Miracles can happen

Well, another year had passed, it was 25th March, 2015, one year to the day of losing our little boys.
It just so happened that with timing, I underwent an IVF procedure - it is as if our little boys were giving their blessing and telling us everything would be OK. That day was so full of emotions and feelings for both of us.
That procedure resulted in a pregnancy!
We found out we were pregnant with fraternal twins, but at 7 weeks lost one of the babies (for a day or two we thought we'd lost the entire pregnancy).
The remaining baby grew and thrived - an extremely active little one!

Scott and Tess - Tess heavily pregnant! We were laughing in this photo because bub was kicking up a storm!

Anyway... our beautiful little boy, Quinn, arrived safely on the 2nd of December 2015!
Here he is at six weeks old:

Miracles can happen - we are feeling very blessed with this little one.

Plastic bag storage... kind of random, I know

Plastic shopping bags.
Wow. Those things are soooo like Tribbles!

This is kind of how I felt when I would open the in the broom closet that the shopping bags were in:

James T Kirk - Star Trek Original Series - The Trouble With Tribbles

About 10 years ago, I made this out of a tea-towel:

Plastic bag dispenser made from a tea-towel

The above image is my actual plastic bag dispenser. Ideally, it would always look like that. Trouble was, there were always more shopping bags than there was room. The dispenser would end up over-flowing, and I would end up having it, as well as plastic bags filled with plastic bags in the broom cupboard.

It was a total mess!

I searched around on-line for ideas about storing plastic bags and found many about folding plastic bags. The idea intrigued me.

This is pretty much what happens (click on the images to view larger versions):

1. Take a plastic bag, and flatten it out as much as you can, getting rid of any air trapped inside:

Flatten out plastic bag

2. Fold bag in half, straight down the middle, horizontally:

Fold in half horizontally

3. Fold in half again, edge to edge, horizontally:

Fold in half again horizontally

4. Take the bottom corner and fold it up at an angle, so that the end is aligned with the edge:

Fold the bottom corner up at an angle

5. Fold over so that the corner meets the edge:

Fold the top corner over to align with the edge

6. Fold over again so that the corner meets the edge:

Fold over again

7. Keep repeating this, until you reach where the handles start:

Keep folding until you reach where the handles start

8. Carefully fold until you match the bottom corner with the top edge (and there is approximately 7.5cm [or 3 inches] of handle protruding:

Fold the bottom corner upwards to meet the top edge

Bottom corner folded up to meet the top edge

9. If the handle protrudes out a little far, you may need to fold it back over approximately 2.5 cm (1 inch).

You may need to fold the handle back approximately 2.5 cm (1 inch)

10. Fold the bottom corner up:

Fold the bottom corner up

11. Turn it around, so that the point is facing away from you, and lift one layer of the folded bag up. It should look a little like a pocket. Push the folded handle into the 'pocket'.

12. Push it all the way in..

13. A nice, neat plastic bag.

14. A basket-load of plastic bags.

I tuck that little basket in my kitchen drawer along with wraps and freezer bags. When the above photo was taken, there were 65 plastic bags.

I have now whittled that down to 10.

I have found that by having them in that basket they are used far more often.

I am now trying out Baggu re-usable standard size shopping bags that I purchased from eBay - I like them a lot better than those big non-woven 'green bags' you can get from Coles, Woollies, Aldi, etc, as they fold down a lot smaller.

Mother's Day

It's been 12 months since my last post.
Sorry for that.

We've been through lots of changes in our lives. Lots of IVF.

Today is Mother's Day here in Australia. It's been a really tough day for myself and my husband.

Seven weeks ago we were pregnant with identical twin boys. Then we lost them to twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome at 16 weeks. Plus it appears I have an incompetent cervix, though that was not the cause of our losing our boys.

These are our little boys:

We named them Jonathan Scott and Alexander William. Those are names we loved and they fit both of our boys perfectly.

Six months prior to that we lost another little one. Too early to tell the gender of our little Angel. Two years prior to that, another set of twins, again, too little to tell their gender.

We have now lost five little Angels (that we know of). I really wish God would stop taking our children from us. I don't know why He does it. Maybe it is part of some kind of Plan. Who knows?

All we can do is hope and pray. We will keep trying. We are taking six month break from the IVF as my body didn't do to well (I lost 1.5L blood and became severely anaemic). My IVF specialist, Gynacologist and Nephrologist all want me to get well and leave it for six months...

