Please forgive me!

Forgive me readers for I have sinned, it has been too long a time since my last entry....yeah yeah I know, stop dribbling Naomi, and just tell us why you've poked your head back in here....well the main reason is coz I have a wonderful friend (She's actually my stitchin sister), Marion, who bought Raelene and I some delightful flowers today....and it was over 45'c when she personally delivered them....poor thing looked like she was in danger of melting.

As you can see, the flowers are just gorgeous aren't they? I think they're Singapore Orchids....thanks heavens someone told me they're fairly tolerant of hot weather and should last a wee while...but if they don't, I have pics of them and the memory of her face when she gave them to us.

THanks Marion, love ya long time baby xxx

Other news...we go back to school next week, and it's not supposed to cool down much before then...so my name is mud in Raelene's book...oh well, the schooling is for a good/greater cause than melting!

This year, we're studying Small Business Enterprise and Sewing Makes Cents. Will keep you all up to date with what's going on throughout the terms.

I have made some Black & White, "Used2b-ya" shopping bags.....seens as though 4th May is the deadline for plastic shopping bags here in Sth Australia, Raelene and I are trying to do our bit to help people not all have to have those horrid green reusable shopping bags...we have several brightly coloured ones that we use....and the Black & white ones, we've made to sell...$4 each (AUD) which is expensive if you want to compare them with the green ones ($1.00 AUD) BUT ours are not mass produced and each colour/fabric design is a limited edition...we have certain fabrics we use for the "Used2b-ya" bags....usually from vintage sheets, fabrics that are purchased at thrift shops and quilt covers.....anything that has been previously used, is washed and disenfected to ensure they are hygienic.

Another factor that people need to consider when weighing up the difference between our bags, and those available at the supermarket...ours are VERY strong....can post a pic showing one holding several hard covered books and the handles aren't even struggling under the weight! (My arms and back do trying to lift it mind!) are fully machine washable...most are made with 100% cotton or with poly cotton fabrics...and are not mass produced in a sweat shop....although at the moment, the heat in the room we do the sewing in, could be considered a sweat shop of sorts! lol

We plan to make alot more of the shopping bags...so if you are interested in buying some, please contact me via email...and I can organise as many as you need! So long as you aren't stocking the shelves of Coles or Woolies Australia wide! I can't sew that quick!

Try and stay cool the best you can...roll on cooler weather.

Hugs
Naomi

A giveaway on Linda's blog!

Afternoon,

I have spent the last few hours reading emails, trying to catch up (it never happens though - delete is my best friend, after I'm briefly read the contents though) and then I had to read one from Jenny F and she mentioned she had a tutorial on her blog....being the tutorial junkie that I am, I took off, tail wagging and THEN when I saw down the bottom of that post that Linda (of Bozzy's Blog) has a giveaway....Yep, you guessed it, I went there too...a condition of her giveaway is that you choose which one of the 3, yes THREE giveaways she has on offer...and put a link back to her blog....she's hoping to break her record number of comments, so lets all jump on the bandwagon to help Linda with her quest...and click on the link here and comment away!

I'll even add her blog to the ones I have listed in the menu on the right of my blog!

Hugs
Naomi

All's quiet on the southern front!

Good moaning!

All's quiet with people checking out my blog and signing up for the Pay It Forward...surely one of you wants a gift from me? I guess that would be the case if anyone was actually reading this, other than me as I write posts! lol If you do happen to read this, please consider doing your bit for Pay It Forward, and let's get everyone feeling it! So to speak that is.

I've seen some gorgeous quilts today and have saved some patterns I've downloaded off the net, to my USB stick and will be going to Officeworks later today to print stuff off so I can get back into making things and putting them on here for show and tell!

Cath Ü has some great ideas in the making for her Teddy Bear club...check out her blog in my list or click here and check out all her latest goodies. I'm loving the new "wotnot" boxes her and hubby have made....I don't think that's what they're calling them, but that's what I've names the boxes. Cath Ü wood burned them and then painted them...she says by hand, but I think she cheated and used a brush and paint!

Ok, well I'm off to look at some more blogs, check my emails and go to bed.

Nuh Night
Hugs
Naomi

I'm ba-ack!

