Poppalina

Eyelet necklace

I'm loving my new necklace.

I got it from the lovely Kathy at Buttonmania <www.buttonmania.com.au> in Melbourne, who designed and makes them herself.

Made from what must be hundreds of eyelets, on an elastic strand 156 cm around (that's 1.7 yards to you Americans), you can double or triple it up, twist and knot it around - it's very versatile. Mine's pink, but you can get lots of other colours too.

I'm partial to statement jewellery, and this definitely fits the bill. I had four separate compliments on it the other day.

My inheritance

This Christmas, I started taking photos of some of the beautiful textiles in my grandmother's home. Then it occurred to me that I don't really have a record of her personal style. Photos taken in her various homes throughout her life have mainly been of people. That's important too, but one of the things I dearly love about my grandma is the way she puts objects together in a room.

The way she'll disguise the ugliness of a heater, for instance, by surrounding it with so many lovely things, you no longer even notice it's there.

I missed the opportunity to record her decorative style with the gorgeous house she and my grandpa had when I was growing up. I've missed it with the smaller house they moved to when the old place became too much to handle. I'm left with the tiny flat she lives in now that she's a widow and 91 years old.

But it still speaks so strongly of her and her unique aesthetic. I look at what she does, and I see love.

In with the new (and out with the old)

On Friday, I went to pick up a new machine: woo hoo!

It's what I call a babylocker, but since the brand name is, in fact, Baby Lock, this could get confusing. (My Baby Lock babylocker?) Basically, it's a domestic overlocker that is versatile enough to do 4 thread overlocking, 3 thread overlocking, a tiny, rolled hem—or babylocking—and almost anything in between.

It's always exciting to unpack a new machine. This one comes with a dinky little zippered plastic pouch containing extra and spare bits and pieces.

One of the nice things about this machine is the way the whole front opens up, for ease of access.

People can get a bit overwrought over the complicatedness of threading overlockers, but I find that most domestic machines are pretty intuitive. (By which I mean you can pretty much tell where the thread is supposed to go to from one point to the next.)  Plus they tend to have a little diagram inside the front panel if you get lost.

I've been wanting a machine that can do a babylock finish since forever.

So now that I have one, in addition to my industrial five thread overlocker (Brother), my industrial straight stitch (Consew) and my domestic zigzag machine (Husqvarna), I really don't need the three thread domestic overlocker that I haven't used in years.

Which means that if there's anyone in the Sydney area (local pick up only) who'd like to own a simple little Husqvarna Huskylock 435 three thread overlocker, I have one available.

I bought it second hand in the '90s, so it's old, but it still works beautifully, and there's nothing wrong with it.

One of the particularly good things about it (that I'm really going to miss when using the new machine) is that the lever to raise and lower the presser foot is on the right hand side of the machine, rather than on the left at the back.

That means that when you've got your work all lined up and ready to sew, and you're holding the work steady with your left, as is natural, you don't have to stretch your right hand across to the other side of the machine and around the back in order to lower the foot. Why in God's name they design them any other way is beyond me.

And yet they do.

 

The Odd One Out

Those who say Sydney is a beautiful city aren't necessarily wrong. They just haven't seen most of it.

Sure there's gorgeous harbour and plenty of serious beauty, I grant you.

But then there's the suburbs.

They stretch on for ever, and they're really ordinary. The western suburbs of Sydney, where I live, contain row upon row, street upon street of variations on this house, the California Bungalow.

Not that it is so awful or anything. It's just that there's so many of them, all built over the first half of the 20th Century, and although they take on the style of each decade, they're all basically the same house.

There are four rooms, with a central hall, and what comes after that basically depends on when the back part was added on.

This one at least gets points for the seahorse balustrade.

Houses of this type are punctuated every so often by one of these monstrosities.

They're apparently what everyone aspires to, God knows why.

You can tell it's what everyone aspires to, because sometimes you see one of the older houses renovated to look like one of the new ones.

 

But walking the dog one day, I came across this.

I'm not entirely sure how to describe it. I just know that it made me laugh, but I also kind of admired it too.

It's so Italian Riviera, with a touch of Versace.

I just had to share it with you.

Introducing the Craftorialist

A Kapinny post

Not content with having a craft overload, and a co-authorial position with Popplina, I have started a new project that, with any luck, won't be finished for a very long time.

