whip up

Guest series :: Listen and watch

contributor — Sat, 19 May 2012 10:53:47 +0000

Guest series 2012: I asked fellow bloggers, makers and creators to write on their creativity and focus their essay on one of four topics: creativity and health, creativity and business, creativity and parenting or creativity and process. I am very excited to have a wonderful lot of fellow creative folk guest posting here at whipup.net over the next couple of months. Please welcome…

Jodi Anderson grew up in the woods of Sauk County, Wisconsin, and her past is present in most everything that she does today. She finds beauty in the mundane, refuses to let her struggles with illness define her, obsesses over local history, and tries to keep track of it all in her online journal, Daybook.

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
– Franz Kafka

I am lullabied, and a bit haunted, by daydreams. They are a combination of beast and wilderness, childlike wonder, science, and the more primal aspects of self. There is a guttural component to my thinking and overall vision, and as often as I can, I allow myself to be fully immersed in all of these elements. The most important thing that I do is listen to and watch what is going on inside of me.

When a concept is evolving, I feel it physically. It is not unusual to find that I am sitting, eyes closed with hands, fingers spread wide, placed upon my chest, as if trying to extract the equation from within so that I can unfold this into an outward expression, a stamp of my most authentic self. These feelings, this immersion, always come first, and it is a sort of love affair with my ideas. A right-quick affair actually, so I make haste or I am liable to not do the project at all. I need to move very fast and work while I still possess that first strong urge.

(If, on the other hand, I am following a crochet pattern or have specific instructions for a basket, I have all the time in the world.)

After that, it is just a matter of desire versus reality. What can I physically do with the objects that I have in mind? Can I learn any needed skills quickly? Do I have the necessary energy? Is this something that I will start and then abandon? What is my end goal? Do I even have one?

When working on characters and costumery, as I do in the unmasked series, I might sketch out an idea, but mostly I prefer to pull together materials and play with them. As they are gathered and begin to reveal more of their nature, I naturally work out the details and consider workability while everything is within my grasp.

An important element in my recent evolution as an artist has come in the form of a fearless friend, Jen, who is a skilled knitter and seems to quickly master anything that she attempts, like basket weaving. We have become crafting cohorts, signing up for classes to do things of which I’d not heard and otherwise raising my bravery status, as well as challenging my previous belief that an introvert wouldn’t enjoy company. (Ha!) It was she who suggested we try antler basket weaving, which, damn if that didn’t incite a whole internal revolution and rock my world.

Already at home in the woods and liking best those things that are alive, or once were, I find that weaving, whether baskets or a garden trellis, works well with my creative process. I have always been first inspired by the wild world, like the spring woods or a bustling river. You can work with synthetic materials, but I find that reed and cane fit in well with my personal design aesthetic. Although there are some general techniques in weaving, such as ojo de Dios (God’s eye) binding when the handle first meets the rim, the craft is remarkably forgiving and intuitive. I find that I don’t need to do much planning, if any. Weaving put a new notch in my figurative craft belt, and it shifted a bit the way that I approach unfolding ideas and then implementing them. It allowed me to more fully relax into making and the end result is like a timestamp of my creative self during that project.

In the end, I believe that our individual life journeys, all of the things that we make, the dreams that we mold, those thoughts manipulated by head and hand, even the art that is conceived and not taken any further, each of these is a step in the creative process, where the ultimate craft is the revealing of our true self.

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The flip side of cake (is a green smoothie)

kath_red — Fri, 18 May 2012 11:30:07 +0000

What with the celebratory week I have just had: birthday parties and mother’s day, I have been baking just a little.

But on the flip side we have been quite overdoing the green smoothie (frozen peas, pineapple, ginger and spinach – trust me — it’s good!) and the homemade muesli thing too – just to add some balance to all that cake.

For my 12 year old’s (second) birthday party this year, I was commissioned to make a double layer marble cake filled with vanilla cream. It was actually incredibly delicious and light (I adapted a sponge cake recipe instead of making a butter cake). And for a different kind of treat bag I made giant chocolate chip cookies. I don’t know about you but I am so sick of the treat bags full of junk – so I decided to take a stand and the giant cookies were much loved and admired by all.

