Living Luscious Lea

Dying with shaving foam

2012-02-26T07:51:00.000+10:00

Here is a post documenting my experience using a shaving foam dying technique to dye natural fibre fabric.

Change into clothes that can get stained, and pop on some gloves to protect your hands from staining. Wet fabric.

Lay fabric on a tarp or other large piece of plastic, to protect floor.

Take your fabric dye that is designed for natural fibre fabrics and mix with enough hot water to form paste. Mix this paste with shaving foam adding just a little of the dye paste at a time until you have the intensity of colour that you require.

Begin to paint coloured shaving foam onto fabric in whatever pattern, pictures etc you wish.

Use chopsticks, fingers or other instruments to swirl your dyes together (if you’re making pictures with your dye you may wish to skip this step). Continue with until your entire piece of fabric is covered with coloured foam.

Leave to sit for approximately 24hrs.

Rinse off excess fabric in a tub of hot salty water and then machine wash without soap.

Dry, then ohh and ahh at all the pretty colours.

Gone green

2012-02-23T16:57:00.000+10:00

I've been playing around with my hair again.

I've damaged it a bit this time so it will be interesting to see how much my hairdresser chops off it in a couple of weeks.

Sun kissed hat take 2 and 3

2012-02-22T16:27:00.000+10:00

There is something special about giving a handmade item to someone who understands the craft you have used to make their gift. They have a better understanding and appreciate for the cost of the materials, the time it has taken to create it and the love that has gone into making them a handmade gift. This is one of the reason why I’m so excited that I’m going to give my grandma a handmade gift; but also because for the first time I’ve giving her something that I have sewn and as a child I often received gifts from my grandmother that she had sewn. Often for birthdays she would make me a dress and a matching dress for my doll. Now I haven’t made my grandmother a dress, but I have made her a hat.

I’ve made a sun kissed hat for my grandmother and one for my mother as well and I’m pretty happy with how they have turned out. Again I’ve had problems with the sizing of the hat but I’ve just added extra snaps to be better able to adjust the sizing. I cannot wait to give these gifts and hope that mum and grandma both like them.

Lunaress lovelies

2012-02-19T11:15:00.000+10:00

I love buying handmade items, and have some gorgeous items from Lunaress that I wanted to show off. Being a crafty person myself I have a real appreciation for the hard work and love that went into making them.

I have from Lunaress a gorgeous pair of crochet barefoot sandles and a necklace as well. The necklace is very special as it was custom made for me and I was able to pick all to stones and beads used, not to mention the fact that I think it is simply stunning. Seeing the necklace come to life was a wonderful process and when speaking to the team at Lunaress their passion for what they do was obvious. My son loves my necklace as well and calls the turquoise piece my “button”. He is so drawn to it that I think I will have to have to look at ordering a similar, smaller necklace for him at some stage.

You can find Lunaress on Facebook or Etsy and check out all their wonderful handmade pieces. I believe there will be a website launched later in this year as well.

Rainy day crafts

2012-02-15T08:39:00.000+10:00

We had a day with a bit of rain recently but did not want to be stuck inside the house. Thankfully we have quite a large patio so I was able to set up some crafty fun for us. My son isn’t that into crafts, so usually if I set up paints or colouring pens he will be interested in it for only one or two minutes, so I was very happy that this activity kept us occupied for a full hour.

I placed an old tarp on the patio and let my son cover it in paint, glitter paint, and shaving foam. We then had some chopsticks for swirling and an egg flip for slapping the paint. After a little while my son fell over on the tarp and then realized how much fun mixing the paint with his hands was. We mixed colours therefore making lots of lovely new colours and pressed paper into the tarp to make some lovely printed images. It was easy to clean up afterwards and a very fun way to spend the morning.

Baking with my boy

2012-02-12T11:22:00.000+10:00

My hubby took this photo on my phone yesterday and I just had to share it as I love it!

My little man loves baking with me and we have so much fun in the kitchen together.

Yet another basic tee

2012-02-08T10:01:00.000+10:00

It was the little man's birthday recently and as he loves all things fire fighters my Mum sent me a cute little iron on firetruck applique.

I made him a Little Basic Tee and attached it and he loved it!

