in the middle is a doll quilt I'm binding in quiet moments. Underneath it are a stack of delicious magazines my Mum has loaned me - it's Matt's birthday in a few weeks and we're having 40+ people over for breakfast (faaark!) For this I need all the help/cooking inspiration I can muster.

More desks here.

cabin fever

Inventive title for a post about a log cabin quilt, huh? I can't do much better at the moment, I was awake for 4 hours straight last night tending to/worrying about Audrey and her nasty case of bronchitis.

Last week when searching through a cupboard for some flannel for a bib for a friend's new baby (which I forgot to photograph, bad blogger) I found this log cabin quilt that I'd intended to make for Audrey, from - searching archives - wow, two years ago! Two blocks had been sewn and a further two laid out. And strips cut. Lots of them. Clearly I enjoyed the rotary cutter as much then as I do now.

I finished piecing the crosses quilt on the weekend - just waiting for the backing to arrive now - and thought it might be nice to actually finish a quilting project. This ended up being the perfect size for a doll's quilt. I'm not crazy about the colours, they're all a bit pastel, which I guess is why I went cold on it in the first place. I did the binding with some of the leftover strips so I didn't feel quilte so wasteful. The cutting is wonky. As is the quilting (probably not a good idea to mix quilting with sleep deprivation, but I had a desperate need to finish something today while looking after my sick girl). But as a whole I'm kinda fond of it.

Auds likes it (it went straight to the duktig). Sarah (about 80% of her dolls are called Sarah) seems to, too.

on my desk. also, bananas.

On my desk today are a couple more big headed mice, with pinned on limbs and facial features. The first one is still unfinished. I find toy clothes fiddly (can't be alone there... all those teensy seams!) and often put off making them in favour of more toy, er, bodies.

This isn't on my desk, but only because it doesn't fit. Playing with the crosses quilt for Audrey continues. I took out a lot of the duller reds (which I love, but just weren't working) and replaced them with some white, orange and a paler pink. This will probably be it, not because I'm so overjoyed with it that it's demanding to be sewn up immediately. More like this is one of those things that could be fiddled with forever, but I want to finish it some time soon, and would like to get it off the floor. Like Allison said in the comments after I last posed about this: finished is better than perfect. Love that.

It's cold today and I used some of my frozen banana stash to make a big batch of muffins. I've never frozen bananas for baking before - they are always eaten too quickly in this house. But during the heatwave they were turning brown faster than we could devour them. And now our house is full of that delicious banana muffin smell, and the muffins are extra banan-ery (?) So I'm a convert. The hot weather was good for something after all.

One more thing - incredibly talented Lauren has done a still life oil painting of one of my dolls (that she adopted). Wow!

melt and sprinkle

It's kinder holidays and my desk is pretty much the same as it was last week. Also, I'm quite tired and am having problems stringing a sentence together. So this is what Audrey & I have been doing this week while Henry sleeps.

Making crayons. There's different instructions for this all over the internet. We just broke up some old crayons into a non stick muffin tray, baked them at 125 C for about 10 minutes. They set in the pan and I put them in the freezer to firm properly. They had a very pleasing sheen as well as pretty rainbow colours. Fun!

Audrey's been asking to do this one for ages. I think she saw it on Playschool. We mixed some sand with food colouring and sprinkled it onto glue to colour some of her drawings. Less fun for me (argh! food colouring everywhere!) But the sand was quite attractive.

One last thing, I'm really (really) behind on replying to emails. I'm so sorry if you haven't heard from me. There's a long weekend coming up and I'm hoping to get back on track then.

like, totally pink

This past weekend, any available opportunity was spent cutting out these 10x10cm squares. Anyone who has read this blog for a while might remember that I've had a couple of aborted attempts to make Audrey a quilt. I never seem to maintain my enthusiasm for quilts. Mostly because I'm never happy with my fabric choices and how they sit together once they're cut and pieced. Also my last idea involved blue prints, which are now a no-go zone ("too boy-ish"... cripey!) in the mind of my 4 year old girl.