Recipes: For the cake and cookies I adapted recipes from two of my fave cook books: Milk & Cookies and Gran’s Kitchen. But I did a little online search and found a few recipes that might fit the bill if you don’t have these two fantastic I-don’t-know-how-I-would-cope-without-them books. Giant chewy choc chip cookies :: Marble butter cake :: Victoria sponge cake :: Kale and pear smoothie :: Monster smoothie :: Homemade muesli

Quilt market: for those non-quilters and others who live in a different universe – Quilt market is on and reports have started to filter in: Spoonflower :: Uhandbag. If you can’t make it – you can join the Blogger’s quilt festival.

At whipup this week the creativity series continues: A failed attempt to control the chaos :: Healing through craft :: The stream of inspiration runs both ways :: Crafting brings the joy :: I’m mostly a self taught creative type. Please share your stories by commenting at these posts.

Fun online tutes: dino hoodie :: Fun sandals :: Fly with me quilt block :: Project run and play.

On my book pile:

Sunday Morning Quilts by Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkison. Published by Stash April 2012. Favourite quilt bloggers + favourite quilt book publisher = great quilt book! Super ideas for using up your scraps and some really fun quilt designs too. Beginner quilters will love the sections on sorting your scraps and quilting techniques, while others will want to just get stuck into the quilts themselves. The quilts are mostly simple in design and constructions and take advantage of the ad-hoc nature of scraps to create quilts that are a little bit improv and a little bit structured. And of course the best thing about scraps is that they don’t rely on any particular fabric line — they are about playing with colour, which I love.

Making Mini Books with various contributors and published by Lark Crafts April 2012. Oh the wonderfulness. The variety. The inventiveness. This book contains a whole bunch of diy mini book book projects from the sweet and simple to the complex and artistic. Using different materials, paper, leather, recycled junk, wire and twine — to teach you how to make traditionally bound books, or more unusual books. You’ll be inspired.

The Book of Gardening Projects for Kids By Whitney Cohen and John Fisher (from life lab). Published by Timber Press May 2012. A bunch of gardeners, educators and parents got together to create Life Lab, a nonprofit organisation in Santa Cruz, California in 1979. Life Lab’s mission is to teach people to care for the world and them selves and each other through garden based programs. They have camps and internships and classes where they not only teach kids but also parents and teachers. So now Life Lab has written a book about their philosophy along with practical stuff from years of experience and classes – such a fantastic resource. With projects from designing play friendly gardens to getting creative with your planting pots, learning about what to plant where and when and how to test your soil. These activities are all aimed at families working with their kids and would make for some great homeschooling projects too. There is too much in here for this short review – so I urge you to go and grab a copy for yourself.

[Thanks to publishers and distributors for sending me books to review, I don't get paid to post reviews but I am an amazon affiliate] (Australians can purchase craft books online through can do books or booktopia or else browse booko for the best prices.)

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Guest series :: A failed attempt to control the chaos

contributor — Thu, 17 May 2012 12:01:59 +0000

MostlyNerdyCrochet is the love child of Tracey McNamee and her adoration of nerd culture and yarn. She’s in her mid-twenties and enjoys long walks on the beach, candle lit dinners, and—wait. Sorry, let me restart. She’s in her mid-twenties and enjoys colorful yarn from thrift stores, weekend projects, and all things nerdy.

Alright, so my creativity isn’t so much a process as a mostly failed attempt to control the chaos. When I’m inspired it’s not just for one thing, it’s usually about ten things and I have to choose the most interesting (and practical) one. Why just choose one? Because I know myself! If I start too many I’ll never finish any of them, and if I try to rush through one to add in a second I’ll burn out before I get there. Thank goodness crafting isn’t a job for me. I’d be terrible at it! I work solely off my muse, who pops in now and then when it’s convenient.

So there I am, sitting at my “work station” and it hits me, I should make one of those! But wait, if I make that, what if I made THAT instead and combined it with this and this. Oh this goes on for a while until I’ve decided that my original idea is not only easier, but I have all the colors for it. You wouldn’t believe how many of my projects are determined by my limited yarn collection.

Let me preface this by saying I’m a very organized person. I even worked as an assistant professional organizer for a while, but as soon as the craft supplies are out I become a storm of flying fluff, misplaced hooks, and sitting on scissors. Seriously. One time it was a needle, and no, my husband doesn’t let me forget it.

This is where the magic happens.

And this is while the magic is happening.

