A Gently Productive Weekend

This weekend has been pleasingly productive...
I have made delicious brownies (well, ok that was Friday but I took Friday off so that counts as the start of a long weekend), I have made a start on a new quilt, and sewn a skirt!

Lazy-girl baking

I was inspired by the "slutty brownies" recipe on The Londoner's blog to bake indulgent gooiness from packet mixes :-)
The result is these delicious peanut butter cookie dough brownies... Yum!

Random meandering, finding beautiful things

So, this year's Solfest fancy dress theme is 'Characters from Roald Dahl Books'... My initial reaction was "ooh, that'll be great!" but after further thought, it's difficult to think of anything that isn't predictable (I suspect there will be many Willy Wonka outfits) or difficult for a festival.
Hence I turned to google image search.
I'm no further forward, but have found other beautiful things...
Take this for example:

Missed Connections: Time Out NY Competition Winner
This was found via an image result which took me to Sparkplug Minuet, which is pretty and distracted me for about 5 minutes, then I saw that image and fell in love with the illustration. Then I read the accompanying text and fell for it a little bit more...

My costuming inspiration search uncovered more specific gorgeous illusrations too,  all related to James & The Giant Peach.
Firstly there were costume designs, for the stage version, all of which are in this flickr set, but it was the centipede that really caught my eye:

Isn't he dapper? I especially love the mustard yellow spats.

All of this got me thinking of my own beloved tatttered and battered copy from the early eighties, the version with the illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert (there's a brilliant blog post about her work here). As a child, I thought James looked a bit odd, and to be honest I still do, but I love the rest of the illustrations even more now than I did then. They have such a dreamlike quality to them, and capture that combination of silly playfulness and darker, scarier things that Dahl does so well...

 

My search also brought up some fabulous cover illustrations, submissions for The Puffin Design Award 2011. Here are a few of my finds:

http://sophieburrows.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/penguin-design-award-2011.html

http://breakalead.tumblr.com/post/5486541900/laurierollitt-my-penguin-design-award-2011

 http://sarahmaycock.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/penguin-design-awards-2011.html 

http://www.behance.net/charlotte_estelle/frame/1202985 

http://laurajayneweeks.blogspot.co.uk/2011_06_01_archive.html

Hooray! Spring!

Spring is my favourite time of year (although Autumn is a very close second), and today, I am officially declaring it is spring in the bloomeenee household, because there are Narcissi in my garden*!

*I say my garden, its strictly neither garden nor mine, but 'bit of wasteland which I occasionally chuck seeds at in vain attempts to cheer it up' takes too long to type...

Oooooh! Shiny new quilt project!

Modern Block of the Month (BOM) ~ Sew Along with Alissa Haight Carlton « Sew,Mama,Sew! Blog

I just found out about this, which just goes to show how long it is since I read the sewmamasew blog! It could be a good project for the butterfly fabric and coordinates I have had in my fabric stash.since I started a fabric stash! I loved them when I bought them, and had plans to really show off the.butterfly fabric, but my taste has changed and now I find it 'a bit much'... This could be the thing to highlight the beautiful colours whilst toning down the print...

More Weekend Sewing

So, I was tidying the spare room on Friday night, and of course I decided that was the perfect time to make a new bag. the pattern is from issue 32 of Sew Hip magazine, and it was really easy.
It's a fab pattern, slouchy, absolutely huge, can be made from fat quarters! It'd be great made with patched panels too. The pattern is intended to be reversible but I adapted mine to have an internal zipped pocket and a phone pocket, and added a Suffolk Puff and a fabric loop to act as a closure.

Owls! Get your chubby little owls here!

Have been having a nice calming crafty day... Well, up to the point when I realised I'd sewn the wrong bit to the wrong bit and need to do some unpicking, but it was fixable. Overall it's been a lovely day, with tea, cake and sewing...

I've spent most of the time on the patchwork bag shown below. I used the wonderful Sprocket Pillow tutorial at CluckCluckSewfor the patchwork, and Aimee Ray's 'Happy Village' pattern from 100 Pretty Little Projects for the construction. I'm really pleased with it, and also made the patchwork piece for a sprocket cushion proper. Allison at CluckCluckSew does say that " The only problem with them is that you can’t make just one…trust me …I tried"... I think I agree with her, it may be the first of my new sewing addictions.





























My second new sewing obsession?
Owls!
Tiny, dinky, chubby little owls!
I found this great tutorial while browsing on Pinterest, it's so simple it doesn't even need words, and the resulting owls are really really sweet.


I've had a pleasingly productive weekend overall, having already finished making myself a hat and dyeing some of my handspun yarn. It's not dry and ready for photographs yet, but this is the 'before' photo...

I had kool-aid dyed the roving before spinning it, and it was a nice enough colour, just not very me (it's a sort of watermelony pink). I've overdyed it with two different darker shades of kool-aid, just waiting for it to dry, can't wait to knit it!