Basic sewing tips for the beginner

2012-02-03T16:37:00.000+10:00

Keep a whiteboard, note pad etc near your sewing machine, so you can write down any little reminders, things you’ve found that do work, things that don’t etc.

Get to know your local sewing store (if you have one). When I started sewing clothes my then local sewing store was a great help and they were happy to help me find what I needed, ensure I was buying the correct fabric for the project I was using etc. Some stores also have beginners sewing classes as well. If you can get yourself along to some classes it can be a great way to learn skills and meet other beginner sewers. Also if you are familiar with the staff at your local sewing store or doing a class this can be a great time to try out different products before you buy them. Yes that rotary cutter might look great, but after using it you might find you actually prefer a normal pair of sewing scissors. Don’t rush out and buy everything you think you might ever need before you even turn a sewing machine on, you may find yourself wasting money on products you find you don’t like or use. Try before you by as much as possible, whether in store, borrowing from friends etc.

Wash and iron your fabric before using it. I wash my fabric on a gentle machine cycle in a bra bag. Dry how you intend to dry your finished garment. Ironing your fabric may seem like just one more annoying step but it does help.

Fabric is important; I never realized how much of a difference a good quality fabric can make until I started using good quality fabrics. When you are a beginner don’t rush out and buy that uber gorgeous $20 a meter fabric thinking “Lea said good fabric makes good finished projects”; let’s be honest here, you are a beginner, it’s likely you’ll have some stuff ups along the road and learn from trial and error. While you’re starting get the correct style of fabric for the project you are doing, but buy as cheap as you can. Once you start to gain more confidence in your skills and find patterns that you are comfortable with then you can start buying better quality fabric.

We all love a good sale don’t we? Look for sales. Good quality fabric can be expensive so every little discount you can find helps.

Remember making your own clothes can be expensive, you could go to your local clothing shop and pick up a nice dress on sale that costs less then buying the fabric yourself; but when you sew your own clothes you’re creating something wonderful and unique and when using good quality fabrics and caring properly for the finished products your homemade clothes will remain beautiful for a long time.

Start off simple, of course sewing a pillowslip is going to be much easier and cause less frustration then trying to sew a ball gown, work your way up to the bigger projects.

You can never have too many pins, those things seem to grow legs and run away. Also I like to have a couple of different types of marker pens on hand, the blue wipe off pen I purchased the other day will be great on some projects, except of course if I try to use blue fabric. Also some fabrics don’t like certain markers, so having a few different types on hand can help.

Find simple step by step patterns. On this blog you’ll see me reviewing patterns which will give you an idea of some of the pattern brands I like.

Keep scrap pieces, you never know when you’ll need them and you’ll be surprised when they come in handy.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help, but remember if someone is trying to explain something to you and you cannot understand what they are trying to say then speak up, maybe they can explain it in a different way or maybe they just aren’t the right person to explain it to you.

Remember that you are learning, go easy on yourself, your sewing will evolve and your skills will improve.

These are just a few tips for beginners, if you are a beginner and have any sewing questions, please post them in the comments, if I’ve left anything out that you’d like to know then I’d love to do a follow up blog post answering your questions.

Pattern Review - Handbag

2012-01-30T11:27:00.000+10:00

Pattern Manufacturer – Amy Butler

Pattern Name – Birdie Sling

Difficulty Rating: Easy

You may remember me blogging about this bag some time ago, when I ran out of thread to finish it off. Well I actually finished it quite a while ago, but because I started using it straight away I haven't gotten around to photographing it until now.

This is the first time I have tried an Amy Butler pattern. I have a friend with a handbag that is made from the pattern and I loved the way it looked so when the handbag I owned started to fall apart I thought it was the perfect time for me to try making this bag for myself.

Once again I’ve gone for a pattern that is suitable for all levels of sewers. A beginner could definitely use this pattern with its easy to follow steps with diagrams. Looking at the bag with its pleats, contrasting panels and shaped handle the bag looks as though it might be difficult to sew, but it’s actually quite easy. There is one slight section of the making of this bag where you will need to do some hand sewing and I received a bit of an education there as I didn’t realize there was more than one hand sewing stitch. The only part of this pattern that I found a little hard to understand was making the gussets in the bag, but once I read over it a few times and understood what was being said it turned out to be a simple process.

