Thank Goodness for Jesus Handles

I guess I should say I'm not dissing religion in my title. I don't know about anywhere else in the world but Jesus handles is a pretty common saying here in Australia and since we poke fun at just about anything I'm going with it. Also there is something a bit rude at the bottom of my post too. I figured if I was going to offend anyone with my religious reference I may as well go for a two-fer and upset people with mild porn while I was at it. 

There are milestones that we commonly share throughout life. Learning to walk , starting kindergarten, getting your pen license in Year 3. Starting high school, and having your first kiss. One of the major rites of passage in young  adult  life is getting your drivers licence. It means you can give public transport the bird. And it means your parents have another thing to worry about and that their petrol bill is going to increase by at least 100%. 

On Thursday Miss P got her learners permit. She didn't get it first go (or even the second) but  I was very proud that she persevered until she had achieved her goal. Sometimes it's easy to give up, but the things we want are really worth going for. No matter how long it takes. 

On Saturday I went out and bought L Plates and a crash helmet because today I took her for her first driving lesson. I also banned her from watching any Formula 1 racing for the last week in case she tried to emulate Mark Webber. 

She did a great job and I think doubling my dose of anti- anxiety medication prior to the lesson was a stroke of pure genius. And crushing some up and putting it in her morning coffee seemed to help her too.

With my whole "anything you really want is worth working for" speech ringing in my own ears I decided to brave making whoopie pies again this afternoon. And you know what ? I think I nailed it. Finally- whoopie pies that aren't the size of baseballs or that can be used as Chinese throwing stars. 

The week that saw me absent from Blog land also saw me finish all the blocks for the selvage quilt. 

And  a second pair of yellow pants that you need to wear shades to look at directly lest you be blinded so Little P could play at being Fireman Sam. 

One of the roadkill rescue ottomans got a makeover this weekend. 

 Stapler gun + cushion covers= gorgeousness 

Finally,  the reason most of you scrolled down to the bottom of this post as soon as I mentioned porn ...I was in Spotlight shopping yesterday and saw a totally new section. I waddled over there as fast as a middle aged woman can waddle but trust me it was a lot less exciting than the sign led me to believe. 

Enjoy your week!

P.S. In case you're wondering about the title ...here's an explanation of Jesus handles. 

A.W.O.L

Some of you noticed that I was AWOL on Friday. To those of you who emailed to make sure I was OK -thank you. I particularly liked Kate's email that asked if I'd gotten into a tangle with an irate kangaroo.


Sometimes unanticipated events occur and parts of my life get put on the back burner. Family will always come first and family has needed me more than usual over the last month or two.  I stressed out about not posting my favourite thing for the week but that's just the way the cookie crumbled.  

The truth is I've been really struggling to juggle my real life with my blogging life lately. At some point over the last month or so blogging has made the shift to my list of things I need to do like doing the washing or grocery shopping.

I had a chat with my inner self this weekend and I recognised that I am not wonder woman and that I can't juggle everything or do everything at my usual 110% at the moment. So for the next little while I'm going to drop in when I can and see what you're all up to without putting ridiculous pressure on myself to comment on every single post or to post to a schedule myself. 


This weekend has been full of highs. We celebrated Little P's birthday on Saturday with a Friday night sleepover and had to wait until he went to sleep at 10pm Friday night to bake his birthday cake. Don't ask.   

I didn't have the internal reserves to make a firetruck cake at that time of the night so Zebra cake it was. It was all good, Little P and I just eat the icing off the top anyway. 

Since Little P is Sam the Fireman mad at the moment, I made him a pair of yellow pants (just like Sam wears) Saturday morning to go with his Fireman Sam top. It's amazing how happy 3 bucks of yellow fabric and some thread and stitches can make a kid so happy. And that has been the sum total of my sewing this week since my machine only made it back from the fixit shop on Friday. She's purring like a dream. I'm pretty sure the fixit guy knows I abuse my machine by running over pins all the time but at least I didn't get a lecture. Although I did get one for using metal bobbins in my machine. Again.

Going Home

I mentioned that my Dad had a birthday last week so Mr. P and I drove to my folks place this past weekend to pay a visit. It's about a three hour drive north of here and we haven't done the trek since Easter. I always refer to my parents place as "home" even though I've never lived there. I guess that proves that home is wherever the people you love are.

Even if they pull faces like this...

I warned you that was going on my blog Dad.... don't ever dare me. You know you'll lose.  

I took this picture on the drive up  to deliberately freak out all my friends in the US because it looks like we're driving recklessly and wantonly on the wrong side of the road. I wonder how I'm going to go with changing sides of the road  when we're away and whether I'm going to spend my days in a perpetual state of agitation about crashing. 

I spent the car ride finishing sewing the binding onto Home on The Range (when I wasn't taking shots of the road and firetrucks to show Little P )  so I could give it to my Dad when we got there. There's nothing like bringing a finish down to the wire.

