Vintage Curtains to Cushions

I've brought new life to the vintage 1960's curtains that I found one weekend whilst garage saleing.

Here's a pic of the first version of the cushion. What do you think?
Just ignore the fact that it's upside down!!! I just realised!!!

How many is enough?

I know it is only physically possible to use one sewing machine at any one time, but a girl should have a good few sewing machines in her collection shouldn't she? I already own three....

Yesterday morning's garage sale jaunt turned up a sewing machine of a make I had not heard of before. Necchi. Italian made, this beauty just begged me to bring her home. How could I say no? Made in the fifties, this Necchi Automatic Supernova (what a name!) is one very heavy machine and is in pristine condition. She comes with an amazing accessory box with many feet and attachments and a set of cams to enable you to stitch 270 different decorative stitches.

The amazing lid on the accessory box has a selector dial incorporated into the lid, and shows you which cams to select and the different settings to choose on the machine, just with a quick turn of the dial. I've never seen anything like it.

At the bargain basement price of $20 I feel that this is a machine that will live in the studio for some time. Below are some snaps from the three handbooks that come with this gem. Gorgeous fifties illustrations. Just my thang!

Fabulous Fifties

This last weekend found our family garage sale hunting on Sunday. I came upon my most favourite type of garage sale. Garage sale of a lady in her eighties who was crafty. Bingo. Fabulous.

This is a sample of what I brought home with me. My poor husband just stood there as I went along, selecting things and passing them to him, loading him up. We had to create a pile on the lawn after a while!

Handwoven cane baskets, skirt hem measure, anodized coffee pot, Adelaide-made handbag, the softest of soft leather gloves, pudding steamer, leather hole punch, knitting patterns, gorgeous dish with handle and some Ornamin Ware by Melmac - fantastic melamine plates and bowls for the kidlet. Vintage kiddie bowls! Oh... and all for $8.

And the item that really rang my bell was the hard cover copy of Australian Womens Complete Household Guide. This is one of a series that Colorgravure Publications released during the 1950's. I have a small number of volumes from the series including The Australian Home Decorator and Painter, Complete Australian Gardener Illustrated, New Australian Home Carpentry, Australian Picture Handyman, and Practical Australian Motorist Illustrated.

These do it yourself books are wonderful snapshots of Australian life in the fifties. I've included the index from the new Australian Womens Complete Household Guide so that you might know what a Housewife would need to know in the fifties. And below that a sample of decorating ideas for your fifties home.

I have a spare copy of The Australian Home Decorator and Painter if anyone has a title that I don't have from this series that they would like to swap. Just flick me an email and we'll compare books!

One giant step for man.....

When it's raining and there's a big whopping box in your kitchen, what better thing to do than to create a rocket ship??!

Here's our latest creation featuring fold out window, telescope, sun roof and letterbox. Every rocket ship needs a letter box. Inside there is a keyboard and controls. And of course the obligatory foil-covered icecream container space helmet.

I've been slogging away getting the last of the wetbags finished for my lovely wholesale customer. Once that is done this evening, I'll be back into making more stock for the Silly Gilly store. In the meanwhile, I've been scouring the garage sales for more goodies and last weekend came up with some crackers! Absolutely divine late fifties/early sixties cotton atomic fabric which is has a slight rib to it. Really bright vibrant colours to it still too. Am thinking a bag from this find. Also another biscuit tin to add to my collection. A Huntley & Palmers Biscuit tin featuring scenes from My Fair Lady.

Hope you are all finding a nice warm spot inside away from the wind and torrential rain. As I've been typing this post, it has sounded like a gale force wind has been rattling round my backyard!

Hooked on Cook Books Day 1

I have a thing for cookbooks.
Not fancy schmancy up-to-the-minute cook books. 1940's, 50's and 60's cook books.

I picked up some more on the weekend whilst garage sale-ing to add to the collection and thought I might have a week coming up where I can share some of my favourite recipes and pictures from my collection. Maybe somewhere out there is someone else who fancies cook books who encourage you to be a good housewife and make art out of rockmelons and cocktail onions....

Here's my new addition of The Australian Women's Weekly Picture Cookery Book. No date but estimating late 50's/early 60's. Now who wouldn't be whipping those little cakes on the right out whenever you have the gals over for afternoon tea?

And next is a cracker of a version, this time from the USA, of Betty Crocker's Cake and Frosting Mix Cook Book. Circa 1966, this is full of fantastic uses for all of Betty's packet concocotions. Look how perfect their icing coverage and texture is!! Now all I have to do is work out if today's versions of her products translate back to the 1966 versions..... I feel a email to the Betty Crocker kitchen coming on!

Any of my loyal readers collect these sort of cook books?

Vintage craft books & patterns for sale!

I mentioned in my last post that I would be clearing out some goodies from the studio. Well today was the day I finally collated them all together and took some happy snaps.