Pockets inside the Birdie Sling

This is the first time I have sewn a handbag and I was happily surprised to find it easier than anticipated. It has given me confidence to try other handbag patterns in the future. One thing I didn't like about this pattern, which really is just a little nit picky thing, is the fact that the instructions and the pattern pieces are all on the one piece of paper, so once you cut out the pattern pieces you are left with a large scrap of paper to read the instructions with. Obviously this saves on paper, but I just have a thing about pattern instructions being presented nicely.

Look, my handbag matches my current hair colour

If you are after a large bag that can be used for day to day use or for times when you need extra room like going to the gym then I would recommend trying this pattern.

My breastfeeding goddess back piece tattoo

2012-01-27T08:11:00.000+10:00

When I had a major overhaul of my blog I removed all the non-crafty posts, but one post in particular that I’ve been missing is the post of my tattoo and I’ve since come to realize that it does have a place on this blog as my blog is about all things crafty and creative, and my tattoo is certainly creative. So I’m bringing back the pictures of my gorgeous tattoo.

My breastfeeding, tree goddess back piece by Shane Pask at Cairns City Tattoo

This tattoo was completed over several months in small sittings. I took my artist, Shane Pask of Cairns City Tattoo, a rough idea of what I wanted and he really understood what I wanted and created this gorgeous design.

My breastfeeding, tree goddess back piece by Shane Pask at Cairns City Tattoo

The centre of this tattoo is to represent my journey as a mother and the tree goddesses surrounding it is a metaphorical representation of the growth of a woman, including my personal growth as a sexual abuse survivor.

Blue

2012-01-25T13:40:00.000+10:00

Well I’ve been getting creative again, but this time with my hair. For years I have wanted blue hair, mainly because it’s the only colour of that rainbow that I had not been. So now that I’m getting back into having crazy coloured hair I decided to try for blue. This is not an easy colour to achieve when your natural hair colour is dark brown as the hair needs to be lightened to a very light/white blonde in order for the hair to go blue as any yellow tones left in the hair is going to cause it to react with the blue dye, resulting in green hair.

So after slowly lightening my hair over several processes, nourishing the hair in-between processes with coconut oil and other treatments I finally had my hair at a shade that I felt was light enough. To achieve this gorgeous colour I used Manic Panic’s Shocking Blue which I heavily diluted with conditioner and left it to sit in my hair for a few hours.

I am loving finally having blue hair, although I am not looking forward to the regrowth.

Time for Tea

2012-01-22T11:00:00.000+10:00

The husband and I love a good cup of tea and had run out of our usual, so out of desperation I went to the local supermarket to buy some leaf tea which totally lived up to my expectations, it was rubbish. What can I say I guess I’m a bit of a tea snob? So online we went to order our usual.

When we last had decent leaf tea I tried making myself Chai, but unfortunately very few of the spices that I wanted are actually available in my town so we decided to try The Tea Centre’s oriental chai blend. Husband was quite intrigued by the chocolate tea so he purchased a small amount of that as well.

When our tea arrived I was quite excited – well when any parcel arrives in the mail I’m quite excited especially when there is only one delivery of parcels per week in our town. The first tea I tried was the chocolate, it was nice, not a very strong chocolate taste, to me it just tasted like a tea with some extra flavours to it.

Next was the chai, which I loved just looking at, with all the pretty spices mixed amongst it. It was lovely to have a decent chai again! Then of course we’ve been drinking the Irish Breaky, but we already knew what that tasted like as it’s the one that we’ve been buying from them for years now.

It’s such a simple thing, but it’s really lovely being able to make a nice pot of tea once again.

Emerald City Shipping

2012-01-16T11:22:00.000+10:00

Some times when crafting you cannot locally purchase some of the items you want and search elsewhere. Unfortunately some US stores don’t ship internationally and that is where my friend Leila’s business comes in handy. Leila owns and operates Emerald City Shipping, a parcel forwarding, assisted purchasing & personal shopper services for people wanting to shop from American stores who do not ship internationally or do not accept international credit cards. The goal of Emerald City Shipping is to make ordering items from America a more personal and affordable experience compared to some of the large corporate shipping companies.

So if you would like to purchase items from the US and need a little help please visit Leila’s website Emerald City Shipping.