I thought I'd give everyone a wee break from my jibber jabbering on, but as I have signed up for a Pay It Forward for this year (2009) on Vickies blog. I will be cheating and copying and pasting the info about the Pay It Forward from Christines blog...hope that's ok to do....will more than likely get beaten with a big stick now....but see the risk I'm willing to take, just to Pay It Forward! lol

So, here's the info about the P.I.F......Below are the rules, and just as soon as I work out how to put it on here, the button to copy and put on your blog, will also be here, somewhere! Come and join the fun.
Here are the Pay It Forward Exhange "rules".. The first three people will be chosen to participate once they leave a comment on this post asking to join the Pay It Forward Exchange..By asking to join, they are agreeing to post a similar announcement on their blog, and Pay It Forward to three more people, who will in turn agree to Pay It Forward etc. So what does it mean?

Vickie is going to send me and her other participants one handmade item sometime in the next 12 months.....I, in turn, will send one handmade item to each of the three participants who signed up via my blog, within the next 12 months..You, in turn, will send one handmade item to each of your participants, and so on.

Just on a closing note, I haven't seen the movie "Pay It Forward", but I'm liking the idea behind it. If you haven't heard about the movie, click here and you can read about it.

My Pay It Forwards are:
1. Cath Ü
2. Melissa
3. Sharon

I have now completed Cath Ü's and Sharons PIF....just Melissa to go.

Hugs
Naomi

P.S. Edited to add the button for your blog

Spotlight Visit # 2

I think I'll just put a heap of pics and not alot of text this time, I'm taking sooooo long to put it all up, but want to show everyone what I've bought!

Coming up, I've put the wool and 15mm knitting needles I bought. I got the needles to try out a pattern for a poncho knitted in the Flurry (Poor mans Feathers!) yarn.








As if I could ever put pics and not much text! These two were in the remnant bin....yes I got the paisley print one again!










The ones to the left were also in the remnant bin, but not in the fabric department, they were in the upholstery section where you buy curtain fabrics! Still $2 a metre for glittery strong material makes some cheap shopping totes.




The ones to the right were all marked down especially the Christmas angel one on the far right of the pic, it was 75% off...so it ended up being about $3.25 or close to that for a metre.

The one with the white background was just $3.00 a metre....had to get 2 metres of that!

Other recent purchases - Non Spotlight

GASP.....Shock horror I hear you say, but yes, it's true, I don't just get fabric from Mum or Spotlight! I got the tea towels from our local supermarket, and the pattern from Oztion....an Australian Auction site similar to Ebay but cheaper to sell on!

December Spotlight Trip # 1

I actually probably went there more than twice, however these are the latest two times I went, and what I bought. In this first pic, it kind of shows all I bought that time, including what's under the white folded stuff right at the end. I'll show that pile in another pic. I did get some freezer paper from Mums' but if I try it out and get hooked on applique, then I'll run out in a hurry...not now...I have a whole roll of it all myself....if I don't get hooked on it, I'm sure Khris (from C-R-A-F-T) will be able to make use of it! Most of the fabrics that you can see were purchased Christmas Eve and were 50% off on a Managers In Store Only special. I've taken some close ups which you can scroll down and see. To the left you can see from top to bottom....the large paisley style print, the really pretty flamingo and tropically looking one, and some mottled black with multi coloured musical notes on it, which was out the remnant bin....I got that (just about a metre from memory) for $2 a metre! It's normally $9.95 a metre so I was rapt. The others were already discounted but still got 50% off, hee hee hee. The one that you can just see a small triangle of on the edge was one of the 50% off ones. I never pick any out of the discounted quilting bolt stuff that's over $8.00 a metre, so at most I paid $4.00 a metre for the stuff I got. To the right you have quilting fabric with bags on....doesn't get much better than that in my extremely novice opinion! There's also some purple and black floral and the same pattern in pink and black, then at the bottom of the pile is some "Pretty In Punk" quilt fabric. I'm not actually sure if that's a play on words i.e. it's punk/gothic or if the designer is from New Zealand and it should say Pretty In Pink! ***Sorry to any of my New Zealand Friends or maybe ex-friends after that comment*** Now onto the pic of the pile of goodies that were at the end of the pic. That stuff is for a sew-a-long I'm doing during January on the Bags To Brag about tutorial(B2BA T) group (see my links list). I hope the folded white stuff will be ok, as I believe it's the closest to Fusible Fleece that Spotlight sell.



Ok the sheet of paper you can see inside a plastic sleeve is the bag we're all making (over on B2BA T), I have 2 white zips there as I'm being adventageous and making two bags at once!









