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Life As We Know It... and Another Online Class and Another Pattern
Hurrah! My next class at CreativeBug was released this week. It's a super-simple back-pack, that focuses on finishing techniques and strap-making that will improve all your general bag-making. You can...
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Happy Holidays 2016
However you celebrate this time of year, I wish you lots of joy and special time with the people you love.My girl and I have been over-indulging in Christmas movies and looking at houses with lots of...
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Fostering the creative spirit
People often ask me how I had the confidence to put my creative work in the public sphere. Even more often, I hear how amazed they are by my girl's confidence in her own creative ability. Here she is...
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Purse Frame Class and Bag of the Month
Over at CreativeBug, they're having a Bag of The Month year, with new bag classes every month. February sees my "Snap Clasp Purse" class ready to go. I'm a bit concerned that the official image only...
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Teaching and Writing and Living and Dying
Yes - I'm still here...occasionally peeping out from behind the curtain of real life and the Facebook and Instagram rabbit hole. This year, I've been pretty well occupied and away from this slower,...
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Bag Design and Pattern-Making Work-Along
Many years ago, I used to run weekly classes in bag design and patternmaking. It was popular with the locals, but people living interstate and overseas were always asking me to put it online, so that...
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Gearing up
Ahhh... A lovely clean studio and a picturesque display of the beginnings of a leisurely craft project...Yes, well, that didn't last long. That photo was from the week after Christmas, when my studio...
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Seasonal Change
Well, now that I've knitted myself a new scarf - from hand-spun, hand-dyed silk-alpaca, bought-at-a-local-craft-market yarn - I'm ready for winter. (I improvised a bias-knit in alternating rows of...
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Gathering Steam
It's been four years since I put out a new YOU SEW GIRL pattern or wrote more than the odd blog post, and I feel like I've woken from a forty year sleep. It's a whole new landscape, but I'm venturing...
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The Better Bag Club, and other stories (..and classes)
We had our first Better Bag Club workshop a couple of weeks ago, at GJ's in Fairfield.This is once-a-month workshop that you can drop in and out of, working on whatever YOU SEW GIRL pattern, or project...
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The Savvy Seamstress - What's it All About?
I'm reposting from the C&T Publishing blog (with their permission), an excerpt from my book, The Savvy Seamstress: An Illustrated Guide to Customizing Your Favorite Patterns. I've included some of...
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Tutorial: Roll-Up Shopping Bag
Gosh, it's like old times... me doing free tutorials on my blog! It's been a while...This shopping bag is simple enough for relative beginners to sew, and is a quicker alternative to the Zip-Away...
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The Savvy Seamstress - It's a real book!
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...
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Collars, Facings, Necklines and a Blog Tour
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...
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Blog Tour Wrap-up
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...
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The Everyday Pants Pattern is here!
It's taken a while (life threw a few curve-balls my way), but the formerly "nearly-a-pattern" is now an ACTUAL pattern. A finished one. Wow. In line with my whole "teach a person to fish" philosophy, I...
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Ridiculously Easy Zippered Cushion Covers (with lovely Sharp Corners)
I spent Thursday this week at the Royal Melbourne Show, at the Spotlight Inspiration Space, showing people how to make cushion covers. I promised a free tutorial on my blog, so here it is (sorry - a...
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Life, Lemons and Sharing Stories.
Scrolling through old blog posts recently, I realised how much I miss the "behind the scenes" life and family news that I used to record here. Instagram gets more attention, but I miss this space for...
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Helping out
Hair loss is traumatic at any time, but summer can be tricky for those who feel more comfortable covering up and/or accessorising. Knitted or lined hats can be too warm. and not everyone wants to wear...
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The Chemo Hat Project - cont'd
I've organised another hat-making day for people who are experiencing hair loss through medical treatment. If you want to make hats for yourself, for someone you love or simply to add to the pool of...
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Hat workshop #3
Thank you to everyone who has been generous and supportive of my little "free hats" initiative. Hats have gone out to people through the Olivia Newton John Cancer and Wellness Centre, and I'm...
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Winter Hat Sewing Workshop
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...
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Winter hats workshop (and a bit about life)
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...
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Scars...not wounds.
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...
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2020 begins....
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...
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