Here is a small poem I wrote. I am not a poet. I am not a trained writer. I just wrote how I feel.

Mother’s Day

My heart leapt with joy
When I knew there were two
Both of you, my little boys

We’d lost two before
And then a third, then we found we were having two again
My heart leapt with awe

We knew being parents to twins would be hard
We knew it wouldn’t be easy
We didn’t know grief would again pierce our hearts like a glass shard

We thought we were safe, four months along
We cautiously began to hope and feel joy… feel safe
Our hearts full of song

Then the unspeakable happened, both of you gone
Our hearts broken
No longer full of song

Dreams are shattered
Hope broken and gone
Nothing else mattered

Tears in our eyes
Pain in our hearts
We say our good-byes

Today is Mother’s Day
I am a mother to five little angels
For them I pray

We see other parents and wish them many joys
We wish our children were alive with us
We miss our beautiful little boys

People who have used my pattern :-)

I think I've become more inspired to go back to crafting because I've only just realised how popular my peasant blouse pattern has become!

A big thanks to the people who use it!

Notable mentions:

• http://pinktulipza.blogspot.com.au/2009/05/peasant-blouse.html
• http://craftingwithcookie.blogspot.com.au/2011/02/found-adult-peasant-blouse-tutorial.html
• http://www.strictly-homemade.com/2012/10/womens-peasant-top-from-vintage-material.html

And I've been Pinterested (is that even such a word???):

http://pinterest.com/pin/123004633543410226/

I know its kind of absurd that I am happy that people are using the pattern/tutorial I created... its just that I like to share what I create.

I hope everyone who uses this pattern found it easy and had fun with it. ♥
Cheers,
Tess

Slackness!!!!

Blimey! Nearly 2 years since my last post!

Life happens so much!

Well I am going to change that, I need to re-connect to my creative self again. I have allowed my work to consume me too much.

I am going to endeavour to have a tutorial completed and uploaded every two to three weeks.

I really, really, really need to let my creative side out!

Painting

Not able to go to work today, due to the floods here in Toowoomba. My work closed down for a couple of days. I hope it will be open tomorrow.
I will have to get some new water colours and guache as it has been that long since I used them they have dried up!!!!!
I have water colour tempera discs and am using those. Will wait and see the effect.
I do prefer a combination of water colours and guache...

Wow...

I have been soooooo slack [read: incredibly busy]. Nearly a year since my last post. Geez I'm sad.
I really have to find time for myself and things I like to do. I haven't sewn for 1 year and 3 months.
Why does life have to be soooooo busy???

Happy New Year!

This year I intend to try to post about once a week (at least a minimum of twice a month). I was really, really, really slack last year. Had a lot on our plates with illness, moving, family deaths...

I just know this year will be a lot more happier, as I am going to try to keep my mind in a more crafty place. Sorry to use a cliché, but happiness is a state of mind - a state of mind that I intend to keep by creating more this year. I did very little creating last year and thus was probably more negative in my outlook on everything - if I can't create or craft things I feel really stale and can get into a negative state of mind.

So, Happy New Year Everyone, and get delirious creating things! :)

Cheers,
Tess

Thank-you for your kind words!

To the kind person who sent me the lovely email through my site - thank-you!

Subject: This Site Rocks!
Message: I've been looking and looking for a simple pattern to make a peasant blouse for thi halloween. I found the pattern on you site and it worked great! I just wanted to say thank you for maintianing such a great resource for free.

I am really sorry I cannot thank you directly, because for some reason, my contact form has started cutting out the senders email address. :(

Hopefully this will be fixed soon...

Cheers, Tess

Omigosh, Omigosh! Pedigree Dolls!

Omigosh, Omigosh! How lucky am I??

As you must realise by now, I like dolls (don't play with em, just like to collect and make them). I made my first sewn doll when I was eleven. I still have her. Anyway, since I was a little girl, I was always fascinated by my Mum's Pedigree walker doll, Sally. I played with her all the time. She is 22" with dark curly hair and blue eyes. My sister has her now, but I gotta say, I always wanted one.

My Mum came back from her walk and said: "Isn't it that doll show on today?" I'd clean forgot!

Today is the annual Doll, Bear & Miniature Show, run by Toowoomba Doll & Miniature Club, (a registered charity, raising funds for the Toowoomba & District Down Syndrome Support Group). I went with my Mum, and, came back with.... a 16" Pedigree walker with blue eyes and dark curly hair! I had been saving for ages, and ages and ages for a Pedigree walker doll. I couldn't decide between her and a 22" one similar to my Mum's. Well, I got back home, and my husband saw how happy I was - he convinced me to go back and get the second one!! Yay!!