A new portrait

2012-01-09T16:44:00.000+10:00

Bamboo love

2012-01-07T15:02:00.000+10:00

Bamboo fabric is the most gorgeous, soft fabric I have ever worn. It allows the skin to breathe while drawing moisture away from the body, giving a cooling effect. Bamboo is softer then cotton and does not hold odors. When living in a hot, humid climate like I do bamboo is the ideal fabric.

So far I have made clothes for myself, my son and my mother from bamboo and look forward to making more bamboo items. I have plain coloured stretch bamboo fabrics and have used woven bamboo fabrics as well. Hopefully at some stage I will also find some printed stretch bamboo fabric to create some lovely clothes from.

Do you own any clothing that is made from bamboo?

More Basic Tees

2012-01-04T15:25:00.000+10:00

I’ve made some more Basic Tees for the little man recently and he loves them. This time I did all the hems with the same binding as on the neckline. I love how I played around with the two different fabrics for each shirt.

The monkey appliqué is a scrap of fabric used on his SunKissed Hat.

I love seeing him running around in is homemade clothes.

Portraits of 2011

2012-01-01T14:34:00.000+10:00

I love taking candid portraits and here are just a couple of my favourites from 2011.

Review of my nappies

2011-12-30T16:17:00.000+10:00

I am very excited to share with you all a review of one of my LoveLea Cloth nappies. Please head along to this blog post at Flowy skirts and cloth bums and take a look.

Flirty, frilly apron

2011-12-27T08:12:00.000+10:00

I love to cook, but make a terrible mess while doing so. Now that I’m sewing myself some lovely clothes I don’t want to have to get changed into my old daggy clothes every time I walk into the kitchen for fear of staining them so I needed to make myself an apron.

I made my apron extra long as I often will wear a long skirt or dress and I’m so skilled in the art of mess that it’s often not just confided to areas on my body that are at the height of the stove or counter-top.

Christmas treats

2011-12-22T09:00:00.000+10:00

This time last year my little man and I were making chocolate truffles, ready to share with the family on Christmas day.

This year it will be just the three of us - the first time we've had all three of us together on Christmas day. We will be having a very relaxed day. So far we haven't decided on food, it will all depend on what our local supermarket has on hand, although one thing we will definately be having is locally caught prawns.

Have you made any special Christmas food this year? Either for Christmas day or to give as gifts?

Pattern Review - Basic Tee

2011-12-20T12:07:00.000+10:00

Pattern Manufacturer – Make It Perfect

Pattern Name – Little Basic Tee

Difficulty Rating: Easy

The Make it Perfect Tee comes in the two size ranges, the Little Basic Tee for 0-5 years and the Big Basic Tee for 6-10 years. The pattern contains both short and long sleeve options for boys and girls (the girl’s pattern has a gathered sleeve). It is a simple stretch fabric tee that you can jazz up with appliqués or by using contrasting fabric for the sleeves.

I made a basic tee for my son from some gorgeous bamboo knit fabric and added a motor cross appliqué from my own design. The pattern was easy to make although I found the instructions difficult to follow as the pieces of paper didn’t flow in a logical order and I had to search through them to find the information I needed. It would be much better if they were presented in a booklet form. Also it bugged me that in the diagram to show how to layout the pattern pieces when cutting them out the pieces in the diagram are not shaped so it’s difficult to understand which direction the sleeves should be placed. There are simple instructions for the binding on the neckline, although when it comes to the hem on the main body and sleeves it says to simply finish them as you wish. I think it would have been better if there was an optional pattern piece for a sleeve binding to attach in the same manner as the neck binding. I finished the sleeves with a rolled hem on my over locker, but didn’t like the way it looked so I will try different options for hemming the sleeve in future.

I found this pattern to be a simple and easy stretch tee-shirt; I will get many years of use from this pattern, especially as it is such an essential item in my son’s wardrobe. While I do like this pattern I think there is room for improvement with the presentation and instructions.

Sewing addiction

2011-12-16T08:45:00.000+10:00

Just a couple of years ago I wasn’t very good at sewing. I did a little sewing at high school and some sewing with my grandma (although I think I was more in the way of grandma’s progress); but over the past few years I’ve learnt so much more about sewing and I’m totally hooked! I’ve learnt some techniques from friends and from researching on the internet, but mostly it’s been a lot of trial and error. I mainly got into sewing when my son was born and I started making modern cloth nappies for him. After a while of sewing from other people’s nappy patterns I was soon designing and sewing my own nappy patterns.

