Market Research: Fabric-a-Brac Redux

It seems to be the season for funky craft markets. Over the last couple of months I've managed to stumble across three different market events selling a variety of crafty supplies and handmade items, and they've resulted in quite a few successful shopping trips. 

One of the nicest bits about the stalls is that most of them have lovely little business cards, and I've had a lot of fun collecting them. I'd never realised how much having a non-standard size or shape makes to help your business card stand out - I'll have to keep it in mind if I ever want to make some.

The first market was  Fabric-a-Brac. I went to the first Sydney Fabric-a-Brac about six months ago and loved it, so when they announced that they were going to have another one I stuck it straight in my calendar. The last one was a little bit cramped, so it was nice to see they expanded this time - it was held at the Petersham Town Hall, so there was a lot of space. It also had a stage, and there was live music playing which gave it a nice atmosphere.

This Fabric-a-Brac didn't disappoint. Seeing as last time I went I had very limited time, I came with every intention of spending a lot of time and money, and spend it I did. I went slightly mental and just bought everything I saw that I thought I liked. And I liked a lot. There were so many awesome stalls packed with brilliant material and supplies.

The best find was Lilypad Designs, who were running an insanely popular stall. They had so much amazing fabric. There was constantly a huge crowd around it, so it was difficult to take photos, but I managed to fight my way to the table. By complete chance I found a repeat of the material from the first Fabric-a-Brac that turned into Steph's laundry bag, which is awesome because it means I can make more of them. I also picked up a lovely grey printed cotton that I'll probably turn into another skirt (with pockets this time!).

Some other notable finds were a big ball of really fat wool that will probably end up being a beanie, a nice stripy black and white cotton knit that I think wants to be a top, and a stall that was letting you choose a bag full of buttons out of a huge jar for a dollar. I ended up leaving with two stuffed shopping bags - I probably bought enough to open my own stall next time!

Next time: Etsy offline


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Fabric-a-Brac - http://fabricabracworld.wordpress.com/
Lilypad Designs - http://lilypaddesigns.com.au/
Drawstring Laundry Bag with Lingerie Detailing - http://etsy.me/INxQDi

Seeing Spots

I've always envied people who can sew their own clothes. The idea that you can have clothes that fit you exactly and look just like what you want is ridiculously appealing to me. When I first got my sewing machine, I had a crafty night with my friend G and I watched in awe as she sat down with an old pair of jeans, some patchwork material and a pair of scissors and just whipped up a skirt. I've been looking for a longish black and white skirt for a while and haven't been able to find one (why is everything mini-skirt length these days?), so I decided to try making one.

The crazy photo on my pattern envelope.

I would love to be at the point that I can just sit down with some material and scissors, but I'm really not, so I decided to find myself a pattern. For some reason patterns terrify me - I get really worried that I'll do something wrong and completely stuff it up, so I figured I should find an easy one. Nick's originally from the country, and last time we were at his home town we went shopping and I found The Cloth Shop. They had patterns, so I picked up Burda 8176. The photos on the packet were hellishly ugly but the skirts themselves looked like they could be quite pretty in a nice material. As a bonus, the pattern was marked as very basic beginner, so I figured I'd try it out.

I went to Tessuti Fabrics one day and found a nice heavy black cotton with white spots. I'm used to buying material at Lincraft, which is pretty big and commercial, so going to Tessuti was quite a nice experience. The saleslady helped me out a lot and asked me what I was making, and when I was looking for interfacing she was able to recommend the best one for the material I'd picked.

To start off with, I sat down with a tape measure and took my measurements. The pattern said to choose the size based on hip measurement, and mine corresponded to a size 14 on the sizing chart. I'm usually a size 8 or 10, so making a skirt that was 3 sizes too big seemed odd, but the pattern said that its sizes were different to commercial sizes so I decided just to follow it.

It took quite a while to cut the material. It's cutting that makes me the most nervous whenever I sew something because it's not reversible if you make a mistake, so I got a bit paranoid when I was laying out the pattern pieces. I finally decided to just go for it, and it turned out to be pretty straightforward.

Overall, the skirt ended up being pretty easy to make. It was essentially just two big trapeziums with a curved waistband that you sewed a zipper into and some side seams on. The sizing chart came back to bite me though - it turned out that a size 14 really was too big, and I had to undo a seam and cut a good 4 inches off it to make it fit properly. Before I began, I was considering making a test version in some calico to figure out sizing, but I decided against it because I thought it would take too long. I sort've regret that now - altering something that's already made turns out to be much harder than just making it correctly in the first place. I mangled the waistband up a bit in the process, which was annoying, but it was only minor so it wasn't really a big catastrophe. Between the cutting, sewing and redoing, it took me about 3 nights, which I was pretty happy with.

A couple of Sundays after I finished it, Nick and I went down to Kiama (a little country town in Southern NSW) for the day. It was lovely and sunny and I was wearing my skirt, so I ran around posing shamelessly while he took some pictures so I could show you all what it looks like!

I really like it, and I've worn it a lot so far. The one regret I have is not trying to modify the pattern to put pockets into it, so I'm tempted to try and make another one in a different material and sew some pockets into it, and maybe add some lining. I think I'm a bit better at sewing than I thought I was - I found the whole process pretty easy - so I'm definitely going to try and make a lot more clothes!

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Tessuti Fabrics, Chatswood - (02) 9415 3357 - http://www.tessuti.com.au/locations/chatswood
The Cloth Shop, Scone - (02) 6545 1275

Ice Cream Sandwich

My lovely friend Jade and I have been talking about moving in together for a while. It's been about a year in the making, but two weekends ago she finally moved in, and its been a blast! It seems, though, that having a new housemate is a good excuse to clean your apartment, and so for the last couple of weeks we've been attacking the kitchen and cleaning out the fridge and pantry. In the process I discovered that we have an overabundance of cocoa - apparently every time I've need to bake with it I've just bought some instead of checking if we have any.

Seeing all the cocoa made me want to bake, and we had some walnuts lying around, so I decided to make brownies. My mum has a really good Cadbury cookbook so I borrowed the recipe and a large baking tray and went to town with it. Unfortunately I seem to have taken too large a baking tray - the amount of brownie mixture that was made barely covered the bottom of the tray. The resulting brownies were dense and delicious but they were pretty flat.

Jade took a look at them and declared they looked like biscuits. She then decided that we should make ice cream sandwiches out of them, and my brain practically exploded.

I love ice cream. It's actually physically impossible for me to describe how much I love ice cream, because when my brain thinks about it it goes like this:

s;ahf;oaihefohkjsdlasdlfjkjlksoie!!!ICE CREAM!!!!sadkljhfo;hsj;adf

We'd discovered during our freezer clean-up that not only did we have ice cream in the freezer, but we had two flavours of ice cream. There was vanilla and chocolate with chocolate chunks (mmm, even more chocolate!). We ended up making two-tone ice cream sandwiches, and they were amazing. They're pretty easy to make, and we had fun mushing the ice cream into vaguely rectangular shapes. Next time we do it we might go to some extra effort and freeze the ice cream in square containers first, then cut actual rectangles out of it.

They tasted delicious, and I think I was still on a sugar high four hours later. You'll have to forgive me for the somewhat dodgy photos - I wanted to take some nice ones but I got too excited about actually eating them that I had inhaled them before I could be bothered to cleaning off the plates and lining up the shots!