This is the fabric choices for bag number 1. I'll be using the same fabric as the one shown on the bottom of this pic, on bag number 2, which is also in the next pic. In this one, it looks more pink than it actually is.










As I said, the same base colour but different ones as the focal fabric.

In this one, the mutual fabric is more like it's proper colour.

And what was in bag # 3?

After the fake fur, came another pink and purple spotty bag, what was in that I wonder?....let's take a look....


OOOh are you getting tired of waiting yet????? Tick tock tick tock......ok ok, it's coming, right now....
Sorry about that, the pic is sideways, but you get the idea....lots of different colours to make bags with there hey? Now a few close ups for the nosey girls from the C-R-A-F-T Yahoo group we're all in!

If you look closely enough, you can see the packet of press studs slipped in between the green patterned fabric and the fawny coloured satin crap! Also, along the way there are two partly used packs of blue and green bias binding.

On the right there are a couple of pieces of light pink ribbing and a bright pink piece of ribbing to be used when I make my gorgeous grand daughter some tracky's for winter.

Now before fur activists jump down my throat and greenpeace come knocking on my door with lynch mob in tow.....the piece of fur that is barely visible on bottom left corner of the pic, is more than likely older than me, and was acquired decades before it wasnt the done thing to skin animals for fashion and/or beauty.....I apologise for it, but in reality....that piece of fur will more than likely be just kept as a keepsake of my Nanna as I believe that' s who my Mum got it from.

Ok, a close up pic of the other end of that row now....sorry if the fur is till in view, but ignore it, if it bothers you.
Now, out with the magnifying glasses again gals...on the top of the fawny coloured piece (three or four in from the right) is a rolled up piece of red and white silky ric rac....now that's vintage, it's probably about 50 years old knowing how old I am and that my mum's a bigger (and I'm having to be werry werry careful with spelling here!) hoarder (phew didn't say the wrong thing!) of stuff than I am...which is not easy I tell ya! I'm a bad bad pack rat, but am going to try and get out of that over the course of this year.

And like the sands in the hourglass, so are the endless pics of my fabric score! Ok, so not quite endless, but felt like it when I had to work out how to add them to the blog and get them in the right spots.....they kept appearing up the top of the blog entry...GRRRRRR I wanted them to be where the cursor was....nothing that a cut and post didn't fix *grins*

The above pic is the last of the "freebie" stuff I got from my mum....this was mostly the "off the bolt" stuff. Wanna see what's inside??? Well I'm not going to share! Oh Oh, I'd better share, coz A. Sharon'll flog me if I don't *grins*.

The dark blue with white flowers wasn't on a bolt though nor was the one directly to the right of it...they were pieces (5 metres or more each piece) that she had and told me to take half!

Although they may be folded different shapes, the others are all off the bolts...If there was heaps on the bolt, she said I could have more of those ones, so it wouldn't fold the same way as the smaller pieces.



And the above is taken from slightly further over...if you look at both pics...the pink with white flowers that's almost in the middle of this pic is visible in the pic before it. The pink one with the birds on is really pretty...has pale pink back ground and different shades of pink birds over it.

On the right shows a close up of the far right fabrics. Bet the doll makers would make use of some of them hey?

Photos of the goodies from the trip to my mums in December '08

Ok, this should be fun....I've added a photo to my profile and that worked, lets see if I can't stuff something up now when I try and add photos of the goodies I scored whilst I visited my mum at the beginning of December last year....doesn't that seem strange to say last year, when this time yesterday, it was last year!

Alrighty, I'm not sure how pics go in, so I might just put a couple up of some fake fur fabric and then can put the other pics up if they work out...I think I would become very frustrated if I uploaded (or thought I had!) a heap of pics to find out it either stuffed up the blog, or didn't work at all.

Here goes it.... Ok I think I got the three pics in the right order....the one above is the two bags that the fake fur was loaded into...then underneath left was what was in the right hand bag in the upper picture, and then to get the colour a bit better on the bright pink, AND get a pic of the leopard print, I moved the camera slightly and took the photo below right. So far so good....now to publish this lot, wipe the sweat off my brow and try another entry to the blog...with pictures! Hugs Naomi

Happy New Year everyone

Just want to wish anyone reading this, a safe, healthy and happy year for 2009 and beyond. I'm about to back track a little with the blog, but will close this message off and start another entry for that. Hugs Naomi