This lasts for a couple of days until I’ve sewn on the last pupil (for some reasons the eyes are always last, it’s something with how they turn “real” once those eyes are looking at me. I think Toy Story instilled this fear that a toy would see anything I did, but not without eyes sucker!) and I sit, covered in thread, polyfil, and bits of my hair that I’ve pulled out, admiring my work. Did I seriously just make this? It’s AWESOME!

I’m especially not kidding about my reaction. I’m always way more impressed than I should be that my work looks like I want it to. For years I struggled with traditional art, but crochet? Finally, a place where I belong.

Back to that muse. Not to assume a gender, but I need a pronoun to refer to her. It’s been a while since we’ve had lunch, sadly, a couple of months. Luckily, when she’s away on vacation I turn to Pinterest. If you haven’t sold your soul to Pinterest yet I recommend you avoid it like the plague. Don’t get me wrong, it’s the best thing that ever happened to me on the internet. The problem? You’ll lose all your free time. Days will pass and somehow you’ll only feel like you stepped through the garage door and saw a sandworm (please ignore my obscure Beetlejuice reference). It leaks into your mind, polluting you with DIY projects, home décor, inspiration, humor, and FOOD. Oh God the food.

Right, back to the creative process. Where did I leave off? Oh yeah, food. WAIT, no.

Ok, since I’ve clearly been distracted by the ever present existence of Pinterest I would like to do a quick follow up on my personal goals from the last time I was invited here. I mentioned that I wanted to learn how to sheer my own sheep, spin my own wool, and dye my yarn. Guess what? I’m doing this in August! Turns out my in-law’s neighbor has her own sheep and does the whole process on her own from start to finish and would love a helping hand! Now that this goal is so close at hand I’ve started planning on another. So here it goes: I want to own my own yoga studio café. I’ll teach yoga, and hire my friend to make all the goods at the café with 100% all natural local honey from my own bees, which naturally I take to my sister’s farm to pollinate her crops, which is where my sheep frolic happily in open fields. See? It all works out. Oh, and I’ll live in one of those surprisingly spacious tiny houses with incredible and innovative use of limited space. Happily. Ever. After.Similar Posts:

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Guest series :: Healing through craft

contributor — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:26:00 +0000

Maize Hutton lives in a cottage in the woods with her Westie Violet Blossom. She’s the President of MommyTags.com and MaizeHutton.com. You can visit her blog at maizehutton where she shares numerous DIYs and snapshots of her daily life.

In 2003, my daughter was kidnapped at gunpoint, beaten up and managed to escape. That incident and the months that followed caused me so much stress and grief, I was afflicted with a severe case of Bells Palsy. The left side of my face was paralyzed for 6 months and I was unable to continue my work as a paralegal.

One day during my recovery, I pulled out a book a friend had given me called The Artists Way by Julia Cameron. It helped heal my broken heart and was the catalyst that put me on a path I never could have imagined. I still write my Morning Papers and find they help keep negativity at bay. I often find myself jotting down ideas within the borders and sometimes end up writing poems. If you’ve never tried writing your Morning Papers, you should start. Pronto. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at what happens when you do.

While I dabble in everything crafty, my one love at the time of my healing was making jewelry. One evening, after hearing of my niece’s birth, I decided to make a silver pendant personalized with my niece’s name and date of birth. I christened it Mommy Tags. My sister in-law loved it, told her friends and I set up a website. I sent a sample of the tags to American Baby Magazine, and in April 2004, much to my surprise, they published a picture of Mommy Tags. It was right before Mother’s Day and I was inundated with orders, so much so that I had over a million in sales in two short years. Mommy Tags was declared a trend and soon many jewelry designers started making and selling personalized tags for moms, which you now see different versions of today.

My creativity has taken me in interesting directions. In 2009 and 2010, I won the Montana Ecostar Award, which is given to small businesses that take environmentally responsible steps to improve their business through reuse or recycling. It was an honor to meet and be presented with the award by the Governor of Montana. I’m also a contributor to GreenCraft magazine by Stampington & Company, where several of my projects have been featured within their pages.

My true love is to design and make things. I’ve taught myself how to knit and crochet, embroider, sew, and I hoard vintage sheets. I love to thrift and often the joke around our house is that I’ll buy back things I’ve donated to the thrift stores! My current aspiration is to sew my wardrobe or refashion what I already have.

