Riches and Roses July Etsy Update

It's been a BUSY past month in the Riches and Roses Etsy Store!

Top 3 Viewed Items

1. Toddler Quiet Book

2. Baby Doll Diaper Nappy Carry Bag

3. Balloon Cover



Top 3 listing favourites

1. Toddler Quiet Book

2. Kids' Tool Belt - orange

3. Kids' Tool Belt - pegs design

Biggest sales

1. Toddler Quiet book

2. Balloon Cover

3. Reversible Whales sun hat

Monday Minute

It's an almost sewing-free Monday Minute this week. It's school holidays here in Queensland and so we left our kids with their grandparents for a few days and flew to Sydney for a grown up vacation.

I had an afternoon to myself at the Art Gallery of New South Wales to visit the Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera exhibition, which was excellent!

And we were very lucky to get so much sunshine and blue sky, despite the cool weather - check out that view! Superb!

And the coffee was excellent!

Not completely sewing free, as I arrived home to three little packages of fabric goodness - yay! How cute are those prints for kids?!!? I think my favourite is the yellow with bright dinosaurs :)

And a sweet little gift from a friend at work today - this little kit to make an Autumn Maiden doll. Bring on the weekend so I can get started on this little project. 

Little miss 5 is also eager to help with this one! Hope to show you the finished product soon xx

Monday Minute

It was a cutting out sort of weekend round here ~

I cut into my new Hungry Caterpillar fabric to make a new version of the case for the Hungry Caterpillar felt set in my etsy store.



I cut out some colourful page backgrounds and chalkboard vinyl numbers to put together a new counting quiet book.



Watching my three year old son's obsession with cars keep growing, I finally cut out some car play mats. First, this racing mat.



And then this little town mat. Stay tuned for some of the detail I plan to add to this one!



And finally.... a whole pile of fabric pages to start putting together a new batch of quiet books! Yay!

Fabric Favourites

Sometimes it seems kids get to have all the fun. My son has shorts covered in little monsters, and another pair in sharks. He has pants with dinosaurs on the trim and a reversible hat with bugs on one side and vehicles on the other. 

My daughter has a skirt covered in rainbow spots and multiple items made out of different owl designs.

I shouldn't complain too much though as it can be a lot of fun shopping for kids fabric and as you can see, I'm building up quite the stash <3 <3 <3

Which one do you like the best?

Pyramid zipper coin purse

Earlier in the year, I went to a craft fair here in Brisbane, where I bought  a little kit to make this tetrahedron zipper pouch. When I saw it, my geeky side (I used to be a high school maths teacher) loved the idea - only a long zipper and a strip of fabric to make a little purse. The fabric strip is sewn along the zipper and as you close the zipper, a purse is formed!

And then of course, my 3-year old and 5-year old spotted it, and being zipper-obsessed as most kids are, begged me to make them both one.

The fabric strip was great, but it was fiddly to deal with the lining, so I perused the internet and came up with the perfect solution for a kids version - ribbon! Follow the link to Craft Passion where you'll find some great pictures and very useful instructions.

So I bought some ribbons... how cute are they?!?!

And some very long zippers, and got to work with the colours chosen by my children.



My kids are not really into coins, but the purses are the perfect size for storing tiny little treasures, like that one favourite car, dinosaur, or hairclip, or for just zipping and unzipping for fun.

Sewing Tutorial Quiet Book Pages - Rainbow, Butterfly, Hot Air Balloon

A few months ago a custom order came through my Etsy store. One of my most popular existing items is the Quiet Book that I sell through the store and one of the great things about it is that it is so easy to add extra pages to it as I join the pages together with ring binders.

The request was to add in one extra page (two-sided, so two extra designs) more suited to a smaller child. See the finished product below!

To make the rainbow, I cut the red (largest) semicircle first and then cut each next colour a little smaller. I then sewed the red semicircle onto the page and followed with each smaller one until I was done.

I overlapped two little light grey clouds over the bottom edge and cut out two identical pieces in a small butterfly shape. I sewed these together, inserting antennae and leaving a small opening on each side so that I could feed through the thin ribbon. When constructing the page and joining it to the previous one, I fastened in the ribbon between the pages. 

The cute little butterfly can be pulled along the ribbon to fly around in front of the clouds.

For the hot air balloon, I first sewed the blue felt rectangle onto the background page as the sky. Then I added two little white clouds and sewed on the main hot air balloon shape (here in the white with coloured spots). I attached four short lengths of ribbon to the base of the balloon cover (here in orange), and then sewed this felt piece at the top of the balloon. I attached the ends of each ribbon at the bottom and then hid the ends by sewing the balloon basket over them.

The doll is used in another page (the tent and sleeping bag page) in the book, so rather than add another, and in order to make it easier to handle for a small child, I attached a ribbon to the doll so that it could be used for both pages, and also couldn't be easily lost - double win!

Sashiko inspiration!

In March this year I went to the Stitches and Craft Show here in Brisbane . It was a rare treat of a day all to myself and I was prepared this time by booking into a few workshops in advance by email.

Having lived in Japan in my 20s for 3.5 years, I have a fascination for all Japanese styles of handicraft and tried a lot while living there and on later visits back. Sashiko is something I've wanted to get into for a long time and have done a few smaller pieces in the past to make into greeting cards or coasters.

At the show, I went to a demonstration of Hitomezashi by Jane from Be Be Bold, which is a 'one stitch' style of sashiko. It is based on geometric patterns which run horizontally, vertically, and diagonally and you concentrate on one direction at a time, sewing through from one end to the other. I bought these little coasters above as a kit and sewed them up at home later. I love the simplicity of this method and how effective it looks. When I get the time (ha!) I would love to sit down and design some of my own patterns and try a larger piece. I also really like the white background with brightly coloured thread - it makes such a fresh change from the traditional white and indigo.

I also tried my hand at Boro patchwork for the first time, at a workshop run by Sue from Indigo Niche and ended up with this great little pin cushion at the end of the hour. I love the imperfection of it and the idea of using the old to make the new with the recycling of old fabric offcuts. It now has a practical use and a position in my sewing room. It's lovely to see my own handmade pieces being put to use in there - you can see it below in my sewing room, along with some of the Japanese pottery pieces I made when living in Japan, that I now use for storage.