Anyhow, the other morning at 3 when feeding Henry, it suddenly hit me (as these things sometimes do in the middle of the night) - I need to keep it simple. No prints for me, just solid colours, especially at the moment with a baby in the house and my brain turned to mush. I saw this quilt on flickr last week and haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I love pretty much every thing about this quilt design, and thought I might be able to steal the idea to make all the requisite pink something I'd still like to look at on a daily basis, as well as being acceptable to Audrey.

So I made a furtive dash to the local fabric shop (with bad lighting) and came home with too many raspberry/red tones. My first attempt at playing with it with looked a bit angry for a little girl. This is my second attempt with less dark pinks. I think it still needs another paler pink in there. So far it's getting the thumbs up from the pink police, so that's the main thing.

on my desk

I was going to write this post this morning. But it's kinder holidays, so it's all kids all the time here at the moment. I took this crappy photo of my desk, intending to go back later when the light was better. But then we walked to the supermarket for coriander, and we stopped at the bakery, then ate lunch at the park over the road. Then I made a dahl and raita for dinner, and played with, fed, bathed & settled the little people into bed.

Now it's 8pm. So the crappy photo will have to suffice. And the new mouse toy I've been playing around with (head's too big, trying to decide if I like it that way or not), and very yellow wool for giraffes (perhaps too yellow? The sales assistant at the fabric shop referred to the colour as 'yolk' - it's extremely bright!) will stay on my desk for another day because I'm a bit tired and am feeling lazy. Also, there's dark chocolate in the cupboard. Good night!

stripey and non-stripey

Our weekend had an unintentional stripey theme. Audrey has recently started attending a flamenco class. The dance school sells second hand flamenco shoes & these were available in Audrey's size. Red polka dotted dancing shoes! She's barely let them out of her sight since Saturday, and has enjoyed teaming them with her stripey stockings.

On Sunday, Matt took the little folk to the park so I could become reaquainted with my sewing machine. Among other things, the strips were sewn up. I've been in quite a chipper mood today, I'm sure it had something to do with getting back into my work room.

On a non-stripey note, I am so loving the company of this smiley little man.

on my desk

I've been such an inconsistent blogger since Henry came along, and have been missing it. A meme type thing is exactly what I need to get me moving, so here's my first installment of on my desk on a wednesday. The blog isn't the only thing that's been neglected of late - my desk is collecting dust as well. Up here are some more strips cut out for Henry's quilt (which I've since gone cold on... when will I learn to finish my projects quickly while the enthusiasm is still there? I'll still use what I've made so far because so many of my favourite fabrics are included, but perhaps in a different way than first planned). Also, I've been doing some drawings to modify my giraffe pattern for inclusion in a craft magazine later in the year. It's been a nice way to ease myself back into toy making.

In reality, this is a more accurate photo of my 'desk' lately. A quick sketch sitting on the floor next to a wriggly, cooing baby boy.

one month later...

Lordy, that went fast. Someone once said to me - or perhaps I read it - that as a parent to young children, the days are long but the years are short (sorry if I'm badly paraphrasing your blog entry). Those words are ringing very true for me at the moment. Thanks again for your lovely comments about Henry's arrival. We are still all here, and still doing fine. At 7 weeks old Henry is a real delight. The two child juggle has not been without it's ups and downs (those of you with 3 or more children will surely be scoffing at me), but we seem to be settling in to some kind of daily rhythm. Mr H is a catnapper by day like his sister before him. Hence no blog posts for a month as I remember what it's like to try to squeeze as much as possible into the 40 minute baby sleep cycle.

So I'm afraid there's not much for me to report, unless record breaking heatwaves are of interest. (I almost went bonkers staying inside for so many days on end with a newborn). I still haven't made it back to the sewing machine, although all that time on the couch spent feeding has been put to good use thinking about all the things I'm going to make one day soon. The photo up top is of an unfinished doll quilt I made for Audrey before Henry's arrival. (Still sitting on my desk waiting for binding - ack! the guilt!) The other photo was taken of the little guy last week. Just because.