My creative process is to scour thrift stores for ideas or take a walk with my dog in the woods. Usually, I wander around looking for items I can use in a project or redesign into something else. One idea, The Woodsy Hanger was sparked while I walked along a country path. I like quick crafts that are executed well and are simple to do. The KISS principle, Keep It Simple Stupid, is my mantra.Similar Posts:

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Guest series :: The stream of inspiration runs both ways

contributor — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:10:14 +0000

Lorraine is a retired Physics teacher, married to a software engineer, and mother of three girls Emily (7), Jenna (5) and Kate(4). She blogs at ikatbag, where she shares sewing and cardboard projects. She lives in St Paul, Minnesota (USA).

Thank you, Kathreen, for letting me be a part of your wonderful blog for a day!

I am continually amazed at how much a parent’s world is centered around their children – naps, bedtimes, dietary limitations, entertainment and their unbelievable energy. My three girls have left me wiped out on the sofa on too many days to count, but they have also pulled me into physical, mental, emotional and artistic spaces that leave me breathless and inspired. They have the best ideas, an almost-ludicrous disregard for the word “impossible” and a delicious capacity for more learning, more exploring, more creating. More mess, too, but it is a fact that small people bulldozing their way through life’s adventures will often leave a trail behind them.

I grew up in Singapore. My own parents love the creative process – Dad taught primary school Art, English, Mathematics and Science, painted, did a lot of carpentry and sewed leather accessories for whichever sport held his interest at the time. Now retired, he continues his art in custom-made archery bow cases. Mum is a homemaker, seamstress and extraordinary cook. Grandma was a tailor and most of the other women in the family dabble in some kind of fabric art.

I grew up understanding that anything could be made with a roll of Scotch tape and cardboard. I made my own toys, devoured craft books and yearned for the craft resources unavailable to me then. I learned to improvise, adapt and veer off the beaten path. Along the way, I also discovered that I enjoyed doing things differently, trying methods other people wouldn’t and accomplishing projects everyone said were hard. Blessed to be in an environment of available resources and help, I learned to hand-stitch at about 9 and use the sewing machine at about 13. Mum taught me to draft and sew and I made clothes and bags all through my teen and young adult years. Both my parents were incredibly tolerant of mess and the disorganized madness that comes with creative inspiration. I suspect this was because they were themselves creative people, but me being occupied by creative pursuits also meant I was keeping out of their hair so they could do their own crafty stuff. It was a perfect arrangement.

Fast forward several decades and, adulthood inexplicably snuck up on me in the form of a career and marriage. I was a junior college Physics teacher and, later, an education and crisis counsellor. I loved my work but not how it left me little time to create. Then my girls were born and I retired to be a full-time mother. I was supposed to have all the time in the world at last but it would be a few years before I’d actually feel it. It seemed I could hardly wait for my babies to be old enough to create with me and now that they finally are, oh, we have so much fun! We work with cardboard, sometimes together and sometimes individually on secret projects.

I draft and sew clothes and costumes (see first image of Kate in a pink Halloween gown) and invent toys. I’ve made fabric playhouses, egg-laying chickens, lactating pigs, dolls with bandages and foam dirt in which to plant felt flowers. These all came from watching my girls at play. I could never have imagined them on my own.

I am grateful for the place I am now – staying home with and enjoying my kids. Some days we are crafting maniacs. Some days we make nothing. Most days we are in between. And for those days when we aren’t inventing new crafts, we love the kits we can buy in stores, designed by other people, and with little colorful bits packed in ready-to-play boxes.

There is always so much to balance in a single day, just in the area of crafting and creating alone. Some questions that run through my mind as I am working with my kids include: How much do I create with them? How much do I let them create on their own? How much inspiration, ideas or suggestions do I plant in their little eager minds? When should I step in to protect, nudge forward, redirect? How much should we involve books? Blogs? The internet? How much should I teach? How much can they learn? And, most importantly, how do I inspire them so they keep learning, continue creating, and are excited about helping others do the same?

It runs both ways, this stream of inspiration that drives us to create and invent.

I am not always directing; I am also hungry for the learning to happen through other sources. I pore over the artwork my girls bring home from school – I love the techniques that are new to me, their teachers’ ideas, and watching the development of their different artistic styles – Emily is minimalist and 3D, Jenna is assiduous and colorful, Kate loves making sets of tiny masterpieces. I make them teach me how to paint with watercolours, make spinners out of paperclips, how to sprinkle coffee grounds on sticky pictures to make fragrant grizzle bears.