And Dad loved it. And I loved it so much I used it all weekend to keep warm since my folks live in Antarctica.

I'm so happy with how this turned out that I may have to make a scrappy tumbler at some point just for me. 

Love the back almost as much as the front. It makes me want to go out and find a boot scooting class. 

While I was at my folks I raided my Mum's garden for goodies to bring home. And I dreamed of putting in a vegie garden at our place and then dismissed the thought because I have a black thumb. I figure as long as my Mum gardens I can just steal the fruits of her labours. 

I spent some of the weekend working on more hexie flowers. It's getting to be  a decent sized pile, but still feels like its taking forever  ...and now I'm looking for a volunteer to peel the paper out. Anyone want to put their hand up? 

And finally I have something to link up to Elizabeth's monthly linky party!

Favourite Things Friday

The week has been made up of several golden mini moments which has made choosing a favourite for  this week more difficult than usual. I guess that means it's been a pretty good week. 

My parents finally got Skype this week.  It's taken my Dad 18 months to hook up the webcam we gave him the Christmas before last. You cant rush these things.  May I remind you Dad that hooking up a web cam does not make you a surveillance expert or Bill Gates.   I don't care if you had a birthday this week , these delusions of grandeur simply have to stop. 

I had a planned day off mid week which was lovely. I went picked up some US dollars at the bank. It's funny money -it's all one colour and made from paper which is totally different to Aussie money.  I'm not used to having to actually look at notes to work out how much they're worth. In Australia our money is different colours so I just open my purse and grab the purple one or the orangey red one.

In the last week or so I've received squishy mail of the exciting variety . Firstly from Amanda who knows  a girl who loves chenille can never have enough. See that pink swirly one? I actually squealed when I opened the package.

And secondly from Nanci , who very thoughtfully sent me these little gems in exchange for some fabrics I recently sent her. I love it when I see things I want to buy but don't and then they arrive in my post box anyway! 

My apron tutorial was featured on Totally Tutorials this week. Normally I'm happy to hang round my own patch so it was a big stretch for me to put myself out there . I got such a thrill seeing my tutorial somewhere other than my own blog. Thank you Linda for suggesting I do it.

At the beginning of the year I talked about our planned verandah makeover. It's been slow going and we aren't finished yet.The garden bed and retaining wall are almost finished and I bought a couple of large cane swivel chairs for the veranda with the idea to recover them in gorgeous fabric, but they just never seemed quite right for that space.  I've been looking for an outdoor bench/seat that I can do something magnificent with for about three months and this week I finally found one.

This is my favourite thing this week. An antique miners couch.  Stay tuned to this space for the end result in a few weeks. It doesn't look like much right now but if the vision in my head can be translated to reality it's going to look utterly fabulous. I keep imagining myself curled up on that couch with a good book watching the world go by. 

Enjoy your Friday. The weekend is almost here . Whooooooooo Hoooooooo! Oh and if you want to share your favourite thing this week you know the drill. 

Favourite Things Friday

I've been on the sick list this week. All of last weekend I was struggling not to give in to a mild sore throat . My body was just lulling me into a false sense of security and on Tuesday my body revolted and I came home early from work and had Wednesday off. A ton of  sleeping made me feel better. I went back to work yesterday and I think I overdid it because I was blissfully snoring by about 9.00pm last night on the couch. I woke this morning to some semblance of normal , ran around doing "stuff" like a hairy goat all morning and crashed again this afternoon. 

One of my jobs this morning  (before I found it necessary to sleep to get through the rest of the day )was to go forth and find an ironing board cover that didn't look like this one. 

Mr. P has just commented even he didn't  realise how grotty the old one was until he saw it OFF the ironing board. I realised it when I did my little apron tute a couple of weekends ago and I've been meaning to get a new one ever since. It doesn't seem like that long since we got this one , so it obviously gets a lot of use. (not with actual clothes, I rarely iron clothes but I do iron a lot of fabric and seams and other interesting stuff ) 

Ta Da ! I bought this one , which I imagine will get grubby really fast too.

Cynthia did a post this week in which she mentioned how sad her life was because she was excited about getting a new freezer. I got a thrill buying a new ironing board cover and not only that, it's my favourite thing this week. I'm  pretty sure that makes my life sadder than yours Cynthia ! I'd really appreciate some bloggy love confirming that the rest of you get the same thrill when you replace your ironing board cover so I can feel slightly normal.

I'd love to see your favourite thing this week too!

Call me "Domestic Goddess"

This weekend I finally saw the bottom of my dirty laundry hamper. I consider this to be one of my most successful achievements for the week. When you get to Friday and have to wear a dress to work because you don't have any clean/ironed jeans left it's definitely time to crank up the washing machine. Especially when you own 20 pairs of jeans. 

