Thank you everyone!

The actual give-away post is now 3 down from this one, but I just wanted to say thank-you to everyone who has come by and left such lovely comments about my bunny. I said over at the SMS giveaway that you couldn't pay a therapist for this kind of warm fuzzy feeling and it's so true! I've read every single one and they've all made me smile. It's been such a fun experience I'm totally hooked on being both a participant and an entrant in so many other fabulous give-aways! I've actually made it through both the handmade categories and just have a few left in the supplies one to go - how's that for dedication? I haven't kept track of how many I've entered but I've seen so many wonderful things my head is spinning and I fear I've lost track of some blogs that I should have noted down in the initial frenzy of clicking through such a long list. Why I was in such a hurry I don't know because there is still heaps of time left - I guess I was going at the pace I did last time when it was just 24 hours! Hopefully I can go back through and pick up those ones who got left behind. That sounds vaguely military doesn't it... I haven't even entered in for everything that I liked as I kept asking myself "would I actually use this?" and if the answer was a hopeful "yes. I think..." then I admired and passed on. Same for all those cute baby clothes. I suppose there must be various strategies employed by people in a situation like this - enter everything, enter for everything you like, enter for only stuff you might use and so on. The great thing is that there is something to appeal to everyone - some things I haven't liked but by the number of comments for them lots of others do and I think that's so great! You get in a bit of a rut sometimes, only looking at blogs where they make things you know you'll like, it's a bit like preaching to the choir :) This just serves to remind that my taste in things isn't the be-all and end-all of craft. Though it's pretty close ;)

Note to self:

Sew Mama Sew Giveaway post two down from here :)

No, that's not my note to self, I know where that particular post is. No, the note is:

Dear Jacqui-of-a-month-ago,

When you are putting a quilt together and not following any set combinations of fabrics and you have to leave it for awhile please please please note down what you were planning on doing with the little piles of fabric you had sorted out, plus the squares that were still waiting on a third fabric to be added. You might think that you'll remember, or it'll be blindingly obvious to your future self, but I'm here to tell you that No. It. Won't. Your future self won't have a flippin' clue what you were thinking or where those missing third fabrics are or what they should be. She only vaguely remembers a sense of self-satisfaction that you'd settled all the fabric combinations and that it would look fabulous. Now she's afraid it won't ever live up to that vague feeling of greatness.

Yours truly,
Future Jacqui

p.s. can you also tidy up the sewing area, it's really messy now and if you'd just done it when you meant to I wouldn't be having space issues now.


A photo from happier days when I knew what I was doing (and the lighting was better)!

Autumn Leaves

Sew Mama Sew Giveaway post is the next one down!

When I was taking photos of my giveaway bunny I ended up being quite taken by the leaves themselves and decided a still-life was in order.



I'm not a 100% sure on the placement of the key things like the rosehips or the manuka blossoms, or whether it could use more white at the top (hello Photoshop!), but oh the colours! You can see it bigger over at Flickr if you select the sizes option.

The inspiration for a studio setting for natural things came from fabulous images of grasses at Oote Boe, check them out!

Sew Mama Sew May Giveaway

The giveaway is now CLOSED. Thanks to everyone who entered! I'll post the winner in a new post above.




Welcome to my giveaway! I'm currently in the throes of a felt bunny obsession, so it seems only right to share some of the bunny love around. So for one lucky commenter I've got this little guy (gal?).



Standing 19cm (7 1/2") tall, not including ears, he's made of a wool blend felt and has red felt flowers appliqued all over his back. He sports a magnificent wool tail, truly the envy of all other felt bunnies! He's not really designed for the younger crowd, I doubt the flowers or tail would stand up to much pulling or sucking; but he's up for lots of bouncing and other more gentle forms of loving. Let's say older kids and the young at heart generally, just to be on the safe side.



I'm happy to ship internationally too! All you need to do is leave a comment on this post and tell me where you're from in the world - I'm always fascinated by the far-flung places people visit from! Please make sure that I can contact you either via your own blog or by email. The draw will be open until the evening of June 1st here in New Zealand, which will take it up to about midnight, May 31st in North America. I'll use a random number generator to pick the winner and will post the result immediately.

