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Vive La Difference

Happy Monday everyone! Hope you all had a lovely week-end and are ready to kick off this week with a spring in your step. The weather over here today is grey and rainy which makes it a tad bit difficult to get too much of a spring in my step. But I’m trying my best.

Today I’m over on the the London-based design blog Colour Living taking part in their Vive La Difference series. Tina (the blogger behind Colour Living) sent me a list of themes and words in which I had to choose a few to interpret into a creative image. Tina then created her own image using the same words as inspiration.

After reading the list I chose the words book, fabric and library. Three things that I really love. Click over to Colour Living to read all about my dream library as well as to see TIna’s interpretation (and inspiring description of her imaginary library). Thanks for having me Tina!

Tags: books, colour living blog, creative, fabric, library, photography, vive la difference

Comments 6 Comments
Categories Creative, guest blog, photography

SuperCut Fabric Shop

9 Jan

scampolo-fleurs-des-iles-grigio-50cm-x-75cm

As some of you may know, I love pretty fabrics of every kind. I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. I don’t smoke. But I do love to buy (lots of) beautiful fabrics. I have a gorgeous collection of materials that I have purchased all over the world and I use them on a daily basis. I may use a new fabric right away or I may even save it for years before using it. I often sit in my sewing room and look through my beloved materials and imagine what beautiful projects I could make with them (that’s what happens when you don’t have a TV).

Since living in Italy (for more than a decade) I’ve bought almost all of my fabrics outside of Italy. I really searched for shops here that had beautiful fabrics but I just couldn’t find any that really appealed to my taste. So after years of buying primarily in Canada (every time I return with a suitcase full), in Belgium (here is my favourite shop) and from Dutch online shops you can imagine how excited I was when I found out about the Italian online fabric shop SuperCut that is based out of the city of Bergamo. I’ve always been a huge fan of supporting local small businesses so this was a great find for me.

The very sweet French owner Marine has excellent taste in fabrics and after going through her shop I realised that she picks out pretty much every fabric brand and design that I myself am so fond of. It’s really a match made in heaven! You can find fabrics from Liberty, Petit Pan, Echino, Kokka, Kitsch Kitchen and many more. Marine stocks cottons, canvases, linens and even has a great selection of oilcloth and notions as well. And SuperCut ships all over Europe.

Yesterday I ordered my first SuperCut fabrics and they actually arrived in my mailbox this afternoon. I was like a kid at Christmas as I was opening the beautifully wrapped package. And everything I ordered was perfect. You can’t imagine how long I’ve been looking for fluo pink and yellow bias!

My lovely purchases

And as an added bonus many of the SuperCut fabrics are currently on sale (even the Echino and Kokka fabrics!). So pop on over and take a look!

Tags: creative, fabric, online shop, sew, Sewing, SuperCut

Comments 10 Comments
Categories Creative, italia, Sewing

Fabric Scrap IKEA Chair

11 Jun

A few weeks ago a good friend drove up my driveway and surprised me with two small chairs from IKEA (called Jules) that her big kids didn’t use anymore. It’s funny because I was just recently looking for new chairs for my twin daughter’s room and the ones that she so generously dropped off to me were the ones that I had actually been looking at to buy. Very serendipitous.

So there I was looking at these little white chairs in my kitchen and I just happened to have a small basket of material scraps next to me (which is often the case for me). I had a few minutes to waste before making dinner so just started playing around with the scraps and the little holes in the back of the chair. A few minutes later my daughter came in and started to help me. We busily cut and wove and tied bows and ended up with the sweetest little chair for their bedroom.

The chair matches their very colourful room perfectly and the girls are so happy with their new “office chairs”. Many hours are spent sitting at their desk sketching, writing pen-pal letters and doing homework. Even the back is pretty with all the different coloured bows. There are so many different ways you could decorate this chair with fabrics of every kind (patterned, solids, linens, cottons…).

Above is another diy project I made with an everyday IKEA product. These little fabric covered bulletin boards (made from kitchen cork boards) are great to hang up on walls and closets to display everything from the kid’s art to photos. See post here.

Viva IKEA!

Tags: bedroom, chair, diy, fabric, IKEA, Jules chair, photography, scrap fabric chair

Comments 2 Comments
Categories Creative

Miniature Bulletin Boards

11 Mar

The other day I had to do one of my bi-yearly trips to IKEA to pick up a lot of stuff I don’t actually need (besides tealights and napkins of course). While there I came across 3-packs of round cork board heat-pads for the kitchen. As soon as I saw them I knew I had to make miniature fabric covered bulletin boards for my daughter’s room. They are turning 11 in a few weeks and I’m planning a surprise bedroom make-over and thought this would be perfect to decorate their walls with something useful.

So as soon as I got home I plugged in my hot glue gun (I’m so scared of that thing) and started cutting out circles in various fabrics. I cut the circles out slightly larger than the heat-pads in order to be able to fold them over the back edge and attach with glue. And yes, it is very dangerous for burning your fingertips. I’m pretty sure I don’t have any fingerprints left.

In the end I made six boards using different materials. When I have painted the girl’s room I will arrange them all above their desks for them to pin up various photos, letters and keepsakes (please no boyfriend photos for a while though!). For the photos above I attached a few to the art corner cupboard in our living room. I think I’ll be making many more of these in the coming weeks.

Now I just have to figure out the best way to hang them up. For the cupboard I used 2 sided adhesive pads found in the local fai-da-te (DIY shop). But for attaching them to walls I’ll need something a little sturdier. And advice out there?

Tags: craft, diy, fabric, IKEA, miniature bulletin boards, photography

Comments 22 Comments
Categories Creative

Shopper

6 Jun

Yesterday in our sewing group we made a really simple, beautiful and usable shopping bag. This quick and easy project was very welcome after our previous projects filled with pleats, zippers, piping, hems and darts. For the outside material I used Ripple by Brandon Mably (for Rowan). The inside material is just a simple floral that I bought decades ago and has been taking up space in the material cupboard.It’s a semi-lined (only the handles and about a 1/4 of the way into the bag) and big enough to fit lots of spesa (groceries).Off to the market I go!

I was thinking of trying to transform this shopper into a flowy summery shirt (I’ll call it the Shopper Shirt….everyone will want one!). Wish me luck and let me know if you have any advice to actually make it work!

Tags: bag, fabric, photography, Sewing, shopper

Comments 6 Comments
Categories Sewing

The fix

15 Jan

During my recent trip to Canada I enabled my not so secret addiction and bought some very nice new fabrics (or actually they were very generously bought for me). Not that I am in NEED of any new fabrics (see post about my “addiction” and you’ll notice that I’m not lacking in material of any sort). In any case, I’m very happy with my new fabrics and I’m already busy thinking about some new sewing projects for 2012.