I present, for your viewing, Holly (in blue) and Samantha (in lavender):
I managed to snap a clear(ish) image with my cruddy digital camera. I thought it had died a few months ago, but it is still kind of working. Half the images it takes are blurry - even using a tripod. Mind you, it has been up and down the eastern side of Australia, and done lots of travelling...

Changing bullet colour in Open Office.org Writer (a quick tutorial)

The previous post, a tutorial on how to make an adult-size peasant blouse, was also made available in PDF format. I used Open Office.org Writer (here on in, I'll just refer to it as 'Writer') to do this.

I wanted to have nice coloured bullets, to go with the colour scheme I used for the headings, not the default black ones. I didn't want to use image bullets, I just wanted to use simple round coloured disc bullets.

It really doesn't take too much to change the colour of the bullets in Writer.

Note: I like to have Nonprinting Characters showing when I use Writer, because I am less likely to miss empty paragraphs, wreck styles, etc.

Step One: Open up Writer, create a simple list

• Kind of
  
• like
  
• this
• one
  

Step Two: Left click your mouse to the Left (in the margin). See the little "I" beam? - I'm just holding the mouse to the left so you can see where I clicked.
When you have actually clicked, the bullet fields will actually show up. The cursor will blink on the left of the bullet. (You can see the cursor is next to the word 'here')

Step Two: Right click your mouse to bring up the context menu, and then select "Character"
This will bring up this window:
Step Three: Click on "Font Color", and choose a nice colour. I chose a customised colour that I had created to suit myself:
Step Four: Click on "Ok":

Notice the cursor is still on the left of the bullet? And the bullet fields are still selected? To deselect (get away from) the bullet fields, click somewhere to the right.
Step Five: Enjoy making your nice, different coloured bullets!
This also works for numbering too!

Adult-size Peasant Blouse Tutorial

I've been losing weight recently (yay!) and as my sizing is at the moment in fluctuation, and many of my blouses now look like big, baggy, daggy night-shirts on me (and funds are a bit tight at the moment) I needed to make myself some cheap tops/blouses, (that also suited me and looked nice). I decided to make myself a couple of peasant tops.

I couldn't find a commercial pattern that I liked (they all seemed to have really low cut necks), and I found a wonderful tutorial by Vegbee on how to make a peasant blouse for little 'uns. It really showed me how to construct a peasant blouse. You rock, Vegbee!

I needed to find a way to measure myself to make an adult-size peasant blouse (I kind of muddled along at this, I'm terrible at mathematics!). This has taken me about a week of measuring, sewing 5 toils - the neck-line and arm-holes were tricky... I over estimated my size on one of them... you could have fit two of me in it! Yes, I do suck that much at measurements! Lucky I sewed using the largest stitch on my machine!

I prefer a slightly higher neckline, so I make my armscye (the armhole) deeper. Adjust the depth of the armscye to suit yourself, to be shallower, if you prefer ‘an off the shoulder’ or lower (wider) neckline.

Just for your information:
Step One – Find your measurements:
Find your ‘width’ (measurement 1)

• You need to find where your widest measurement is.
• To do this, measure yourself around your bust and your hips.
• (I say to measure your bust and hips because some are bigger in the bust than their hips and vice-versa)
• My widest measurement was around my hips, which was 124 cm or 49"
• Divide this amount in half – for me, it was 62 cm or 24 ½"
• Divide this in half again – for me, it was 31 cm or 12 ¼"
• Whatever your measurement, add 4.5 cm or 1 ¾"
• For me, this measurement (Measurement 1) was 35.56 cm or 14"

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Find your ‘length’ (measurement 2)

• Measure from the top of your shoulder, over the point of your bust, to however long you want your top
• For me, this measurement (Measurement 2) was 74cm or 29"

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Find your armhole ‘depth’ (measurement 3)

• Measure your armscye (arm-hole) by measuring from the top of your shoulder to how deep you want your armhole, to approximately the seam-line under your arm.
• For me, this measurement (Measurement 3) is 31.1cm or 12 ¼".

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Step Two – Draw up your pattern pieces:
Ruling up the bodice paper

• On a large piece of paper* draw up a rectangle with the dimensions from Measurement 1 and Measurement 2 – for me that was a rectangle with a dimension of 35.56 cm × 74cm or 14" × 29".

