Fabric shopping > cleaning

Posted on July 5, 2012 by thecuriouskiwi

Just a quick post to say I’m still here, I’ve just been recovering because last weekend was MOVE DAY! Yay! Finally!

Originally it took just the two of us 5 truck loads and two days to move everything into storage but with the help of some awesome family members (Mechanical Bother-in-Law and Father-Who-Didn’t-Lift-Anything-Heavy-If-His-Wife-Asks) we managed to move everything out on Saturday in just 3 truck loads, phew!

Nerdy Husband and Mechanical Brother-in-Law seemed dismayed at the number of boxes labelled “Mel’s Room (Sewing)” or “Fabric” but Father-Who-Didn’t-Lift-Anything-Heavy-If-His-Wife-Asks knows his daughter well and just smiled.

I know you guys will understand 😉

I love our new house but unfortunately I haven’t had much time to enjoy it yet. Despite the previous owners paying a cleaner for the morning I still ended up spending most of the weekend cleaning the kitchen before I ran out of energy. So I have no future-sewing-room photos for you just yet. The problem is that my room is currently serving as wardrobe, dressing room and linen cupboard until I get a chance to thoroughly clean them too. There is only one word to describe their current state: feral.

The plan this weekend is more cleaning (sarcastic yay) so that I can get our clothing, linen and towels out of future-sewing-room. Then I can re-assemble my sewing table and shelves, which all had to be pulled apart to get them down the tiny hallway of our rental house, and then the fun really begins!

I better hurry up because my fabric shelves just got some new additions…

Excuse the wobbly cell phone photo – hands were full of fabric

50% off at Arthur Toye? Well if you insist… 😉

Green & white cotton/spandex for an experiment to recreate my favourite (and almost falling apart) workout top and 2 x 100% viscose prints

Some sort of knit with sparkly stripe, some suiting and a lace – because I really want to make a lace overlay dress! Possibly to combine with the suiting fabric beside it as a more work-appropriate version (?)

Lace detail

I am looking forward to sharing photos of my room with you as I set it up so watch this space next week when, hopefully, normal service resumes…

Sewing as Art – Light Trail Dresses

Posted on June 18, 2012 by thecuriouskiwi

How ridiculously amazing are these?!

They are “Light Trail Dresses” by Atton Conrad, a London-based advertising and art photographer.

It’s hard to pick a favourite but I think I love the one top right the most, or maybe the one below it…argh, I can’t decide! How about you?

You know what would be amazing? Having to translate these to real dresses. Very cool project.

I have long been a fan of photographic light painting but this takes it to a whole new level!

See more of Atton’s amazing photography on his website.

Want to see something else really cool?

This is my future sewing room!

Ignore the furniture, this image is from the real estate website, so we’ll call this a “before” image.

Features:

It’s north facing, so lot’s of natural light through that huge window
Double wardrobe to hide any UFOs 😉
It’s close to the kitchen for nourishing snacks when I am in a sewing frenzy (hah!)
It’s HUGE! I’ll be able to have my cutting/layout table set up again, finally!

Less than two weeks to go!

Déjà vu

Posted on May 21, 2012 by thecuriouskiwi

Remember this image?

They took my toys – April 2011

Well it happened again 😦

All gone…again!

But I have good news, the Curious Kiwis have a new burrow, of their very own! Yes! We bought a house! So excited! So many exclamation marks, I know!! I am actually bouncing off of the walls!

Well now I am, previously I was just battling mega-stress. Hence the lack of posts the last few ~~days?~~ ~~weeks?~~ oh I don’t know, but it’s been a while I know.

I knew this would be a big deal mentally and I thought I’d be able to cope, continue with life as per normal. Seriously, my last year of Uni was pretty full-on, I’ve moved country, twice and I planned my own wedding including making my own wedding dress. I’ll tell you right now, none of those compares to the stress level of buying a house for me.

Placing it firmly behind me, unfortunately we don’t get to move in until June 29th and we have run out of time on our rental. We are out this week, back to living with family. So it’s all getting packed up again, but, for the last time, yay!

There are some goods things when it comes to packing:

Can you see it?

Yay, my errant jeans thread!

As blogged about here, turns out it snuck down deep inside my filing cabinet hiding under a big pile of patterns. Oh yeah, remember those jeans? One day…

So, confession time: My machines are packed because I will have no room at our temporary accommodation for sewing. So there will be no sewing to share but I’ll be around with the magazines and other fun posts as I can, please stick around, I’ll be haunting all your gorgeous blogs plus I can finally enjoy my Sundays again. So instead of traipsing through all the Open Homes I can handle I get to go hang out with the Wellington Fabric Hoarders instead! More yay!

What else has happened lately? We’ve officially been back home in NZ for 1 year, so much yay, but wow! How fast can a year go by?! My 2nd blogoversary passed unnoticed and un-celebrated by me, but it’s all good. My birthday is also coming up and, just like last year’s dress, this year’s dress is going to be fashionably late too. But I do get to fantasise about how amazing it’s going to be for the next 5 weeks, I’ll share with you my thoughts.

On Saturday, post-packing, I did treat myself by going to Fabric-a-brac, here are the goodies I brought home with me:

Wow, I didn’t realise how retro they looked until I stuck them all together 🙂

On the left some sort of jersey/knit that makes me think of The Jetsons 😉 Amy Butler cotton at the bottom, another cotton at the top (three largish pieces) LOVE the colours, and on the right a small strip of heavy cotton that would make a cute belt, bag or purse.