Win 1m of your favourite fabric from fabrication.co.nz!

I'm conducting a survey. Why? Because I'd love to know what you like (and don't) about the fabrication.co.nz website (and this blog too).

My survey is very quick - it's just 11 questions and will take no more than 3 minutes of your time. And, the best thing is, if you do help me out by letting me know what you think you'll go in the draw to win 1m of your favourite fabric from fabrication.co.nz. That's right, if you win the draw then you get to choose 1m of the fabric of your choice from me. In fact, I might even be so kind as to let you choose 0.5m each of 2 fabrics, or 0.25m each of 4 fabrics if you really can't make up your mind, but anyway, you get the gist. Answer the survey, go in the draw to win stuff.

And, it's all a piece of cake really. To complete the survey you just need to click on the link below:

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB22A95YJDSH6

It's all very self explantory, so you can't go wrong. There's just lots of ticking boxes, with the odd space to comment if you want to. Just please be honest. If you hate the site, tell me. If you love it, tell me. If you think I waffle (which I'm pretty sure I am right now), tell me. I don't care if you've never bought anything from fabrication.co.nz, or you're my best customer, I'd just love to hear from you either way, so please click on the link above and let me know what you think.

Thanks! A x

It's a good week ... more fabrics!

Lucky me ... another delivery today. Two more fabrics waiting on my doorstep when I got up this morning. This must be how my customers feel when their fabrics get dropped off by the courier. Today I got two fabrics from the Wildwood range by Erin McMorris: the floral is called Sophie's Garden and the beautiful coordinate is called Buttons. More delightful goodness from the team at Free Spirit, and just in time for the beautiful (and hot!) end of summer. 

Three times as nice

This week three new fabrics have arrived in at fabrication.co.nz, two from the delicious Wa Nouveau collection by Hokkoh of Japan, and one called Babushka by Kokka. All three are lovely - I'm eyeing up the Autumn Floral for a handbag design I've been working on, and think I'll use the Babushka fabric to make something for my friend who is expecting her baby girl to arrive any day. As for the Small Floral, well, something will come to me ...

As usual, all fabrics are available for purchase at fabrication.co.nz so now all you have to do is decide what you're going to make.

Purple

When I was about 7 my favourite colour in all the world was purple. I was particularly fond of that middle of the range soft type of purple, and distinctly remember having a nice purple outift - a purple sweatshirt (my favourite), and matching purple socks and headband. All sounds a bit cringe-worthy now, but hey, I was only 7. And, goodness knows I've made far worse fashion faux pas than that in my time!

After quite a few years where purple didn't really feature in my life I've noticed I'm trending back towards it. I'm not sure how much of that is just because it is becoming a bit more of an "in" colour, but regardless I'm happy about it.  The pictures above are a random selection of purple things from around my house (actually, mostly from the garden, which shows that nature loves it too!) - I hope you'll enjoy looking at them as much as I do.

Summer PJs

A few posts back I mentioned that I had received a shipment of fabrics from David Walker's Oh Boy! collection. It's full of really cute prints for boys featuring dinosaurs, vehicles, stripes, circles and great colours. I also mentioned that I wanted to make Thomas some pjs out of one of the fabrics.

Well, my list of sewing projects is about as long as my arm at the moment, and it seems to be growing each day, so my lovely Mum took one thing off my list and made Thomas these very cute summer pjs, using Animals Allover in White. All I had to do was make the button holes and sew on the buttons. I'd never used the buttonhole function on my sewing machine before, but since it was all automatic it was really quite fun. Must try it again sometime, or maybe I should get Thomas to do it since he seems magnetically attracted to the dials on my sewing machine...

Anyway, these pjs took just over 1m of fabric to make, and are a large size 2 I would have said. I think Mum used a pattern, but I'm not sure of its details. Still, I'm sure any of the major pattern brands would have something similar.

A tee pee for Thomas

We live in a very small house that is in need of a lot of work. Ever since we moved in last March I have been dying to do up Thomas's room so that he has somewhere lovely to sleep and hang out doing boy stuff. Unfortunately other things, like rotten weatherboards, the fabrication suite and the garden, have taken up any spare time we have for renovating and we haven't gotten to his room yet.

So, to make up for it I wanted to give Thomas a Christmas present that would go some way towards brightening up his room and making his space a bit more toddler friendly. And since his favourite game still seems to be peek-a-boo I decided that a tee pee would be the perfect thing. He could hide in it, read books in it when he gets older, and generally have a wee space of his own.

I had seen a pattern for one ages ago in a Your Home & Garden magazine but of course when I went to look for it in my stack of mags I couldn't find it. Luckily, the lovely Fiona at YH&G was more than happy to email me a copy of the pattern so I set to work.

The tee pee takes quite a bit of fabric (just over 4m in total - I used curtain/upholstery fabric from Fabric House here in Christchurch) and you also need a few other bits and bobs, like dowel rods, some ribbon and a few beads, but it is very easy to make. Basically you just cut out your triange-shaped sides, stitch them together, add your strips for the poles and whack a hem around the top and bottom and you're done.

And, the result is fabulous - a tee pee that fits one small person very easily (at a pinch you can almost fit one small person and his mummy and daddy, or as in the bottom photo, his Gran and Great Aunty), it's portable, easy to erect, and is a great play hut for inside or out. Today we finally had some sun so I moved it outside for him. Unfortunately the wind meant that playtime was quite short lived because it kept blowing over (luckily not while Thomas was in it though!)

The only problem now is keeping hold of our pillows, cushions and visitors - they all seem to be dragged into the tee pee for a lie down and a story!

It's all gibberish to me!

Hi friends of the fabrication blog, I'm back! It feels like an eternity since I last sat at my computer tippy-tapping away on the keys writing a post, but actually it's only been a month. Still, far too long. I have blog post ideas coming out my ears, but finding the time to post them is the trouble at the moment. What with Christmas, New Year, family arriving home from overseas for a very much anticipated wedding, painting our shed, and doing all those other bits and bobs that you do on holiday I just haven't found the time. But, since I'm back at work tomorrow after a lovely break I thought it about time that I put an end to my absence and let you all know that I'm still here.

So, tonight I just wanted to let you know about my friend Lauren who has started up a wee enterprise called "Gibberish". She makes fabulous hand screen printed tea towels and cushion covers with quirky sayings on them like the ones in the pic above. She's very talented and lovely to boot, so I just wanted to spread the word on her products. They are very reasonably priced (only $10 for a huge tea towel) so if you're interested then please flick Lauren an email at gibberishgifts@yahoo.co.nz, I'm sure she'd love to hear from you.

A x

p.s. Just arrived in stock are some gorgeous japanese fabrics by Hokkoh from their Wa Nouveau collection. Check them out at the fabrication.co.nz shop now.