• This will be the bodice section.

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Ruling up the armhole:

• On the rectangular piece of paper, at the upper right corner, measure down 25.4 cm or 10", make a small mark.
• From the upper right corner, measure across (to the left) 15.24 cm or 6", make a small mark.
• Rule a light line between both points.

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Ruling up the neckhole:

• On the same rectangular piece of paper, at the upper left corner, measure down 3.8 cm or 1 ½", make a small mark.
• Rule a light line from this point to the point previously shown.

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Drawing both the arm- and neck-holes:

• Use a curved ruler / flexible ruler to draw a curved line from one point to another (as shown in illustration)
• If you haven’t got a curved ruler, just sketch it very lightly with a pencil until you are happy with the curve. Then go over with a darker pencil line.
  
• If you take a piece of string, and lay it over the harm-hole and measure it (green line in illustration below), it should be about 31.1cm or 12 ¼", which is Measurement 3. You may have to adjust the angle of your curved ruler / sketching to get to be the right depth for you.
• I haven't really mentioned the neck-hole depth and measurements, because it is elasticized/drawstring and you can adjust the elastic (or drawstring) to suit your sizing requirements.
  

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• You will end up with the arm- and neck-holes drawn as shown in the picture below
  

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Now for the sleeves:

• I am having a ‘puff’ sleeve, so I need a bit of space in my sleeve
• I want a slightly longer sleeve to make it puffy, but not too puffy.
• My sleeve will need to be about 45.72 cm or 18" long, by 27.94 cm or 11", on the fold (opened up it would be 45.72 cm or 18" 55.88 cm or 22").
• This can be made shorter, the choice is yours.
• The sleeve pattern is easy to make, take a rectangle, and use the neck- and arm-holes of the bodice section as a template. An explanation follows.

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• Take another piece of rectangular paper, 45.72 cm or 18" long, by 27.94 cm or 11", place it beneath your bodice section.

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• Hold the smaller piece of paper in place by paper clips or some other non-permanent adhesive (such as blu-tac or low-stick tape).

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• Cut around the neck-hole and arm-hole guidelines (the parts discarded are represented by the grey bits).

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• These are the paper templates that you should end up with.

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Mark your pattern pieces so you know which part is what.

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Step Three – Cut out your fabric:
Laying out and cutting the fabric:

• Layout the fabric, place the bodice section on the fold, and the sleeve section on the fold.
• Cut out.
• I cheat a bit and cut two layers on the fold – be careful, though, some fabrics are naturally a bit ‘slippy’, and this can cause issues when cutting out (such as one part being misaligned).

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Step Four – Sewing your blouse:
Sew the sleeves to the armholes:

• Place a sleeve piece on a bodice piece, sew around arm-hole (shown by red line).

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• Place the second sleeve piece on the other arm-hole. Sew (shown by red line).

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• Fold over the sleeves (as shown), so that the armholes meet

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• Lay second bodice piece on top, sew where shown in the diagram (indicated by red lines).

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• Pull sleeves out, lining up edges.

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Sew the side seams:

• Sew from sleeve end down side to bottom hem (as indicated by blue line).

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Sew the neck casing:

• Fold over neck-hole to make the casing for your drawstring or elastic, sew down, leaving a hole for you to thread the drawstring or elastic through.

• Thread the elastic through, fasten ends of elastic, sew down opening.

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Sew the sleeve casings:

• Fold over sleeve ends to make the casing for your drawstring or elastic, sew down, leaving a hole for you to thread the draw-string or elastic through.

The finished blouse:

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Ideas for finishing:

• Hem around bottom, maybe add lace, ric-rac, ribbon or Broderie Anglais
• Add elastic around waist (at bottom).
• Add elastic under bust and hem around bottom (like in the picture below). If you do this, use bias binding or tape and sew it to inside of blouse under bust-line. Thread elastic through and secure. Length of elastic is measurement under bust minus 5 cm or 2".

My measurements (they may be handy for you for layout):

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* I got an end-roll of unprinted on white newsprint paper from our local newspaper for AUD$4.00. It is about 80 cm (32") wide and can have anywhere between 30 meters (approximately 32 yards) and 100 or more meters (approximately 109 yards) of paper on it.

PDF (1.15MB) of tutorial here - Right Click and Save As.

View here via Google Docs