Unicorns and Rainbow Dress

Something very weird is happening in my creative world lately, I don't know quite how its happened, but lately I have no desire to make anything for myself outside of costumes. It's weird. Very weird. All of the projects I have on the boil are presents for friends, or friends children or some cool guy who has a birthday soon. I'm not really interested in making anything for myself.

Seriously, I don't know what's happening guys? I have a tonne of patterns and fabric for me, but none of it is calling my name. Why?

I guess the important thing is I am STILL sewing and I STILL want to sew, just not for me. Maybe that's totally ok.

Anyway on the topic of sewing, last Saturday my friend Emma asked me to join her and a few other girls to join her for a sewing day. She even made gluten free banana bread - hurrah!

So what did I end up working on? Well nothing for me - obviously. However, this year I've decided to embrace "using the good fabric" along with a couple of my friends. This Lisa Frank style unicorn fabric was definitely the "good"  fabric and I cute up a sewed with it regardless! MAGICAL!

This is a little dress I've made for my forever work BFF - we don't actually work at the same place anymore, but she's still my work BFF. She is having a baby girl in December, so I decided to make her a dress for the baby to be as  I knew she would love this fabric.

Who WOULDN'T love this fabric, I only had a metre of it so it had been lingering in my stash for a while as I didn't know quite what to do with it. I originally bought the fabric from fabric destash central, which is a NZ fabric destash group on facebook.

This is a tried and true pattern that you guys have seen a bunch of times here, here and here and I've made another version that I am yet to blog! It's such a cute and simple dress for a little girl. I also started another little project - it's nautical themed, here's a sneak peak.

Yes, those little whales are wearing tiny tailor hats. This is going to be a pretty cute dress when it's finished.

If you are a sewist, what have you been making lately? Anyone else found their selfless sewing mojo?

USA Part Eleven - Back to San Francisco

After very long, long journey we arrived in San Francisco - it was my second time to visit the city and Rich's first. I was excited to show him some of the things I saw last time and explore some new things.

I was also excited to come back to San Francisco because we were going to catch up with a bunch more friends here! Including Kiki (who Rich hadn't met before) yah!

When we first arrived in San Francisco, we had to take a bus from the train station and finally to a central city bus stop where Kiki met us and helped to direct us to our hotel. When we were all checked in we decided to visit the Japanese Tea Garden (you all know by now how I feel about Japanese and Chinese Gardens).

The Japanese Tea Gardens are within Golden Gate Park and as Kiki is a local she knew that we could get a good view from the top of the fine arts museum, by heading straight to the lift (no entry fee). It pays to know someone local!

We explored Golden Gate Park a little more with Kiki, its a seriously pretty place.

 Next stop for the day was Japantown - I don't even know how I could have possibly missed Japantown last time I visited San Francisco!

Kiki and I went to have our photos taken in one of these cute photo booths - I  haven't used one of these since I left Korea so I jumped at the chance to have some pictures taken. You can add all kinds of cutesy features once your photos have been taken - for some reason Rich chose to sit this out. 

We only had a brief look around Japantown as a lot of the stores where already closing by the time we got there. We did stop by this really cute bakery though.

After Japantown it was time to say goodbye to Kiki, but there was time for one last photo by the pagoda. Thanks for taking time off to hang with us Kiki - you're awesome!

After spending a day exploring San Francisco, Rich  and I decided we needed a break so we headed back to our hotel for a bit. At around 7pm we decided we wanted to go for a bit of a walk and maybe find a bite to eat. But because we have some kind of problem a bit of a walk turned into us exploring Chinatown for a couple of hours (because that's how we roll).

 I literally can't remember if we ended up eating at all! But exploring Chinatown was a lot of fun, I feel like I saw a bunch of new stuff that I didn't see last time I was here (and of course things do change over a couple of years). After exploring Chinatown it was finally time to collapse as there were many more adventures ahead!

Places I like: Pete's Emporium

It's time for a break from ALL those travel posts (there are more to come). I thought I'd do a post about somewhere I've just "rediscovered" - actually rediscovered is the wrong word, really I just finally got my butt out of Wellington central and went to other places.

When I was working on my jacket for the kawaii high tea I decided I really wanted some fancy trims and I couldn't really find what I wanted in the city, so I decided it was time to trek out to Porirua to Pete's Emporium.

What's Pete's Emporium you ask? What do they sell? I think you'd be better off to ask "What don't they sell?" I think the sign outside says they sell fabric, fishing supplies  and costumes.

 However, I was there for the sewing craft supplies - look at the cute pumpkins and ghosts! So fun!

They really do have ALL THE RIBBONS at this place and they aren't that pricey either.

They have all kinds on notions and patches - I'm not sure about the quality of some of this stuff, but maybe its fine. I did buy a cute little anchor from the patches section.

I kind of love all the flag patches - especially when places like Yugoslavia are included (that's not a country anymore - right??)

Some of the stuff is kind of umm...interesting? Like these sparkly straps in the bra-making supplies. Was this a thing back in the early 2000's? Maybe just where I lived in Hamilton? (nothing says classy lady like an exposed sparkly bra strap).

There was also a bunch of this fluffy stuff? What is this stuff even called? Is this the stuff used to trim bell sleeves on 70s vintage patterns?

Also they have buttons, like a whole wall of buttons. I have to admit I'm not much of a buttons person. However even I bought some buttons from here (they have cats on them!). If you're looking for some cute random buttons this is the place to be. I love those apple buttons above.

It's not all about sewing themed craft supplies - they have ALL the craft supplies including giant bottles of glitter!! This reminded me of when I was teaching and I thought that making masks with glitter would be fun - it was fun for the kids, not so much for my classroom. Imagine the damage a bunch of kids could do with this much glitter.

Also remeber how I said this place had costumes? I thought I may as well share some of that stuff too as some of it is really....interesting....my favourite is the uber macho chest rug (I mean who could resist that?)

That's a very brief snapshot of shopping times at Pete's - I've promised another friend I'd head out there with her soon (she's recently moved here from Auckland and never been to Pete's - although I know there are a bunch of Auckland  emporiums). Maybe there will be another Pete's related post soon!

I hope you folks all have a lovely weekend - Spring has been pretty cruel to us so far and there has been a week of gloomy weather. We had a touch of sunshine this afternoon, so I'm hopeful we will have a nice weekend (maybe I'm too optimistic).