A Winner!

I'm sitting here typing one-handed with a cranky baby (who finishes a competition at 5pm, really?!)
So! I went over to random.org and typed in 1-13 and Mr Random Number Generator gave me the number 2! Congratulations Tamsin! I'll be in touch with how you can spend your mulah!
Thanks everyone for entering! Keep stopping by to see what's happening in store and at my house!
Ok! Must. go. feed. baby...

Colour, Balloons, Cute Kids and a Giveaway!

Welcome back! I thought I'd set up a little store for you in the kids' room so you could get a feel of all the colours and textures together. Etsy, though wonderful, feels more like internet shopping than a little boutique.

Here are my bibs! Not yet in store, waiting to go to market. They just feel sooo soft, made of flannel and terry toweling. Would you like one? I'm offering the first 3 customers who buy something from Tickle & Hide a free bib with their purchase! They come in boys and girls and large and small.

Oh Evie, what a beautiful little girl you are. This was my one moment this morning of baby sitting still for photo. She did not stop moving once after this! Eve's having a little play on one of drawstring mats. I haven't had a chance to put them up in store yet but if you would like one, or a custom one in different colours, they'll be for sale for $85!

Quilts, playmats and new fabric! I can't wait to show you all the things I'll be making with this over the coming months. There's lots of boy colours in there!

Our dear friend Jonathon made these balloon flowers for me for my opening today. What wonderful, thoughtful people I have around me!

So! We now declare Tickle & Hide: Clothing with Alter Ego officially open! And to celebrate, I have a special giveaway! I'm going to give a $50 voucher to a lucky winner valid until November 30! You can spend it on an item already listed or a custom item. Here's how it works: you can enter up to 2 times by leaving comments below.
Comment 1:Tell me about your most memorable or colourful celebration!
Comment 2: Become a follower of my blog or like me on Facebook (you'll have to search me as I don't have a URL yet!) or add my Etsy store to your favourites (or all 3!) and come back and let me know.


There! Easy! You can leave 1 or 2 comments below and Tim (or if we get really techy, a random number generator) will pick a number on Saturday afternoon.
Thanks so much to everyone who has said such kind things and encouraged me to keep going even when I've felt scared. This has been such a fun, learning, colourful, growing experience.

Jodi. xxx

Hello Spring, Hello New Shop!

Good morning! Are you ready to welcome my new store into being with me? We are! Tully and Eve were so excited, they were up and ready at 5:30 this morning! In fact, we were probably some of the first in the world to say hello to Spring!

 So, here it is:

www.tickleandhide.etsy.com

Oh wait! Before you go, we're going to have a bit of a party here today to celebrate. We'll take some photos, share them with you so you can join in and there'll be a giveaway! So make sure you come back after we've dressed and eaten our breaky.

Ok GO!

...and After!

What happened to Tuesday?? One minute it was Monday and we were moving up a storm, then next thing I know it's Wednesday already and those last little bits of cleaning, (you know, the ones where you have little piles everywhere of things you don't have a place for and don't want to think about?) were still scattered through my lovely, sunny dining room/studio.
Crafty Tuesday, a little group of friends who come over, eat cake and drink coffee and create together is what happened to Tuesday. I was so immersed in finishing off the final touches to some of my dresses and taking photos of them ready for my grande shop opening tomorrow (woohoo!) that cleaning didn't make it anywhere near my agenda.
So this morning, baby asleep, I made my way through those piles with great motivation. And look!

 In this yummy corner, where Tim's desk used to be, I have my fabric shelf and ironing board. The shelves we discovered on Monday on my neighbour's junk pile and asked if we could take it! Isn't it great?!

 This sad box is my scrap box, waiting to be sorted. My entire fabric collection used to fit in here. Hmmm.

 These are my bibs and dresses in a nice neat pile, waiting for new homes!

 And ditto for my quilts and drawstring playmats!

 I just love sewing next to the window! I love natural light.

 Look how much room I have! I feel so spoilt! And to top it off, the kids have been sleeping great in their newly shared room. (Although I did just have to go in and see what Eve was fussing about. Tully, trying to cheer her up, had thrown a teddy, a rocket and a hippo in her cot for a sleep-over.)

 And here's Tim, back in his cave (or sauna!), feeling like he's come home.

Don't forget! Tomorrow's the big day! Tickle & Hide: Clothing with Alter Ego is opening on Etsy! There'll be cake and balloons and a big giveaway! If you're actually, physically here in Newcastle, come on round for some fun. Otherwise, check by the blog to share in the celebrations over the ether!

Before...

Ahhh.. Spring! For me, it marks the end of a yummy, cozy Winter. I love spending the day in ugg-boots and drinking too much coffee and fitting 15 people in my lounge room for dinner without us all fanning ourselves desperately. I love sitting on the oil heater with a cup of tea held close and being about to bake peanut butter cookies and enjoy the warm rush of hot air as I take them out of the oven. And I love, love being able to sit and hand-quilt in the evening. Sigh. I love this time of year with it's warm, sunny days and cool-enough-to-still-have-flannel-sheets-on nights. I am desperately willing it to go slowly, drinking in every last minute.
Tim, on the other hand, grew up on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, which, apart from raining on the weekends, otherwise lives up to its optimistic name. Today, as we opened the windows for the first time in months and let the spring cleaning bug take hold, Tim also sighed, but his was in anticipation. "Oh, the humidity!" He exclaimed nostalgically, "It reminds me of home and surfing and Christmas." 'Humidity' has never, ever been a word I have used fondly. I would much rather think of snow when I thought of Christmas.
Anyway, worlds-apart differences aside, today we both rejoiced in the sunshine and let it fill us with enough energy to rearrange our house again. Not a complete overhaul, but definitely a new-chapter type change. We moved 9 month old Eve Lily into Tully's room and gave Tim back his office. That little office-once-bedroom is a lovely sunroom surrounded by windows which becomes an oven in Summer, just perfect for my Sunshine Coast man.
Like Summer, the change is both exciting and daunting.
Tully and Eve sharing a room: daunting.
Tim moving into to office and giving me the studio/dining room all to myself: exciting.
So far, with minimal fuss, both kids are asleep! Let's hope it stays that way till at least 6am.
Here are some photos of us working hard today:

Tully was very quick to discover the possibilities of a cot pulled to pieces!

This included making sure he was able to help out.

 While taking this photo, he said to me, "Mum. You need to stop taking photos now cos I'm trying (he says 'frying'!) to concenfrate."

 Evie spent the morning finding all the hidy-holes.

 And I tidied up the biggest mass of fabric and dresses from the dining room table. But you will have to wait till tomorrow's exciting episode for "...and After" because there are still a few finishing touches to go before the place is camera-worthy. :)

Ooh! And speaking of dresses, Tickle and Hide: Clothing with Alter Ego opens on Etsy.com on Thursday to celebrate the first day of spring! There's going to be a garden fiesta! With flowers and prizes and giveaways, BYO cupcakes, wine and internet connection! Can't wait!

My undoing.

This week, the most wonderful thing that can happen on a daycare day did happen. I heard a knock at the door, looked through the coloured glass and there, in her fluro yellow coat was Postman Pat! (Yes, Postman Pat is a lady in these parts.) I let out a shriek, opened the door to a smiling lady who must have heard my excitement, and thanked her enthusiastically for what I knew was my first arrival of birthday fabric!
Remember in my last post I was awaiting said fabric to finish this little project? Well after it arrived, I was so excited and too impatient to wait for the fabric to go through the wash before I could cut it up and use it, that in a flash of inspiration, I ended up finding the perfect fabric for the drawstring from my stash. Silly me!
So, to the satisfying swish, swish, swish of the new pretty colours in my washing machine, I sewed up a drawstring and quickly threaded it around the drawstring mat.

I hated it.
Oh! (whingy voice)
I didn't like how it sat awkwardly, how it pulled on my hand-stitching, how it looked like a birthday party hat when turned the other way round. I sat down at the computer, as I always do when I'm disappointed with something I've made. I went looking up blogs I follow to distance myself from it for a while.
I found Jennifer at Ellison Lane Quilts who was writing about her holiday in the mountains. Just looking at the photos made me breathe a little deeper. Then, without much fanfare or fuss, she mentioned she wasn't happy with her blocks for a quilt she was making, so she'd taken out the seam ripper to pull them apart and start again. Just like that.
Isn't it great how reading other people's stories can connect with us so strongly and help us feel ok about our story. I think that's why I'm so motivated to share mine. I hope the things I'm thinking through and learning can encourage you.
Anyway, I realised I thought the drawstring mat was a finished deal. I would have to do it different next time. I'll have to throw this one in the cupboard. I don't even know why I thought that way. It sounds so silly writing it 'out loud'. Having Jennifer so simply remind me of the seam ripper reminded me that creativity is a process and that process involves mistakes, changed minds, pulling apart and starting again.

So, I took to that beautiful hexagon with the seam ripper. And it's still sitting there in pieces on my sewing table. But, I did finish this one and I'm so happy with it!

Thanks Jennifer!

Dear Mrs Walsh.

Dear Mrs Walsh,
I am just writing to apologise for my lack of attention in Year 10 Maths. You responded to us hiding the dusters, building a bunker out of the chairs and desks, and locking you out when you were late with such humour and grace. And now, I'm afraid, it's all I remember about Year 10 Maths.
The other day I was trying to make a hexagon shaped quilt and I had to get my nerdy, engineering husband to tell me I needed equilateral triangles to achieve this. I also couldn't remember that they all needed to be cut at 60 degrees. (Thankfully my cutting ruler anticipated this and I didn't have to work out how to do it!)

Then, when I worked out I wanted my quilts to be 90cm wide at the widest point, it was with great humility that had to ask Tim how big I needed the triangles, which he proceeded to work out in his notebook. It looked like Russian. Actually, I would have had a chance with Russian because I paid attention at University. (Thank goodness I didn't marry an artist!)
If only we had known that at the ripe young age of 31, I would be needing the trigonometry I learned half a lifetime ago, maybe you could have convinced me to do my homework.

Please feel free to tell your current year 10 students that I now regret thinking Maths was irrelevant.
Your's sincerely,
Jodi.

Ok. Now I have that off my chest, I can show you the (nearly) finished product!

 This is another drawstring play mat, this time made from lots of strips sewn together then cut into many equilateral triangles.

 Cute, funky fabric for baby to play on,

Mature, funky fabric for the outside when it becomes a bag to hold the toys and throw in the car, ready for when you're going to a place (like mine) where you know they don't vacuum nearly enough. I'm just waiting on my very exciting birthday purchase for the fabric for the drawstring.
And then I'm taking them to market! Yes! My friend Anna and I got into the Newcastle Handmade Market. Woo! Come see us near Charlestown Square (google it for more details) on September 10 to say hello and run your hands over my neat piles of colour. I can't wait!