I started my craft blog to share our projects and pass on the skills I learned from my parents. Occasionally, I will sew something for myself when I need a break from the manic flow of child-centered ideas and projects. Such is the irony of parenting – I want to make all these creative things for my children, but I will only have the time to do it when they’re no longer young enough to be enthralled by them. There are not enough hours in a day, or years in their childhood to realize all the ideas that come from the books we read, the stores we patronize, the catalogs we browse. Or even simply watching them play. So in the short time I have, I must pick what to make, and what to save as sketches in my notebooks. Perhaps some will be a grandmother’s project years down the road. Perhaps some will be published for someone else’s kids to enjoy. And perhaps some will be saved just as they are, to be shown to my girls when they are grown, to remind them of the different ways their mother loved them when they were little.

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Guest series :: Crafting brings the joy

contributor — Mon, 14 May 2012 11:03:42 +0000

Sayraphim Lothian is a craft and visual artist interested in exploring playful and participatory experiences. She co-runs Pop Up Playground, a Melbourne pervasive and social games collective; recently participated in a playful residency at the National Gallery of Victoria and some of her work can be found in the archives of the NGV, the collection at MOMA and on streets around the world.

Yesterday morning I was feeling pretty excited. I’ve been making artificial cupcakes on and off for the past couple of days and yesterday they were ready to be distributed in the CBD. They’re all in colourful patty pans, with purple ‘icing’, sprinkled with different coloured glitter and a cheery red bead on top. Threaded through each bead is a glittery paper tag, printed with a hand carved stamp that reads “For you, stranger <3 sayraphim”.

I went into the city and left them all out in various places for people to find and take – I’m exploring random acts of guerrilla kindness – and I was really excited to see how it went. My ultimate goal was to make someone’s day a little brighter by gifting them with a fun fake cupcake. By the time I was back on the train heading home I’d already gotten my first response, someone on twitter telling me that finding a cupcake had made them smile and that they were so inspired by the project they were planning to do something similar.

My current body of work investigates kindness and loveliness as art. I create fun, magical moments for people to experience and enjoy. Sometimes these take the form of games to play, in the street, in theatres, in parlours or out in the open, and sometimes they are joyous craft pieces, installed in the street. Along with the For you, Stranger project I’m also working on Gilding the City, which installs reworked pieces of found and broken jewellery in cities around the world, and Street Pests, which places pigeon and rat softies sewn from material found in the streets back in the suburbs they came from. I see all these pieces as little bubbles of joy or surreal moments for passersby to notice.

There are two main influences on my current practise. The first was my grandmother, Marge. She tirelessly created toys for charity throughout her life. She had a wardrobe filled with material people had donated to her, a garage full of yarn and she knitted, sewed and created hundreds of dolls and toys for charity and gifts. She would also teach anyone who asked and freely gave of her time and expertise whenever she saw a need. At the end of her life, while in a high care dementia home, she was still knitting scarves for the hospital and teaching the nurses to knit. She shared her skills and knowledge freely to anyone and she made the world a better place for hundreds of people.

The second person is a British gent named Tassos Stevens. He co-runs the playful society Agency of Coney and just over a year ago he visited Melbourne to invite people to rediscover their playful side. He inducted us into Coney’s world of play and its principle of loveliness via games and challenges. In one challenge he asked us to gather into pairs and suggest someone we thought might like a lovely, possibly anonymous, surprise and what that surprise might be. Another challenge was to get together in groups and chat about a group of people who are normally ignored, or who do crappy jobs for little pay, and what we might create as a nice experience for them. Nurses, public transport drivers, cleaners and people living in old folks homes were some of the people nominated for loveliness and some of the experiences brain stormed were quite touching.

I fell in love with this idea – niceness’s organised for people who might need them – a little bit of kindness to improve someone’s life. During the week, through these challenges and some physical games out on the street, Tassos taught us that making lovely experiences for people is actually a Thing. Which sounds silly when you say it out loud, but sometimes you need stuff pointed out by other people to fully understand it.

The whole experience made me want to do that too, so I started a new direction in my work, making niceness’s for other people in all manner of ways.