Here are the vintage crafty books on offer:

Children's Wardrobe - $8 - circa 1978. Patterns included. Lots of sewing hints and casual clothing for kids. Soft cover, 144 pages. SOLD

101 Things To Make - $3 - circa 1960's. Gifts, Home, Accessories and Toys. Knitting, sewing, crochet, general craft. Soft cover, 46 pages.

Simplicity Sewing Book - $10 - circa 1962. Fantastic book full of detailed, easy to understand sewing information. How to use a pattern, 7 garments explained, fabrics, darts & seams and more... Small tear to cover on front and back but otherwise excellent condition. Soft cover, 160 pages.

Hey! Let's Make A Busy Book (Shirley Shackleton) - $6 - circa 1987. Wonderful book of patterns to make a simple rag book full of things with which children can learn to tie laces, do up buttons, set the table, grow a garden and more. Name on inside cover but otherwise in excellent condition. Soft cover, 47 pages.

Sew For Toddlers (Kerstin Martensson) - $10 - circa 1979. Wonderfully simple book full of practical, easy to understand patterns for young children such as t-shirts, shorts, dresses, pj's and overalls. Includes full set of uncut patterns. Corners of cover slightly worn, otherwise excellent condition. Soft cover, 134 pages. SOLD

Home Handicrafts - $6 - circa 1975. Book full of all the crafty things that are now popular again! Lots of projects to decorate your home and projects to make for children. Hardcover, 252 pages.

McCall's Sewing In Colour - $15 - circa 1963. Excellent reference guide to all facets of sewing for home dressmaking, tailoring, mending and soft furnishings. Great colour plates as well as lots of illustrations. Highly detailed and covers everything you need to have a professional finish on your work. Hardcover, 308 pages.

Little Clothes For Little People (Lia van Steenderen) - $14 - circa 1987. Very useful book on making clothes for children aged birth - 7. Lots of casual and practical clothing such as dresses, pinafores, coats, bibs, stretch baby suits, bathrobes and more. If you can get past the interestingly illustrated children's faces, this book is for you! Patterns included in book for all clothing items. Hard cover, 207 pages. In excellent as new condition. SOLD

Biscuit Tin with red rose design - $5. Very clean inside. Sides undented and unscratched. Three small dents on lid. This tin is in great condition for it's age. Measures 23cm in diameter and 8cm high.

I think rather than have a million photos on this blog that takes an age to download, I will post links to each group of sewing patterns on offer. So you can click away to your delight on links and see what you might find!

Newborn - 18mths vintage sewing patterns - whole lot for $8
Size 1 Girl's vintage sewing patterns - whole lot for $8 SOLD
Size 2 Girl's & Boy's vintage sewing patterns - whole lot for $15 SOLD

If you would like to buy any of these items either here on the blog or in my Flicker set, either comment, email me or leave a comment on Flickr. First come, first served ala garage sale style.

Payment for any of these items is by bank deposit. Your purchases will be posted via the cheapest method possible and I will contact you with the item price + postage when you contact me saying you'd like to buy it!

More to come tomorrow!! I'll add them to this post so that all items are together.
Edited to add: More patterns and books have now been added today/Monday.

Click Clack

I've been working on my daughter's castle bag and fingerpuppets and spent a nice part of Friday afternoon sitting in the backyard starting my project whilst my daughter played outside.

As usual I had my fluffy companion Ella right under my feet, the sun was shining through the trees and I was using some lovely cheap but cheerful coloured yarn.

And Saturday morning's garage sale haul was a doozie too. This time the biggest find was for my MIL Robyn. Robyn's just taken up smocking to add to her already amazing repertoire of skills. I found a Sally Stanley Smocking Machine for the bargain basement price of $10!! Considering they go on Ebay for over $100 I was pretty happy with that find!

And I also picked up these curtains. Please tell me what you think. Got these for $3. They are vintage 50's - 60's and in okay condition. I'm just not convinced that the print is nice enough to be pretty without looking like a circus tent with wedding bouquets all over it?? What do you think?

Festive Find

I was just a smidge more than excited when I spied this beauty at a garage sale last weekend. Yes, back for two days and I was already beating the streets for finds.

The lady who was selling this tablecloth told me it was her mothers from the fifties. I love it for its festive feel and bright red colour, of which none is faded. All for $1. Bargain!!

Sorry for the shadow lines over the cloth... just couldn't get the right angle!!

And of course it's about ten centimetres too short on all sides for our big square dining table but what do I care?! I'm just in festive lurve...

Sweet Singer sewing

Methinks I should stop going to garage sales. Soon... maybe.

Okay, perhaps just give it a rest for a couple of weeks. Because the good garage sale karma is going to run out soon.... maybe....

Lookie here at what I found this morning, bright and early at 8.30 at the local church garage sale.....



It's a Singer 201K Sewing Machine, circa 1952. And I have it on good authority that the lady who donated it states that it is in perfect working order. Oh my, oh my, oh my......

And I already have a beautifully restored singer sewing table/cabinet for this baby to sit in. Hopefully the machine fits. You don't really worry about that when the sewing machine is going for a stupendously small amount of $10.

