Feeding the family

It's so very satisfiying (and economical) to feed your family from your own garden. This basket became a quiche. And later we used our lemons to make a mayonnaise. Oh yum.
And its nearly three monthe since our chooks arrived from the egg farm and its a relief to see them almost fully feathered again. Thanks for the eggs ladies, keep up the good work!

New Purse!

I was checking out the Flickr group of 'Bend the rules sewing' and was loving the purse/wallet designs. They were all so cute but didn't have enough space for my bits and pieces, and I don't have the book yet either, but I was inspired to tackle a new purse anyway. My old one is pretty shabby.Here is my finished purse. I added the metal clip, in case I want to attach my keys to it in future
I sewed on some clear plastic from Spotlight (that was left over from another project) to make the pockets for photos and frequently used cards!
I carry quite a lot of cards, so here is the opened out purse, with about four cards in each pocket, and a pencil, just because I had room for it! I put in the hook and loop to prevent the whole thing opening during day-to-day use, as the cards in here are only needed fortnightly or less.
I needed to have a space for notes as not all our shops here have eftpos available so its good to have cash as well. The only thing missing is a really secure place for coins. We'll see how it goes and I may need to modify it later.
I kind of made it up as I went along, using whatever scraps I could find in my stash. I'm almost embarrassed to say that the fabrics are an old skirt and a cheap sheet (too cheap to ever have been slept on).

It certainly kept me busy last night and this morning. I gave it a test run at the shops this afternoon and so far, so good.

Some sewing

From last year - I had fun making the bassinette cover to hide the cane basket that was showing its age. I also custom made the mattress to fit. Then we discovered everyone got more sleep if we were all in together! Oh well, it still got used for a few days sleeps...

From this year - The play clothes are an example of sewing on my very small budget. All the pants in the bottom row are made from our clothes that were on their way to 'clothes that don't fit Heaven'. These were repurposed when the weather suddenly grew cooler and shorts were no longer appropriate attire for my little man. He was also 'between sizes'.

There are several bonuses to this style of sewing:

*It's almost free! This is great while I am at home and money is tight. I did buy some elastic though.

*At his age clothes don't last long, and get messy quickly. Lots of pants are a good thing and if they get ruined noone has to moan about how much they cost!

*He is too young to know or care whether the pants he has on today are the trendy ones from that special kids clothing shop or the ones made out of mum's old cords!

*There is plenty of fabric to make size 1 pants while avoiding all the pockets and stuff in the original pants!

The pants and top in the top row are made with fabric from my stash.

I don't have a good pic of the PJ's. They are already well worn in too. Maybe I'll post when I finish the new PJ's!