I also undertook any number of other boring, mundane but necessary chores this weekend,  like dusting cobwebs from my ceiling cornices because it was starting to look like I was getting in with some early Halloween decorating here. I washed cushion covers, and dusted skirting boards and cleaned blinds and moved furniture to vacuum. I feel so virtuous! 

In truth I cleaned properly for the first time in so long Im embarrassed to publicly put a time frame on it. But I'm full of ulterior motives.  

Little Miss Sunshine bought something recently that I thought was frankly the best invention ever and within days I had rushed off to buy one for myself. 

But since my house was such a filth pit, Sadie was having trouble picking up the three inches of dog hair masquerading as shag pile carpet  as she scooted round the house vacuuming her little heart out. Bless her. This is as close to a maid as I'm ever going to get. Now that the house is clean I'll be cracking the whip and expecting her to be earning her keep while I'm out working.

You may recall the coffee sack cushion I made in February. (by the way that chair is still waiting to be re-upholstered- just the thought of doing it scares me)  In my cushion cover washing frenzy this weekend I discovered what an awesome job my washing machine does.  Ummmm yeah - where did the writing go? Now it's just a plain Hessian cushion which isn't half as trendy as having a coffee sack cushion.

I decided to play round in the kitchen today to get rid of some stuff we had lurking in both the fridge and the freezer. I'm on a waste not want not kick at the moment.

Scrambled eggs (It was supposed to be an omelette but it kind of got stuck to the bottom of the pan )

Broccoli and Potato soup 

Lamb Rogan Josh 

Lemon and vanilla coconut cake. 

Not one skerrick of sewing has been done for a week. There I said it out loud. Kick me out of the crafty club. I may just get to it this week. If my machine decides to play nice. 

Favourite Things Friday

After my Rip Van Winkle experience last Friday where I fell asleep instead of going to the Post office to pick up a VIP (very important parcel ) I finally got there Monday after spending a torturous weekend having something so excitingly close but inaccessible. I didn't take any chances on Monday. I went before work instead. I thought it unlikely I'd accidentally fall asleep at 9 am. 

     And my parcel was there !Oh Happy Day! 

And when I opened the box this is what was inside. 

This is what I've been using for the last 5 years. It makes and receives calls and occasionally lets you send a text. Except that the buttons are so small and close together that if you have fat little fingers (like me ) your text often ended up reading like it was sent in a language other than English . Example: "I will meet you at the shops"often looked like  "I woll mert yot at tge shpps" . I rarely texted because it was a complete waste of time. Nobody knew what I was trying to say anyway. 

This week I joined the legions of people who have a phone that wasn't made when tin cans and string were all the rage for communication. And since I've  already become proficient in swiping and poking screens because of my Ipad I didn't have to go and get a degree in technology before I made my first call. And when someone calls me birds chirp. So freaking cute ! 

I have the internet on there and everything! In fact I have lots of everythings on there I have no idea how to use. 

But I'm going to have fun playing with it all. Assuming my smart phone isn't evil and isn't plotting to take over the world the second I touch the "start countdown sequence" button. 

So this little pile of technology has been my favourite thing this week. What about you? Any favourites to share? 

Bella Parade - My First Ever Tutorial !

I'm sharing a tutorial with you today using Bella Solids that will be perfect for the mini chefs in your life. And best of all, you can knock it up in an afternoon.  

I found out that writing a tutorial takes way longer than the average blog post if you want it to make any sense. And I'm still not sure I nailed that part. So,  if you find a mistake or something isn't clear please email me and I'll do my best to help. I took approximately 293,856 photos for this post and still managed to miss things out. 

I'm going to be showing you how to make a super simple kids apron using Moda Bella Solids Platinum, Boysenberry, Strawberry and Berrylicious. If you want some more ideas on other fabrics to match up with these colours you can have a look at my post here .

To make this apron you will  need: 

Bella Solids Fabrics in 4 of your favourite colours cut as follows:

1 piece cut 21inches x 13 inches for the largest part of the apron body 

2 pieces from two of the other colours cut 21 inches x 6 inches for the top and bottom of the apron 

3 pieces from the last Bella Solid cut 20 inches x 3.5 inches for the neck strap and ties 

Embellishments like ric rac or ribbon

1  piece of elastic an inch wide x 13 inches 

I piece of coordinating fabric for the ruffle on the bottom if the apron . I cut mine 4 inches by 40 inches. 

Pins

Paper and a marker 

Coordinating Thread for sewing 

This apron is sized to fit an average 2- 4 year old child but it would be easily adjustable for an older child. 

If you're anything like me the first thing you're going to have to do is advise your hapless long suffering husband that you're going to be doing your first ever tutorial today and that you've left it late so you'll be under extra pressure . (I was actually testing to make sure this could be done in an afternoon ) Hapless husband will make himself scarce by manufacturing an errand that requires several hours of shopping somewhere so he doesn't have to see your tears of frustration and hear bad swear words emanating from the sewing room should things go bad. You are ready to begin.