My first project was called A Moment In Yarn. It took the craft skills and generosity of my grandmother and mixed them with the personalised kindness experiences that Tassos teaches. It’s a one on one experience in which the participant tells me a cherished memory and, as we chat, I translate the memory into a granny square for them using different coloured and textured yarn. It’s a really beautiful experience and I always feel really honoured that people trust me with a memory that’s so precious to them. I love hearing their stories and I love the challenge of re-creating them in yarn. It’s a big responsibility – you’re being lent a treasured moment of their lives and you don’t want to do anything to sully it – but it’s always so heart-warming at the end to see their faces when they receive their Moment In Yarn; their memory made solid, something warm and soft they can hold. What I knew would happen at the end of each Moment is that the participant would get a craft object based on their memory (which they all seem to love) what I didn’t expect was the awesome feeling I’d get that I’d made something that meant so much to someone.

The next project was called Gilding the City. You can read the post I wrote about it for Whipup here. It’s a street art project reworking found bits of broken jewellery into little art pieces for cities to wear. It started out in Melbourne and quickly spread around the world. They’re usually pretty small, often they don’t stand out from where they are installed, instead they are little rewards for people who take the time to look around and really see the city rather than just going about their daily business. I love the city, I love peering around corners and scanning the ground to see what I find and, with Gilding the City, I wanted to encourage other people to see the city the way I do. I’ve sent Gilds to people all around the world to install in their own cities and they tell me they love the thrill of the hunt (to find the right place) and the excitement of installing the piece. One lady, who installed a little figure with her son, wrote to me to tell me that he waves to it every day and has named it ‘Lollipoloser’.

Some of these projects take a little bit of time to create but I love doing it. I love the idea that someone stumbles across one of the street projects and it brightens their day. I’m always thrilled to see interesting art out in the streets and I want to share that experience for other people. I create tiny moments of joy for people in the city; out-of-the-ordinary moments that transport them, if only for a second, to a world filled with magic and wonder. I get such joy out of making each item and I’m always chuffed when people contact me to let me know they found one.

My advice is keep an eye on the streets around you, you never know what you might see…Similar Posts:

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Guest series :: I’m a mostly self taught creative type

contributor — Sat, 12 May 2012 11:17:08 +0000

Cam is a crafter, illustrator, textile designer, maker, blogger, and obsessed op shopper. She adores rioutous colour, and vintage style. She lives in Melbourne, Australia with her trusty sidekick Mr Limpy Houdini Dog, and is currently on the waiting list for a double lung transplant. She blogs at CurlyPops.

For me, craft is a part of my work and business, but I also still craft just for fun. I adore making and giving gifts to family and friends, and I also love to be able to contribute something handmade to community and charity events. From a business perspective, at the moment, I’m focussed on textile design and sewing. I’m really enjoying the challenge of creating hand-drawn illustrations and applying these to textiles. My current goal is to improve my digital design skills so that I can combine both to create my next boutique range of fabrics. Seeing my handrawn illustrations coming to life as a textile design and then taking that fabric and transforming it into a functional item has been absolutely thrilling.

Inspiration :: I seem to find inspiration everywhere I look. At the moment I’m quite obsessed with pattern and texture. It can be anything from the pattern in the bitumen on the road, to a dappled sunlight shadow coming through the window, to a wallpaper or tile design that I see on one of my favourite DIY tv shows. If you take the time to look beyond what seems to be right in front of you, you’ll be able see it too.

Colour :: In my eyes, everything looks glorious in shades of pink and orange and red. But I really just happen to love all colours. Everywhere I look, my eye is always drawn directly to the strongest and most saturated colours. When working on any new designs, it seems that my colour choices also follow this same pattern.

Technique :: I’m a mostly self taught creative type. My best ideas seem to suddenly appear while I’m lying in bed in the middle of the night, so I make sure to always have a sketchpad and pen in my bedside drawer. I have my own peculiar techniques when it comes to creating and making. The first step is to take the idea and visualise the finished item in my head. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to construct it, and how the seams will come together.

Once I’m happy that my idea is feasible, I usually sketch it out and work on the finished dimensions. Using that sketch of the completed item, I’ll then sketch out the separate fabric components, calculate their dimensions, and add the appropriate seam allowances. I have multiple sketch books in all sorts of different sizes. They’re literally all over my house!

