Firstly, apologies to all those people I told at the Royal Melbourne Show (in September) that I'd have a new Shopping Bag Tutorial up her within days.... Ummmm... Real life got in the way of all my good intentions, and it has slipped down the list of priorities since. Sorry. There is still this free Shopping Bag tutorial, and the Zip-Away Shopping bag pattern is available in my Etsy store. Apart from real life stuff,  I've been working steadily on my (working title) #chemostyle project. Things are taking shape. I even have an Instagram account now!  There's also another workshop coming up o ..read more

Lately, I've been contemplating those heady days of the mid 00's, when I found myself in a vibrant and connected community of like-minded and crafty souls. Since then, many of those blogging buddies have become real-life friends, staying in touch across other digital platforms and real-life meetings instead of through blog posts, comments and late-night email conversations. The bonds that we formed over chats about knitting needles and ironing board covers remain solid. In those early days, this blog a mix of business, personal life and crafty hobbies. Sometimes I drew threads of connection ..read more

Winter is well and truly upon us here in Melbourne. Thankfully this year, I have a bit more hair on my head than I did last year.  It makes for tricky modelling of chemo hats, but here I am, doing my best to show off one of the newer styles we've been making in the last couple of  #chemostyle workshops. It's all about the tucks. A few weeks ago, a lovely group of Australian Sewing Guild gals got together and whipped up a goodly pile of winter hats. These have mostly already been distributed to Warringal Wig library, the Olivia Newton John Centre and a few individuals. There are a few other ..read more

A quick heads-up that there'll be another #chemostyle workshop at GJ's Discount Fabrics on 27th April. You can book in here (it's free, but I need to know numbers). If you would like to make hats for yourself or for someone you love, or if you'd like to contribute to the pool of hats for donation to cancer centres or people having treatment that causes hair loss, please come along. Details of what to bring etc are on the booking page. We need some heavier knit fabrics for this, so if you have any offcuts of fleece, loop-back, ponte etc, please bring them along or drop them into GJ's beforeh ..read more

If you've followed me on Instagram or Facebook this week, you'll have seen daily posts about The Savvy Seamstress blog tour and all the giveaways on various blogs and Instagram accounts.  The winners will be drawn tomorrow (or the day after that, for the USA blogs), so there's still time to do the rounds and get your name in every barrel. (Some giveaways have more participants than others, so the odds might be in your favour if you look for the smaller barrels...! ;) ) Here are the links...@mrsbeckinsale, cravingsfrocks.blogspot.com @sewthispattern, sewthispattern.com @fibresmith@cookinandcra ..read more

The days of having a four-year-old in the studio to model for me are long gone (she's in secondary school now!), so I had to make do with a clothes line.  Still, these little blouses swinging in the breeze looked sweet and made me happy today. They're all made from the same base pattern, with the collar, necklines, sleeves and facings altered to vary the design. You guessed it... using the patternmaking and sewing techniques from my book The Savvy Seamstress. We launched the book at Can Do Books in December, but until recently, I haven't had much time or brain-space to to promote the it (you ..read more

This box of books arrived a couple of weeks ago. A slight glitch behind the scenes means that it's taken this long to post about it here. But here is The Savvy Seamstress. As I've mentioned before, the concept behind the book is that once you have a pattern for a garment, you can keep changing design features on it to make it into many different garments.   For example, a casual short sleeved shirt (or pyjama top) can become a classic long-sleeved shirt with cuffs, collar stand and button placket. These are teeny little boy's shirts, but the same could be done for mens' or womens' garments ..read more