Exciting things afoot!

My apologies for that very bad pun. Over the Australia Day holiday..and probably for a few more days yet, my clever husband (with my valuable assistance) has been laying a new floor in what will soon be my sewing studio. A sensible person would have decided to begin this job on a day that was not scorching hot. Oh well, I'm sure that once it is all down and the walls are nicely painted it will be well worth the sweating and swearing. We've discovered that the walls are not straight, which makes for a bit of a challenge and is the main cause of the swearing.

The 90's blue will be replaced with a nice crisp white and I can't wait to finally have a proper home for all of my sewing gear so that I don't have to go into panic mode trying to remove it from its current home in the dining room when we have friends over. The room looks teeny tiny in this photo but it is actually quite large (for an Aussie home) and this is just a little bit of it where the bay window is.

I also made a library bag for my daughter who went back to school yesterday...and omitted to tell me that she needed said bag until the day before school started, which was of course a public holiday. I cobbled it together out of an old denim skirt and some fabric I bought on sale a while ago using this tutorial http://cicadadaydream.blogspot.com/2009/02/fat-quarter-tote-bag-tutorial.html. Hers is a lot cooler looking than mine, but hey, she's a fabric designer and has access to loads of gorgeous funky fabric, whereas I had access to a pile of old jeans! I should also point out that the doors in my house are not bright orange as they appear in the photo. I really need to work on my photography skills!

I've been busy drafting a new Blythe dress today, but it still isn't quite where I'd like it to be. Also, I have used fabric from my "uglies" pile that I received in swaps so that I don't feel too guilty about the many many re-makes that I need to do, and I can't bring myself to photograph it. It is an ever-so-lovely brown with printed prim patchwork stars on it...mmm pretty!

The first entry - oooh scary!

Writing the first post in a new blog is like diving into an icy pool. It takes a fair bit to work up the nerve, but once you get in there and warm up a bit you find it's not so bad after all. I have procrastinated about this long enough. Time to bite the bullet and write something dammit!

This blog is the result of my interest in Blythe, the expensive little piece of plastic that I first saw long ago on Alicia Paulson's famous blog, Posy Gets Cozy. At the time, I could not understand her interest in that wierd big-headed doll with the creepy orange eyes, nor her consuming desire to make outfits for her. Now I find myself eagerly combing through ebay searching for bargain Blythes and admiring photographs of her on Flickr. I'm still not sure how it happened. Is this the face of my mid-life crisis? Could be worse I suppose!