For my own range of CurlyPops products, I don’t necessarily make myself a pattern. I usually just work with a sketch. I also make a lot of one-off custom orders for things like camera bags, or teatowel handbags, where the dimensions of the camera, or the dimensions of the teatowel actually dictate the size and construction method. I receive quite a few requests for unusual items, and I’ll usually try to make anything at least once!

I was lucky enough to work part-time for Nicole Mallalieu from You Sew Girl for a couple of years. I learned so much about sewing, bag making, using hardware and choosing the right type of interfacing to create the appropriate structure in a project. I most definitely would not have the skill level that I have today without the knowledge that I’ve gained from Nikki. That’s one of the reasons why I decided to become a You Sew Girl pattern stockist.

Donate Life

I’ve been on the waiting list for a double lung transplant since August 31st 2011. Craft really has been wonderful for keeping my spirits high, but it’s also helped me to raise awareness for organ donation. If you’re in Australia and you would like to know more, then please visit the Donate Life Website and sign up on the Australian Organ Donor Register. If you read my blog, or follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ll be the first to know when I finally receive that amazing call from the Transplant Co-ordinator.Similar Posts:

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Keeping it real and staying on track

kath_red — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:44:56 +0000

My life in this very moment is just all about quilts, quilting, fabric, stitches, threads, rotary cutter, sweeping the mess, scrap bags of fabric piling up, making space for more quilts…

In between I am trying to keep the sanity by staying real. Real life keeps butting its head into my sewing realm. Kids. Dinner. Dishes. Responsibilities. Friends. Health. … so to stay real I have to stop procrastinating, need to use my time wisely. Need to be organised. Have to stay on track. Stay focussed. …

How to stay on track … Keep lists. Use the blackboard planner. Not in fact plan too much. Be realistic. Delegate. What do you do to stay on track?

Some organisation tips:: from Elsie :: Organising the family paperwork.

Check in on our creativity series:

We also hosted: Maya on her blog tour for her new book Reinvention.

Interesting links:

Mimosa painting
Grilled pineapple salsa
Green your period
Beautiful photography
Tissue flowers (for mother’s day – the the kiddos onto this one!)
Strawberry cake

Happy mother’s day this weekend to all the mothers out there. [I share mother's day this year with my husband's birthday -- so ... kiddos you better buck up! :)]

This week I am reading some traditional quilting books from That Patchwork Place:

Foundation-Pieced Quilts (Dec 2011) :: Civil War Legacies (March 2012) :: Pretty Patchwork Quilts (March 2012) and Kaleidoscope Paper Piecing (Jan 1012). All of these quilt books are full of traditional designs and techniques that have taught me a thing or two. That Patchwork Place always has such excellence in their quilt books. The instructions, diagrams, templates and images are straightforward. Don’t get these books for the pretty styled pictures or the conversational dialogue – you won’t find it. However do get these books for a good foundation in technique and some lovely traditional style quilt designs that will challenge your skills.

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My kids magazine Action Pack Magazine for kids [facebook page]
My new book Little Bits Quilting Bee
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Guest series :: Slowing down and connecting with each other

contributor — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:55:35 +0000

Marcie has lived as an organic lettuce farmer, a tropical rainforest field technician, an Alaskan tent-dwelling field biologist, and a Manhattan biology teacher. She now has two young girls. After a few years of babywearing, Lego-playing, Play-doh-making, puppet-showing, costume-making, fort-making, worm-digging, goop-making, tadpole rearing, mudpie-making, tomato-growing, and forgetting herself and forgetting just about everything she knew while kid-less, she developed Mossy. A blog about child-rearing and family life, with a focus on simple natural growing and making projects.

I grew up spending a lot of time outside—with parents who took us camping, hiking and sailing. Before kids, I worked as an wildlife field assistant, went to graduate school in Alaska and then later taught biology and ecology in Manhattan. My creative projects were mostly geared toward rugged outdoor endeavors—functional ski gaiters, messenger bags, backpacks and snow pants.

When our two girls arrived amidst a house renovation and cloud of plaster dust, crafty projects were neglected for several years. As the girls grew, it became a matter of both necessity and pleasure to get them plugged into nature and to get their creative juices flowing through hands-on projects—felting wool, making superhero costumes, making tents and playhouses, building a vegetable garden, making a bee coop, designing field guides, making finger puppets and stuffed animals. It was really an organic evolution that we not only find ways to work together at home, but that we understand the nature behind each activity—Why does bread rise? What causes a seed to germinate? —I deemed it my “job” to nurture the creative part of our kids and offer small simple real-world experiences that matter.

