Sliced bread... (the best thing since)

I'm a tad giddy with excitement here. Can you see why?





I've just discovered these amazing cross-stitch kits for iPhone 4 covers.





They're from the ever-wonderful Purl Soho in New York.





You can read about the designs stitched in the first picture here.





And Purl Soho have them for sale here.

Holiday craft

The thing I love about holiday craft is the sense of time to experiment; to try out new ideas, a new technique or skill. This holidays I've been playing with a new palette, using embroidery floss to play with colour combinations...

... on an old but much loved design. I've been wanting to make up some more embroidered brooches for a while now. Here's hoping I finish these soon ;)

I also used the holidays to play with form. I tried embroidering without any plan in mind... just going with the flow... but still structure somehow imposed itself on me and I started experimenting with colour combinations again...

My eldest daughter thinks it looks like a Pac Man stuck in bow tie land ;)

There was also a bit of crocheting... going through the motif patterns... starting again each time I found I'd somehow got it wrong. 

I'm full steam into crocheting now (I'll show you soon). I've made some significant discoveries while playing with these motifs and have been using my new-found knowledge to start a new blanket. What have you crafted this holidays? Did you discover anything new?

Crafty weekend

Being part of the Commonwealth, we have a lovely little holiday every June called the Queen's Birthday holiday. I'm not sure why but it always comes as a surprise in this family - it's a nice little treat just before school holidays and it happened yesterday. So, what can you do with an extra day to your weekend? Well, my Big Girl and I did some crafting. I have a few projects on the run at the moment but I suddenly needed to do some embroidery... and the BG taught herself how to blanket stitch her pin cushion together. We had fun :) What did you get up to?

Little things

One of my little ones (actually my big girl of 13) has started documenting her craft on a blog called Doobas. I'm very proud of the little things that she's been making :)

V&A Quilt lovin'

One of my favourite places in the world, and one of my favourite sites in the blogisphere, is the V&A. I love this place. That I used to work there (in the National Art Library) adds an extra thrill to the feeling of this being 'my place', if you know what I mean? I receive their monthly subscriber emails with updates of their exhibitions and what's in the shop etc. This month's update was a wonderful treat... the new exhibition is called Quilts 1700 - 2010 and, as always, they have an abundance of support merchandise in the V&A Shop which definitely comes under the 'covetable' banner :) They have books about quilting, how-to books and stationery, but best of all, the V&A have teamed up with Liberty Art Fabrics to offer a broad range of divine textiles for sale in either fat quarter, half meter or meterage lengths. Here are my favourites...

If you're lucky enough to be heading over to London in the next couple of months, the exhibition runs from 20th March till 4th July 2010. Find out more about the exhibition here.

Sorry if this reads like an ad for the V&A - my intention is only to share this wonderful site and show you some crafty things you might be interested in. Have a lovely weekend :)

Button love

When we were in London over the Christmas break, our lovely friend Bec gave me a very special gift. It literally took my breath away. I kept looking at it, convinced that I'd never seen anything so exquisite. Above is this special piece... a bracelet made from about 50 covered buttons, meticulously fashioned together with black wire. It is indeed a most wonderful thing :) Bec also gave my daughters a fabulous knitting kit each to make themselves a 'slouch hat' (photos below). Bec bought all of these wondrous things from a friend of hers in London and her name is Fiona Bailey. Have you come across her work before? She has a fab blog and I believe she's recently opened her own Etsy store.

Fashion/Craft

There's a fabulous exploration of technology in craft at the University of Technology in Sydney at the moment, called Fashion Craft: Fashion Technology. The exhibition features contemporary, collaborative works between UTS fashion and textile designers Alison Gwilt, Cecilia Heffer and members of the Embroiderers Guild of NSW. Each designer has worked with the Guild to produce a series of contemporary embroidery samples reflecting a selected theme.

1 Alison Gwilt & Helen Parsons created embroidery samples from recovered textile waste which they reconfigured and reworked. 

2 Cecilia Heffer & Helen Parsons were experimenting with new geometric structures for lace and created "Hyperbolic Lace".

The exhibition also includes a project where the 3rd year students had to rework off-cuts from Rip Curl wetsuits to make a jacket. This one's by Kate Smith.

The exhibition is on until 19 May.

Web Find: How We Say Hello

I think I've found my all-time favourite blog... How We Say Hello. This one's a shared blog between two friends, Famapa in London and Sandra in Gothenburg, Sweden. Both are passionate about photography and each week they choose a new theme and post their daily interpretations... It's just magical. So simple. So beautiful.

Topic 17 from last week - my fav post so far

Both friends have their own blogs and they're pretty spec too. Sandra's has loads of craft and photography and Famapa's is mostly photography.

Sandra's other blog, Smosch, is here.

Famapa's other blog, My Funny Eye, is here.

They're not the only ones doing this either – there's an Australian duo, Amy and Luci, who have a fab site too, We Make Words. These guys take it in turns to photograph a word made of found objects and each word has to somehow relate to the one before it.

The last two posts from We Make Words

Luci's other blog is Happiness Etc and Amy's is Tummy Ache. Both are blogs of illustration, craft, photography and even a bit of cooking sometimes.