The Craftorialist is a new blog of inspirations, instructions, pictures and patterns, in which I share my technical expertise with anyone interested in textile-based craft. It's brand new, so there's only a few posts to see right now, but I will keep adding to it over time.

Feel free to drop by and have a look, ask a question, make a comment or—hell—add it your reader!

thecraftorialist.com

Easy winder

A Kapinny post

I thought the unpicking was going to be epic, despite the new yarn winder.

But thanks to Bernadette at the Happy Hookers crochet club on Sunday, it SO wasn't. As I pulled, she wound. It was hard to keep up.

Which meant that at the end of a very short time, I had a pile of watermelon pink wool/silk yarn balls instead of a too-tight sweater.

We decided that my hook size was correct for the tension and the stitches, so I just need to go up a size in the pattern for the sweater to fit me right.

Many thanks, Bernadette!

High School Formal Frock

A Kapinny post

Last year I made my step daughter's Year 10 end of year formal frock. She had found the pattern in an op shop.

 

Though the skirt was far too long and full for someone of her small stature, the bodice and collar are designed for her, really. She has one of those old-fashioned hourglass figures.

The trip to the fabric store was fun and excruciating in equal measure. It took ages, but finally we settled on a cherry red silk satin ...

... which looks a lot brighter red here than it really is, and a gorgeous black lace overlay.

And the lovely French lady serving us found a fabulous black lace trim we decided to put on the hem. After it was finished, and she had tried it on, I described her in it to my husband.

Me: 'Gina Lollobrigida. That's all I'm saying.'

Him: 'I don't know what you mean.'

Me: 'You know what I mean.'

Him, putting his fingers in his ears and screwing up his face: 'I don't want to know what you mean!'

Goldfrapp love

A Kapinny post

Being a lucky birthday girl last month, I had tickets to see Goldfrapp last night at Sydney's Luna Park (thanks to my clever husband). You have to love a band that takes dressing up as seriously as it takes its (seriously good) music. I want to be Alison Goldfrapp. Here's my favourite image of her, from the 2006 Supernature album. Imagine making such a fabulous thing as those peacock tail shorts. (I won't ask you to imagine wearing them.)

So last night she was wearing a sparkly, shaggy, black cape/poncho thing that made her look like a short, black Big Bird with curly blonde hair. It was more fabulous than it sounds.

Under that was a pair of sparkly black legging/platform boots that, it turned out, go all the way up, jumpsuit style. It made me wonder what it was like to put on: do the platform boots dangle off your feet until you're all the way in?

For the encores, she swapped the cape for a wispy, wired silk organza top that gave her an angel wing silhouette, followed by a long-haired jacket, with the hair shaded from pale pink down to bright red. The first encore was a note-perfect 'Utopia', from Felt Mountain (2000): no mean feat, considering the previous hour's robust singing, with its operatic soprano-style beginning.

Totally gorgeous.

Babies love colour

A Kapinny post

It's nowhere near as impressive as the wedding jacket Shula made for a baby Mymlet, but here's one I made for a friend's new baby girl.

I adapted it from a much plainer pattern:

 

It has a picot edge (because I love them so), a dear little floral band and comes complete with complimentary dog hair, as do all my offerings.

 

I'm not a fan of pastel pink or blue on babies, not unless it comes with lots of other gorgeous colours. Babies have personalities too, you know.

When my sister Sophie was a bub, she looked stunning in navy blue. Now she's in her 20s, she pretty much looks stunning in anything. But that's another story.

Vintage pattern cache

A Kapinny post

My aunt found a bunch of '50s and '60s sewing and knitting patterns in a second hand shop. I have the choicest ones on loan, so I can copy them.

It's perfect timing: I've been so loving the Mad Men aesthetic (if not the culture) as we make our way through the DVDs.

Here's the first pattern I have copied and actually made up.

And the result. I'm not entirely happy with the way the sleeves sit (hard to show on the dummy), but this is only the first trial version; I'll be making some adjustments. I've made it up in a stretch woven, since it's more closely fitting than the illustrations would suggest. Also, I don't have that kind of figure any more.

I love the print on this fabric; for some reason blue and white always does it for me.

And here's a gorgeous coat pattern that I'm in the process of making up.

So much fun.