Archive / Fabrics

For the boys…

May has a nice sort of buzz. Busy sort of ‘buzz’… In the past weeks, we have been blessed with many happy occasions: birthdays, arrivals of babies, news of soon-to-arrive babies, new opportunities, etc. I don’t know, but I felt these personal feel-good events countered the negativities covered in the press: the economy, swine-flu, AWARE tussle, etc…

Hubby and I also made some plans to move forward with our ‘hobby site’ which he set-up in the late ’90s, servicing the Beanie babies crazed online community. The idea of a ‘baby gift ideas site’ has been tossed around for the LONGEST time, given that we are such ‘big’ consumers of baby items/gifts and I felt that the parents in SG are quite shortchanged in terms of cost and variety.

More updates about THE PLAN coming up soon, I hope ;>

In the mean time, I’m caught in a bit of a ‘quilting funk’ which I can’t seem to shake off. So, I made

more of these:

If you are interested in getting one of these fabric wallets for a special little chap, each costs SGD$18 (comes with 8 Crayola non-toxic crayons + 1x100sheet memo pad). Please add $2 if you prefer Crayola non-toxic WASHABLE crayons.

Crayon Wallets for little girls

More cupcakes crayon wallets.

Difference is that I’m getting paid for them now! (cue The Count laugher)

A friend custom-ordered 2 of these crayon wallets and I made one extra with left-over fabrics.

If you are interested in getting your hands on a fabric wallet, it costs SGD$18.00 (comes with 8 crayons + 1×100-sheet memo pad). Please add $2 if you’d prefer washable crayons.

It’s a wrap!

It’s raining babies here! :> Seriously, I have no idea what the government is talking about when they say we are not having enough babies. The gynae’s office is always packed, the malls are filled with families with strollers, babies/kids everywhere in the zoo, etc… Then again, I have been visiting ‘kiddy-friendly’ places hence the observation may be a ‘little’ skewed :p

A friend delivered earlier this month and I dugged out my old nursing cover and created a new one based on the pattern.

It’s a double-sided cover, with a flexible boning strip to give you some ‘view’ to the nursing child. I used the cover as a stroller cover too when the baby’s asleep and you want to keep the lights out and curious aunties poking their faces into the stroller :p

The backing is a japanese 100% cotton brown striped fabric which is very soft.

I think its a great gift: The shops sell them for quite a bit of $$! With a cover, I don’t have to wear a nursing top or risk flashing my boobies at anyone!

Speaking of modesty, we were out at the zoo a couple of weeks back and when I neared the gibbons section, I noticed a yummy-mummy, in a nice denim tube dress, seating at the bench with a fussing baby. What surprised me was that she popped her breast out of the dress, before she positioned her baby to nurse. Hmmmm… Talk about self-confidence! hahaha

Book Me

I picked up some notebooks from an old favourite store Muji at Paragon over the weekend. They gave 10% off the stationery supplies. Whoopee!

I’m in a bit of a sewing rut at the moment. Nothing pretty or productive coming out of the machine or cutting table. But good news is that I’m handquilting on an old WIP, sash by sash, cornerstone by cornerstone each evening.

Since the needle in the machine is quite old, I’ve been sewing some recycled papers together for scribble pads around the house. There’s never paper or pen when you need one and when you don’t, they are all over the house for your to pack them up.

And I jazzed up the notebooks with some iron-on experiments. And I made some for my brother – who knows better than to criticise my workmanship, or lack of. Haha.

This is a simple iron-in. I don't really like how 'bare' it looks - and the edges are not 'pretty' enough.

There, much better! I tried another scrap fabric appliqued to the book, using a zig-zag stitch.

The T-shirt

I’ve been thinking about doing up an appliqued t-shirt for Benji… for a long long time.

This is a good tradition to start – a birthday shirt! Sadly, I missed out 1 :p

Really happy how this turned out – although I’m a still a bit lost about which stabilizer I should use. Here, I used a tear-away for the number ‘2’. For ‘I’m’ – I used an iron-on stabilizer which I think its a bit too stiff. I used the iron-on because I was terrified that when I ‘tear-away’ the stabilizer, it would rip up the t-shirt! Guess I need to experiment a bit more :p

All the Mother-care or Gap clothings that have embroidery or appliques use some kind of iron to protect the threads from chafing the baby’s skin. Any ideas what it is and where I can find it?