The next step for me was to start making clothes for myself which was a step out of my comfort zone as I found sewing nappies so easy, but wasn’t used to sewing clothes. I found most of the patterns I would buy (your typical big name pattern brands available at most sewing stores) to be very confusing and just reading those patterns was an art of it’s own. Since then I’ve found there is a whole range of easy to follow patterns from smaller name pattern companies (a few which you will see reviewed on my blog).

My beginner sewing

I am now much more confident with sewing my clothes and I love looking back at pictures of clothes I have previously made and seeing the progress in my sewing.

The biggest problem I have now though is there are so many gorgeous patterns and fabrics available that I just want to buy them all!

The ever growing blanket

2011-12-11T14:02:00.000+10:00

I love getting inspiration from other crafters, and my son’s blanket was definitely inspired by another crafty goddess. When I saw Majikfaerie’s blanket for her daughter I loved the way that it was a gorgeous, one of a kind blanket, but I mostly loved the way that the way the blanket was crocheted meant that it would grow over time with her daughter. So inspired by this blanket I set about crocheting a blanket for my son.

What started off with just a couple of circles has now grown to over 70 different circles, with different colours and sizes and the gaps between them filled with black yarn.

There is so much that I love about this blanket. No one else will ever have a blanket identical to this one, it’s great for using up left over pieces of yarn, I love the way that it isn’t a perfectly finished, rectangle blanket and I love that I can create small pieces at a time for this blanket, to add whenever I have the time, rather than lugging a great big blanket around waiting to crochet another row.

Although this blanket has certainly grown over the last year it still isn’t particularly large, but I will continue adding to it delighting in watching it slowly grow and evolve.

Pattern Review – Sun Kissed Hat

2011-12-07T17:12:00.000+10:00

Pattern Manufacturer – Make It Perfect

Pattern Name – Sun Kissed Hat

Difficulty Rating: Easy

I have a wide brimmed hat for myself that adjusts in size on the brim and I have always thought that it would make the perfect hat for kids to allow for their ever growing heads, so when I saw that Toni from Make It Perfect had released a pattern for this style of hat I was so excited. This hat pattern is fully reversible and can be made for both children and adults.

I found this pattern simple and straightforward. It is great for beginners as it is so easy, I would suggest having a lot of pins on hand as attaching straight pieces of fabric to round pieces is much easier when pinned often rather than spacing out your pins. As with other Make It Perfect patterns I’ve used in the past the instructions are not delivered in a booklet form which I would prefer and the diagram to show how to lay your pattern pieces on your fabric is displayed with rectangles only, rather than the actual shapes of the pattern pieces.

Once you’ve cut all the pieces and attached the interfacing it’s quite a quick process from there. The only changes I made to the pattern was using snaps rather than Velcro closures. Something I didn’t like about the pattern was the size chart has only one measurement per size, rather than a size range, so I found it difficult to know what size to make and as a result the hat I made for my son is a little too large. I really like this style of hat and look forward to using this pattern again to make a hat for myself.

New Patterns

2011-12-05T12:13:00.000+10:00

Two new patterns turned up in the mail this morning. I'm so excited, but now I just need to find time to try them out.

The carrot cake that wasn’t

2011-12-03T16:34:00.000+10:00

Next week it’s my birthday, but I wanted to celebrate with girlfriends early so that I could be joined by a wonderful friend of mine before she moves interstate.

I decided I wanted to make chai and cake so set about thinking what cake would best suit chai. I decided carrot cake with lashings of cream cheese icing would be delicious. A couple of days before my morning tea was scheduled I went grocery shopping so that I could get my ingredients and this is where it all fell apart. First of all the supermarket didn’t have the spices needed to make chai, and then there wasn’t any carrots either.

So instead I ended up with spiced tea and chocolate cake, it was yummy but not the carrot cake and chai I was hoping for. My son certainly didn’t mind, in fact he ate half the chocolate off the cake before I cut it so I only have this rather crappy phone photo.

Oh well, when living in the middle of nowhere, one must get used to not having the ingredients for what one wishes to cook.