ETA: I'm planning on posting a tutorial for the bunny with pattern and instructions in the near future - so if you're not the winner this time please check back for the tutorial and make your own!

I can't wait to start working my way through other participating blogs, I'm wishing everyone (including me) good luck!

The Master List

I wrote this up a couple months ago to keep myself on track with the projects.



Master list, originally uploaded by Ansis68.

Ha! So yes, I have actually ticked off a few , and mostly in order, but there seem to be a few projects that "accidentally" slipped in without being written down. How did that happen? Like the felt bunnies (plural), the chibi kitten and rabbit, the felt crown. Oh yes, I plead extenuating circumstaces your honour - birthdays! a mania for felt rabbits! But shouldn't I at least anticipate the birthdays? I've got them marked on my calendar, they are anticipatable. Clearly I need to work on my mad list-making skillz.

How to get ahold of those Japanese Sewing Books

I'm not even sure if this is something people worry about, but I can tell you that I spent an inordinate amount of time searching around for Japanese Sewing books here in NZ before realising that my only option was to order online. Then I spent an inordinate amount of time researching that! I don't like to just click and order, I need to agonise over something for ages and find out every single option, ignoring the law of diminishing returns, until I nearly collapse from the sheer volume of information. You should have seen me ordering a few bits of wool felt last month!

In the end I got mine from Yes Asia as they had the cheapest prices by far (free shipping!) - although as I discovered that's because they're as slow as a wet week in getting it to you! But they did come after a month or so, and really for those prices it was worth it. The site comes up regularly as a good place to buy them so it's not a fly-by-nighter by any means. As an English-speaker it's not the easiest site to navigate, although I notice that in the year since I got my books it's become heaps better. For craft books the categories you want are

Books in Japanese » Hobby/ Lifestyle/ Culture » Lifestyle » Home Arts. The direct link is here. Please note that this is the global site, if you want shipping to North America only then you want this link here. The books are listed by publication date (generally). I found the easiest way to find them was to look on other sites for books people have reviewed or provided photos of pages, and then go looking for them on Yes Asia because you can't look inside and they don't provide reviews of the books - in English anyways. You can do a Google search, check out Etsy sellers, or visit sites like Crafting Japanese, Angry Chicken, or Molly Chicken. Crafting Japanese has a big long list of lots of blogs who mention these books.

Damn, now I want to order some more books! How about this one - imagine the amount of time I'd need to waste before committing to buying a book that was both a Japanese craft book AND about wool felt? Welcome to the Felt Bakery

iPhone cover

Woo - first item completed from my list of gifty-goodness! Only how many left to go? ;) This was an iPhone cover for Shelly.




It's the same as the one I made for myself, but without the pocket for earphones. The fabric is from the Botanica line by Art Gallery Fabrics with green lining fabric from my stash and a button from the button box. I love these green buttons because they have a wee sparkle in the middle - I'm fond of a small amount of bling in unexpected places. It has a layer of cotton wadding as well as I gather that iPhones are pretty delicate and prone to breaking if dropped. Poor Mat is dying to have one but an archaeologist's phone needs to be moderately robust so he's being sensible (so far!). Reminds me of one dig I did where Pete lost his phone and got someone else to call it and we all heard it ringing from in the spoil heap (big mound of sieved dirt). Not really iPhone territory...



Shelly was really taken with the idea of having a button closure on the cover, but I figured that fumbling with a button while your phone was ringing would just add to the stress of modern life so I did a fake button hole and put velcro underneath.



Sorry the photos for this are dreadful, so washed out! They don't do the fabric or the lovely pale green button justice. Must have been a bad day. I'm really keen to turn this into a wee tutorial so that people can do this themselves - there's lots for sale but I couldn't find a pattern myself when I looked and it'd be so handy to have the measurements out there for people to experiment with. I just have to figure out how to draft up the pattern and find somewhere to host it.