Crafty Christmas Club

Oh boy, am I excited. Two of my favourite things together at last - craft and Christmas. Maybe, like me, you've always associated the two and made your own Christmas gifts since you were a kid. I remember making great gifts such as the coloured-in bit of cardboard with the safety pin taped to the back (brooch - for my Aunty) and coloured-in piece of paper taped around a glass jar (vase - for my Uncle).

The good news is my crafting skills have come around a little since I was 8 years old. The even good-er news is that Tilly from Tilly and the Buttons has started up a Crafty Christmas Club, a blog to share Christmas crafting ideas, gift-making ideas, tutorials and the like. And I am part of it! Yes, I will be blogging lots of gifty ideas and Christmas crafty things in the lead up to the big day.

Now, before I give you the link, there is one condition you must adhere to. You see, I will be posting my handmade Christmas gifts on the blog, so if you are a close friend or family member of mine (i.e. you would usually get a Christmas gift from me) you are not allowed to look at it! Because that would ruin all the fun surprises, wouldn't it?

Ok, now that we have that out of the way - peeps, I present to you: the Crafty Christmas Club.

Business shirt refashion

I picked up this business shirt from the op shop for $4. It was actually fine and I could have worn it as it was, but it just seemed like every other plain business shirt and I wanted to make it a bit more fun. So I cut off the ends of the sleeves, used the fabric to make some ruffles and stitched them back on. Voile! Very easy refashion, very happy Stitchybritt.



P.S. That is our attempted veggie garden in the background. We are having terrible troubles with snails and slugs eating everything! Does anyone know a natural way to stop them eating our seedlings? I tried the beer-in-a-jar-lid trick but so far, no luck : (

Fairtrade fabric (and a bit of chocolate)

This week I signed up to be a Fairtrade Champion and pledged to spend at least $2 per day on fairtrade products. After stuffing my face with Cocolo and Alter Eco chocolate, I thought I would look at buying some fairtrade fabric, being the stitchy person that I am. Turns out that fairtrade fabric is actually not that easy to find! I have had to do some real hunting online, and so far have come up with the following results.

Those awesome girls at Ink and Spindle have some beautiful prints on certified fairtrade cotton.

Fabric of Life have a range of fairtrade fabrics from around the world.

Organic Cotton are based in the UK but will ship to Australia if you ask them nicely. Their fairtrade fabrics are labelled as such.

Bishopston Trading Company are also UK based. They have a nice range, and again, the fairtrade fabrics are labelled.

Another British company, Fairtrade Fabric.

If you know of some other suppliers (especially Aussie ones) please let us know by posting a comment!

Crafty Power Hour

Well, I have finally emerged from the chaos of moving house, and I am pleased to say that I am slowly getting myself back into the crafty community. I missed a whole bunch of cool Sydney crafty events recently (boo!) but managed to catch the last lunchtime Crafty Power Hour put on by Knitty Gritty & Loopy. Crafty Power Hour had been part of the We Craft This City event which was put together by a whole bunch of cool crafty peeps.


At Crafty Power Hour I was taught the very important skills of making plarn (plastic yarn, or yarn made out of used plastic bags) and weaving it into baskets and other cute vessels.


This is the very beginning of my kawaii-sized plarn basket. It is basically made by spiralling the plarn around and holding it in place with blanket-stitched twine.


And here is the finished piece. It's quite small (about the size of an egg cup) but would you believe this is a whole plastic bag worth of plarn? What a great example of recycling, not to mention a super fun way to spend a lunch hour in the city.

Oh, and just a post note: it occured to me recently that many lovely people follow my blog (some through RSS feed) and I don't always get to know about you and your own blogs! So if you read this, please leave a comment with a link to your blog or site, so that I can get to know you too! Thanks xx