Bluebird Original

My eight-year-old son is an avid fan of Minecraft. He plays Minecraft on the computer, he owns Minecraft Lego, he plays imaginative Minecraft games, he writes Minecraft stories, he reads Minecraft books, he talks about Minecraft to anyone who will listen. He loves to build, imagine and experiment. Minecraft just enables him to do these things in a virtual world.  One day in the last school holidays he asked me to teach him how to sew. Together we decided to make a simple soft toy inspired by Minecraft. The character decided on was a Minecraft Enderman. This character is all black with purple eyes and long limbs. The blocky nature of Minecraft makes the characters easier to make as everything is constructed from simple square shapes. The Minecraft Enderman was constructed using a series of fabric rectangles. I didn't measure anything, everything was just cut according to the size that my son thought was right. The eyes were joined together like a quilting block and attached into the...

Several years ago my sister and two of my sister's-in-law were all expecting babies within a few months of each other. Surprisingly enough all of them were girls, so I had an excellent opportunity to sew three tiny little baby dresses. I drew the very simple pattern using my 3 month old sized bodice pattern block. See image on the right. The back and front were identical for ease of cutting out and sewing. The sleeve was simply a long, skinny oval shaped piece of fabric folded in half long ways to create a self lining. I then inserted the elastic in the folded edge and stitched a casing to hold it in place. Using the bodice block I measured the amount of elastic needed based off of the measurement from the top of the shoulder to the top of my drawn on pattern. The sleeves are inserted into the shoulder and then the bodice of the dress is fully lined. No scratchy little exposed seams to annoy the tiny baby. The skirt is simply a gathered length of fabric attached to the waist with t...

Taking an old, unused item of clothing and changing it into something new and useful has a special joy all of its own. This remodelling of a skirt came with the unique challenge of working with a fabric that has a distinctive design.  I purchased this maxi skirt some years ago from TK Maxx. It was made up of eight large panels to create a floor length, full circle skirt with an elastic waistband. The fabric is a delightful, if somewhat busy, Indian print on a fine, loose weave, transparent fabric. The way that the panels were joined created an interesting zigzag pattern around the hem. The skirt's original lining was made from a horrible stretchy fabric of the sort that I hate and which I quickly discarded as the remake began. For the dress I used Kwik Sew K4215 as my base pattern. Once again I am frustrated with the lack of correct fit provided by commercial patterns, but that is another story; the pattern provided a usable base to work from. With some careful piecing, I cut the c...

In Toowoomba, the city where I live, there is a large population of Yazidi refugees. These people fled the Yazidi genocide in Iraq in 2014. They come from the Kurdistan region of Iraq and are a minority culture and religion. They are very proud of their culture and heritage and often wear their traditional dress to weddings and other important cultural events. The traditional Yazidi dress consists of a long, loose, white dress pulled in at the waist with a sash. Over this, the women wear a black waistcoat style garment. On their heads, they have a black turban with a white or lilac veil attached to it. The turban is stuffed and decorated with gold trimmings. The traditional dress of Kurdistan, the area in which the Yazidi people live, is different. The Kurdish women wear a long dress with long trailing sleeves. Over this they wear a jacket-like overdress that reaches the floor and is split up the sides and opens in the front. The overdress is usually very decorative and has elbow or wr...

I've always been interested in India and Indian things. I remember reading guide books about living in India as a teenager and always dreamed of going there. One of the things that excited me most about India was the clothing and the fabrics that they use. Indian clothes have so much colour and use such interesting decorative features from embroidery to sequins, beads and metallic threads. I coincidentally married an Indian man and we travelled to India in the year after our wedding. Though I did buy some Indian clothing while we were there, I didn't buy a sari. Some years later, my parents went to Bangladesh for a couple weeks and brought back this beautiful pink and black sari.  The sari features gold thread throughout the design which, though beautiful, makes it quite stiff. The black cotton is also heavily starched and adds to the general stiffness. Wearing a sari gracefully is an art that seems to belong mostly to Indian women. While I do know how to drape the sari, the ef...