High seas

From the Cabbages and Roses website

I'm mad for this grey ships fabric from Cabbages and Roses (they also do some great women's clothing). It comes in a duvet cover, but only for a single bed. I think they're implying the print is too childish for adults. I do not accept this. I could buy the fabric by the metre and make a duvet cover, but we all know that won't actually happen.

amateur floral arrangements

At my request, BCB bought me three bunches of flowers from the Vietnamese (?) florists on Beaufort St, so I could arrange them myself. Emerson Merrick + We Like It Wild on DesignSponge have me totally convinced I can arrange flowers. I got daisies, lisianthus (?) and orchids, all a little wilty, because it was Sunday.


In one of my favourite wedding gifts, a Wembley Ware vase that came with a note saying "I chose a gift I hope will increase in value over time, as the value of your relationship with each other no doubt will." Love the vase, love the sentiment.


In a jug my uncle gave my mum as a birthday present in the 70s. It's Danish, but mum can't remember from who, and she doesn't seem too fussed about it. I'm wild for it.

There was a third vase, rectangular and brown and white speckled, with a tall arrangement of just white daisies, but I forgot to take a photo.

The Sofia Coppola Collection - Lost in Translation

Yep, that's right. My week of sewing has been arranged into themese based on Sofia Coppola films. I don't actually love her films that much (Badly Coloured Boy does), but things did kind of fall neatly in categories.

Using Japanese (Echino) fabrics to make homewares, the Lost in Translation collection.

I really, really like this cushion. The colours look awesome against the couch. Obviously, it also uses my Kristen Doran fabric too. The back has two panels (lined in cream cotton) that overlap, through which the cushion insert can be stuffed/ removed. No sewn in insert for me!


Placemats out of Echino too, and backed with the olive floral sateen I made a dress out of a while ago. I only made two because eventually a table runner will take the place of these two placemats, and the placemats will sit on the other two edges of the table. I'm so-so with these. They were based on the Amy Butler In Stitches placemat pattern, and damn they are huge! Look at them! I would suggest shaving an inch or two off the finished measurements should anyone else want to try out this pattern.

Here is where I had to handsew part closed, because my dodgy topstitching didn't catch the backing.
To think they failed my ability to slipstitch in compulsory Year 8 Home Ec! (I also nearly failed cooking, because I burnt a beef burger which my vego cooking partner/ best friend refused to touch, and we both had tantrums about having to make devilled eggs (neither of us eat eggs and spent the class gagging over the whole ordeal. I have never cooked an egg before or since). Honestly, who eats devilled eggs these days? It's like the course wasn't revised since 1953. My friend did fail outright, because in the written exam she labelled a colander a 'lettuce drainer' and a ladle a 'soup sharer'). I wonder what Mrs Feathers would think of me now.


And, um, last up, here's my mushroom kit. It's such instant gratification compared to gardening. I've had this thing maybe two or three weeks. Look at all those edible funghi! The largest is about the size of a 10c/ 10p piece.

i have a nakey cushion on my couch/ rambling about pottery

isn't it hilarious? it looks like a paint-by-number with an area left out. however, 'hilarious' is not really the look i'm going for overall. i've been pondering cushion covers for a bit, knit and sewn. i remembered liking some mitred square rugs i'd seen floating about, but a google search threw up an old favourite i'd forgotton about.


excuse the tragic photo quality - blame Interweave, not me. for that's where the pattern's from.
a block of three squares by three squares would fit my cushion insert perfectly, plus use up some of this.


that's all my DK and aran oddballs and stash, with the exception of a single skein of black. i think i may have a colour theme going, huh? take especial note of the two rather garish handdyes, that i made myself.
also take especial note of that you can see of my couscous bowl. i bought that bowl in morocco, and because of its fragile nature i carried on my lap in a bus across the desert for ten days, then took it as hand luggage on two international flights. if my house were burning down, the couscous bowl would be one of the first things i grabbed. i love it to pieces. it cost what felt like alot to my student self (some $70 Australian... about 420 dirham, I guess), but i haven't seen such vibrant, detailed, accurate handpainting on porcelain since, for any price. and the place i bought it from had piles of these bowls, from the ground to knee height, maybe ten or twenty piles, and i never found two with the same design. honestly.
i think maryam could make a bomb exporting the higher quality pottery pieces to fancy homewares store.

oh look, indulge me. here's a picture of the factory (factory? crafthouse? i'm not sure what to call it) where my bowl came from.


these are the unfired pieces. I think the purple goes blue when fired. I can't remember what colour black goes. maybe it stays black. the yellow stays yellow.