My architecturally designed hat display

I had been wanting a new way to display my hats for when I attend the Future Family Fun Days each month. I mentioned this to my husband and being the architect that he is, he dwelt upon it for a few days, getting ideas straight in his head.

And this is the magnificent creation is the result!! A round wooden base supporting seven hats at different levels, so that each is not disrupting the view of another. And it was extremely thrifty too. We found the dowel used for the uprights at a garage sale for $1 and the round wooden base is the top of a table we no longer needed. Some screws from the toolbox and voila!! A little bit of paint tomorrow and I'm impressed. Hi Mr Silly Gilly if you're reading (which I know he will as he requested I blog about his workmanship)!!

Never mind the hastily placed fleece hat on top or the creatively messy desk behind. I was just in a hurry to take a photo whilst there was a smidge of light left in the room. :)


See that little hand on the left? That's my new little boy Steiner Doll almost finished and ready to go to the Future Families Fun Day this Friday, at Goodwood Community Centre. He's a custom order and looking as cute as a button. It's hard to part with these little people once I've created them! I'll post a pic of him perhaps tomorrow once he's finished.

Pinch me now...

I think I've hit gold......



I'm in crafty shock.....


It all happened this morning at a garage sale I wasn't even going to visit. I went late, 12.30pm, expecting all the goodies to be gone.

Little did I know.......

that waiting for me......

for the measly amount of $10...........

was this:

Oh my golly, golly me........

Garage Sales and Apron Sneak Peek

I'm trying out some new layout styles with my blog, courtesy of a fantastic tutorial by Megan at My Everyday Chaos. She has a tutorial on how to change the size of your photos in blogger. It's such an easy to follow tute, and I'm enjoying the playing around.



Above is a photo of some delicious fabrics I found at a garage sale this weekend. Left to right, some lovely heavy weight gingham, fantastically bright red floral which I think I'll use for a girls summer hat for the store, a light weight, slightly open weave fabric with a 40's style print of children playing and lastly, another fabulous 40's style print. Both the last two seem destined for skirts or summer tops.

And I was hideously decadent Friday night and kept working on my new apron.
Yes it is All. For. Me. Call me indulgent, selfish, plain outright crazy, but it's nice once in a while, when you sew for your business, to go silly and sew something that you will wear yourself. Have a sneaky look at how it's coming along...



The fabric I have used is by Anna Griffin and is called Elsie's Kitchen Pattern #24570. I loved the 50's look fabric as soon as I laid eyes on it. It definitely came under the category of impulse buy but I'm still smitten so I think that's ok! Paired with some nice cheap, reliable gingham from Spotlight and some vintage bias binding, it's coming together nicely. More photos soon!

Oh no, not more Little Golden Books...

Yep.

Found more today at a garage sale. 35 more to be exact. Today I actually decided, out loud, consciously, to aim for collecting the whole damn lot. Not that that was my intention previously, but now it is. Am I loony? Methinks.....

I have also been a busy bee this evening piecing together my Doll Quilt Swap 4 quilt. I found the pattern here. 12" square, it still needs lots of embellishing but apart from that, it's coming together nicely. I'm thinking of some red or pink stitching. Maybe buttons? Sorry for the low quality photo, that's late evening photography for you.


But there is one piece in the quilt that is bugging me completely now I've uploaded this photo... Can you guess which one? It's funny when you view something through a different medium, it gives you a fresh outlook. Looks like some unpicking is due tomorrow.

And I've finished a smock that's been waiting in the WIP pile for some time. It features a great retro print with little boys and girls playing pirates and finding treasure!
It's size 5 and available here in the Silly Gilly store.

Have a great Sunday everyone!!

The handing down of the patterns

Garage sales rock. They are a lovely new family tradition. Here's a great garage sale story from this weekend.

Find garage sale in progress in empty office building. Bit suspicious but venture inside. Find in back room a three box bonanza of vintage sewing patterns. Feel like I've just passed out and I'm hallucinating...

Bark quick instruction to husband to ask woman how much patterns are each. "50 cents each" is the report. Frenziedly make a 'must have' pile, a 'how cute' pile and a 'what were they thinking but quirkily cute' pile (I've gotten terribly efficient in weeding out the bad patterns).

Woman comes down, sees the slightly manic but ecstatic glint in my eye and we banter excitedly when she finds out I sew with vintage patterns for my daughter and she offers the lot to me for $2. Two Dollars!!!!!!!!! I feel quite light headed and thank her effusively. Leave with 30 vintage patterns dating from the 50's and 60's, mostly children and some ladies. Here's some of my favourites:


I have also started the hair cap for another Steiner doll. This one just a little influenced by a good friend of mine, the elusive Miss C. Don't you love the colour?? Seeing my knitting makes me giggle. I'm a very new knitter.


And if you are twoing and froing about whether to see The Dark Knight, just do it. It is AMAZING.

Happy crafting everyone and have a great week!!