I used an existing apron I bought for three bucks to make this pattern but it's easy enough to make your own. I'll give you the measurements below. 

If you're making your pattern from an existing apron , lay it out on paper and smooth it down. Then trace around it adding a quarter to a  half an inch all round for a generous seam allowance.

Cut out your paper pattern

If you're making this without the aid of a paper pattern , you can use the following measurements. 

Lay your fabrics for the body of the apron out and make sure you like the way they look and then sew the three pieces wrong sides together with a quarter inch seam allowance. 

Press the seams open (I think it's time I bought an new ironing board cover...how embarrassing! )

Voila! (That's the only French word I know besides baguette  - so the rest of this post will be in English only )  You should have a piece of fabric that looks like this. 

At this point you can add your embellishments if you want. I started adding ric rac like a crazy lady.

Sew it down. You want to get it as close to the centre as possible all the way along. 

Then lay your paper pattern down on top of your fabric and cut round the paper pattern template. 

You can pin it if you want. I don't, because I like to live dangerously. I use my plastic ruler and rotary cutter to cut the straight edges and then free hand the curves.

Take the piece you cut for your ruffle and fold one long edge over 1/4 of an inch  all the way along the length and press it down with an iron . Then fold it over again and press so you have a nice edge. This is going to be the hem of your apron.

Then sew as close to the edge as you can on the wrong side.

If you're one of the lucky people and have a gathering foot now would be the time to put that on your machine. For the rest of us, set your machine to the largest stitch you have and sew all the wall down the other long side of the piece you just hemmed, making sure you leave a decent size tail with your thread at either end. 

At this point I noticed my tension was completely out of whack but for this step it doesn't really matter. 

Tie off one end where you just did the big stitching. A knot works well and then take the other end and gently pull it to gather the fabric. 

Keep gathering until it measures about 20 inches. Tie off the end in a secure knot. 

Then pin your ruffle to the bottom of the apron as shown in the following picture. When it comes to ruffles I am a classic over pinner !. 

Sew just under the gathering line or it will show when you flip your ruffle right side up...

I double sew this line for extra strength. You can overlock the edges of the ruffle if you wish . It gives a cleaner finish. Turn it over so you can see the front.

Press the front so it lays flat. It'll help with the next step. 

Top sew just above where the ruffle meets the fabric. This will anchor the ruffle in place, and make the seam sit nice and flat on the back. 

Sew on some more ric rac just above the ruffle (which will hide that stitching you just did!)

Now is a good time to square up your apron bottom if you have any excess ruffle or ric rac

Now I;d suggest you use a tiny overlocking stitch to go all the way round the raw edges of your apron. 

Starting at the top side of the apron fold the edges in about 1/4 of an inch on both sides and press.

And then sew them both down 

Take your ties and neck pieces and fold them in half lengthways wrong sides together and press them (so you end up having 3 pieces measuring 20 inches by 1.75 inches) Sew two of these shut along one end and all the way up the long side and sew the other one up the long side only. Turn them right side out of press flat.  The two with one open end will become your ties and the one that has both ends open is going to be what serves as the neck tie.

Take your neck tie pieces and your elastic and thread the elastic through from one end to the other . I use pins to keep it from disappearing inside the tube .

Then sew straight across each end a few times making sure you catch the elastic to hold it in place. Cut away any excess on the  end. 

And you'll end up with something that looks like this 

This is where things can get a little bit tricky because I'm sure I break all the rules when it comes to sewing. I'm about to show you how I attach the ties the "Shay" way. 

Lay your apron out wrong side up and turn your fabric over to make a 1/4 inch hem. Press and place the tie (with the open end )  in under the 1/4 inch seam you just pressed.  (I usually place mine about an inch under the curve) 

 Then flip the tie back on itself over the top of the seam like in the picture below. 

Then we're going to sew two lines of stitching right down each of those sides on the seam. One as close as you can get to the edge of the apron and one as close as you can get to the edge of the 1/4 inch seam you just pressed in. And yes - you're going to sew down over the tie so it gets held nice and firmly in place. (I totally forgot to take pictures of this part so I hope it makes sense. ) 

Then we're going to do the same thing with the neck tie.

Clip your stray threads and stand back to admire your awesomeness!

If you're stopping by from Bella Parade at 13 Woodhouse Road- Welcome. Pull up a chair and have a snoop around while you're here!

I want to say that until I wrote this tutorial (which took at least twice as long as it did to actually make the apron)  I took pattern and tutorial writers completely for granted. So thank you to all the people out there who willingly share their talent and expertise with the rest of us. Especially those who do it for free. You have my never ending admiration and thanks.