And the garden finally comes alive...

We have been away camping for 3 days and wow! what a difference we have come back to. There was rain while we were away and prior to that the ground was very dry so things have had a bit of a boom.

It's a pretty sad little basket of vegetables compared to other years, but it's had me buzzy since I've been feeling all blah about my garden this summer. But it feels good to have the garden providing enough 'greens' for a meal every night (beans, zucchini and ruby chard, along with a mass of lettuce and broccoli that will be ready in about a week) and I've rediscovered how neat it is to wander down and grab a handful of whatever is on offer and make our meals around it.

On a roll...

I wanted to make another wee bag for a friend's daughter so made this one up this afternoon using a piece of fabric from my stash (unfortunately when cutting out the flap material I forgot about the direction of the pattern on the fabric!).

A friend sent me a load of buttons recently, and a couple of the colours were a great match for embellishing the front flap.

Argghhhh, I'm busy writing list after list at them moment. We'll be making a trip to Australia for one of my sister's wedding later in the year and needing to sort passports (went and had photos taken this afternoon) for all of us along with all the other things that go along with holidays away from home.

Then, we're off to homeschool camp on Wednesday so need to get us organised and repacked after recovering from the last one!

More refashioning

I've been meaning to make the kids a messenger bag each that they can take with them when we go out for walks. I didn't want them too big, but large enough to pop their water bottle in along with some paper and pens or any items they find while out and about.

Nathan's has been made from a bag I made a few years back. The original bag was a refashion from an old linen skirt of my mums. I repositioned the straps to make it messenger style, added a flap and lining (used more of my hessian stash for that). The pocket and belt loops from the original skirt placed on the inside of the flap were an after thought but work well.

We're continuing to harvest a large handful of string beans everyday and they really are a lovely addition to our meals. I put them into everything and Nathan quite likes them just cooked up as a side dish too. I'm really hoping the many pumpkins and squash have plenty of warm weather left to grow now that they're taking off. I did harvest our first zucchini yesterday and can see they'll be coming through thick and fast in the next week or so.

I've been much more focused on having seedlings constantly on the go to pop into the garden so hope to have a reasonable autumn/winter garden (mostly brassicas, silverbeet, spinach I think).

Refashioning...

I found a little brown linen tunic dress I'd made Danielle about 18mths ago that was now much to small. I made the original dress from a large women's tunic top I found from the op-shop. I had out my Sew Liberated book last night and realised that the original dress was quite a good match for the wee blossom shirt in there. I figured if I could open up the shoulder seams and chop a bit off the top, that I'd be able to use the tunic as is and just insert some sleeves which would then increase the size of the dress by a few sizes. I didn't have enough scrap left of the linen, so used my leftover brown knit from my skirt and added a wee bird at the bottom. It's perfect again and will do nicely as an autumn top over jeans and a long sleeve merino top.

Well, summy is finally here! Lovin' it!

We were away camping for 4 days and now returning to normal happenings.

While away I realised I only have one summer skirt (a new one I splashed out on recently) that fits me after a few additional Christmas kilos made their way on. I hadn't really noticed my lack of summer wear before since there hasn't been any consistently warm days to feel a need for more than one skirt.

Anyway, I ordered the Sew Liberated book a few weeks ago and it arrived while I was away camping. I spent Tuesday night and all day Wednesday (in amongst the usual daily doings) putting the skirt from the front cover together. It uses a reverse applique technique as well as embelishing it with embroidery stitches (I've not done either of these things before so was a bit of a new thing for me). It was fun and I love it!

Yes, I'm fairly unoriginal, so have done an almost exact copy on colour placements!

Once I'd made my pattern for the skirt, I was then able to whip another basic skirt this evening without the applique in less than half an hour.