I love unraveling life’s mysteries with my girls—the messy, the comical, the unexpected. Before they were here, my projects were more intricate and utilitarian in nature. Now with them my projects are smaller, slower, more whimsical and slightly messier. Always, their ideas propel things in an unexpected direction, and, in the process, we build upon an old skill, or learn a completely new one. More importantly, we’ve spent time slowing down and connecting with each other.

I think, to build lasting connections with our families and our environment, we need to understand where things come from—how they are made, how they are used, how they impact the surrounding environment throughout a life cycle. I think sustainability should be securely sewn into the fabric of every day, as an awareness that touches all that we do. Sometimes it takes substantial patience and effort to slow down and merge family and creativity. But sometimes it’s the things you do while standing still that make up who you are.

On my own, I like to think carefully about the process and combine like-minded colors and textures in my projects. I like to use high-quality cast-off fabric—wool remnants, curtains—and notions and materials like Bakelite buttons and hand-me-down silver. I like to reconstruct unwanted clothing and upholstery into vintage and modern designs. I like to make things out of things. I like to make things that will last.

A woman I used to know told me once that she was inspired by orange and sometimes red. The following people and places inspire me daily:

Charlotte Lyons :: Lisa Congdon :: Ann Wood :: Mimi Kirchner :: Micaela Preston :: Jenny Rosenstrach :: Maya Donenfeld :: Rachel Ball :: Elisabeth Dunker :: Gayla Trail :: Stone Barns :: Storm King Art Center

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Guest series :: Crafting is my lifeboat

contributor — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:24:29 +0000

Heidi writes the mostly crafty blog, Speckless, and sells crochet and embroidery patterns in her Etsy shop of the same name. Heidi lives, loves, and makes in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her happy little family: boyfriend Nicky and a little orange cat named Penny.

Crafting is My Lifeboat

Becoming unemployed is devastating in many ways, but most profoundly, it is emotionally damaging. Each day that passes brings more fear, uncertainty, anxiety, and loss of self-worth and confidence. But this isn’t a sob story. This is a story about how creativity helped me weather the storm and how it made me come out the other side a better person.

The first few days after I was laid-off were kind of blurry. I was in shock. I think I slumped on the couch watching-but-not-really-watching daytime TV. Then I decided to get busy . . . busy being creative. Busy making. I can honestly say that craft and creativity helped me stay sane during this very trying time and shaped my outlook on life by giving me a sense of control in the face of uncertainty.

The first thing I had to get control of was my schedule. No more TV after my morning job searches. Instead, I lined up creative projects to accomplish and check off a list – macrame, sewing, paper crafts, jewelry-making, wood-working, crochet . . . you name it, I probably tried it. Crafting helped structure my days, kept me busy, and gave me a sense of normalcy. In turn, this structure lent a sense of purpose. I was occupied, working hard, and learning. At the end of the day, I had something physical to show for my time, and it felt good.

As I’m sure some of you know, being jobless and struggling to find employment can really strike a death-blow to one’s self-esteem. My self-imposed craft adventure not only gave me control of my days, but it also helped keep my self-worth ignited. I was reading every craft book I could get my hands on, scouring blogs, and flexing my creative muscles as hard as I could. Every day I felt mentally stronger – learning, growing, gaining experience, and expanding my skill-set.

Staying focused on creativity was helpful. Having a sense of self-worth was great. Still, there were really bad days – really awful discouraging days. And this is where craft helped the most. Being absorbed in making something – anything – was one thing that really transported my mind elsewhere. Crafting can be a very soothing, almost meditative experience, and this is invaluable for anyone struggling through a hard time.

I don’t want to say that craft saved my life, but it definitely kept me afloat when I felt like everything around me was sinking. Looking back, I see now that this experience shaped my life profoundly for the better. I learned an encyclopedias-worth of craft and creative knowledge, I found my niche in pattern-making, and I started my blog – a life-changer in itself!

Photos are a small sampling of projects I tried during my unemployment:

paper tube wall art inspired by Cut-Out-And-Keep
pom pom flowers inspired by Domestifluff
pajaki inspired by Resurrection Fern

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