Holiday cheer!

I enjoyed using my tea cosies while away in September, so decided the SpaceVan needed more accessories. 

When I first learned to sew, I lived in Newcastle and bought fabrics from McElwaine's on Hunter Street and Anne's Glory Box, when it was in the mall, near the food court (for the Novocastrians). 

I occasionally bought from Pooh's Corner and another shop in the main street of Belmont. Sometimes Spotlight. 

These days I pick up fabric and notions from op-shops to add to my stash - and buy a few special prints online. 

I still go to Spotlight, mainly for needles and thread, batting and interfacing and try to buy these at during one of their regular sales or when they send a voucher.  Of course, I'll rummage in their remnant bin while there! 

I wanted my Spacevan kitchen and dining accessories to be bright, like the tea cosies.

The sunflower fabric has been in the stash for so long, I can't remember where it came from. The green dots were a recent opshop find - and there was enough to make a small tablecloth also. The main fabric of the sunflower tea towels was a 50c piece! (The green tea towels are new, purchased from a different opshop). 

In total I made two tablecloths, two placemats (the reverse side is a bright llama print), four bowl cosies, a jar opener, two pot-holders (backed with yellow batik that was used for my tea cosies), two tea towels and one hand towel. 

We have a green/white melamine set of plates and bowls (originally purchased back in 2014 before the Millard van but well-used during our 18-month stint of caravan living) that co-ordinate well with these accessories. The insides of the bowls were looking sad but a few soaks with denture tablets worked wonders. I was able to salvage six of the original eight.  Given it will be mostly Nick and I using the van, I'll keep a set of four plates in both large and small sizes in the Spacevan, as well as two similarly coloured smaller plates.  (The other green plates in our larger picnic kit).  I'm liking the holiday cheer!

Taking ad-van-tage of scraps!

The volume of my infamous fabric stash fluctuates.  I add opshop finds to it, haberdashery items as well as material - and I occasionally buy specific prints, when crafting a themed gift.  

This happy caravan design was purchased to make a bag set for a friend. A different friend scored a travel tissue cover from the leftovers and then there were just two small pieces left.  I wanted to use them for me but hadn't thought of a suitable project.  

When playing with this striped op-shop remnant (a $2.00 bargain!), I realised it was an excellent match for the vans - and I decided to make a cosy for my small $2.00 teapot, which had been well used on our Wing-it Wanderings last year.

Youtube had many tutorials, though a few were declared "frumpy" by Erin!  I found one that appealed, drafted a simple pattern before bed and started creating when I woke at 6ish. I smiled hugely as I sewed and was very chuffed with the finished piece, particularly the button "tyre". The top collage shows the front and back of that cosy.

I rediscovered the second, larger piece of van fabric yesterday and made a second, larger cosy for our Roma teapot (purchased from the marvelous Ace Drapers store).  I'd used all the stripes, so the reverse is a bright yellow batik print - the same as the lining of the both cosies.  Four vans were given button tyres and when we were choosing those, Erin found a black button with a rooster etching, so that was sewn on a compass. 

As much as the cosies were made to fit particular teapots, they will fit others and I'm thinking the larger one might cover a plate of scones or similar also.  

Mat-ching!

I was impressed with the success of my hair towel project, so decided to make something else for my holiday kit - a mini bath mat!  It may seem OTT but I've often remembered the bath mats at Mortlake and thought I could BYO a smaller version.

This one is a cut-down hand towel, that had been retired from use.  I rounded the corners and then topped with more of the bed cover fabric.  

It's not perfect but will be quite fine to stand on after a shower.  Looks pretty flash, eh?!  

Hair it is!

I've previously showed the contents of my brown beauty case (purchased to pair with my Gladstone bag).  

I like all the bright, happy colours and bought a similarly cheerful towel last year from Ace Drapers in Roma.  It was labelled a beach towel but I think of it as a holiday towel!

In recent times I had a yen for a co-ordinating hair towel and spent a fair bit of time looking for one that was pre-made or alternatively a bath towel I could use to sew a custom version.  

Nothing really appealed and Nick half-jokingly suggested I dye a hair towel already here.  At first I didn't think much of his suggestion but when I was up super-early yesterday morning, I did some Googling.

Earlier this year, I dyed tea-towels with - tea!  I didn't fancy a brown-ish hair towel but thought onion skins and turmeric might have potential as on-hand natural dyeing ingredients (that didn't require a mordant).

While I was boiling those, I did some running repairs on an old, white hair towel. It's elastic was stretched and some of the stitching had failed. 

I strained the skins and tumeric powder from the dye, then returned the liquid to a large pot.  I put the repaired towel in and brought the dye bath to the boil again.  

I'd already booked several activities for the day, so turned the heat off before leaving the house and left the towel to soak till my return - around 6 hours in total.

It's not as bright a colour as I hoped but I'm quite happy with the result.  

Since our very early camping days we used a particular cover on our bed.  I had some fabric from that and cut a flower motif to applique on the towel.  

When testing it became obvious the elastic loop needed shortening and I added an orange button also, sewn with bright pink thread.  Hah - how's that for a custom bath accessory, using materials already here?!

Laundry revamp ...

My ironing board cover was part of a larger laundry revamp.  

When we moved in there was a laundry tub downstairs - and that was the limit of built-in storage under the house.  We later bought an old, $10.00 cupboard from an opshop, which provided some much needed bench-space and additional storage. 

Progress stalled after that.  A lot happens here behind the scenes and home-making generally takes a back-seat when we deal with other stuff.

This cooler part of the year is good for more physical projects though and a recent cancelled property inspection (along with a bout of vertigo) highlighted the need for much better organisation.  

As there had been no dedicated clothes sorting area previously, clean washing was brought upstairs and often left in baskets inside the back door or on the table - which caused chaos.  

Moving to Queensland prompted a wardrobe overhaul for me and I now wear dresses much of the year.  I like them to be ironed and there was no actual ironing area, so an ironing board was often set up in the air-conditioned lounge room, using a bookcase for hanging the pressed clothes.

I watched quite a lot of YouTube for laundry inspiration but most tutorials were aimed at home owner renovators rather than tenants.  I didn't want to paint walls and build cupboards. I just wanted to create a simple, cheap, pleasant work area - that could be dismantled and taken with us at some later stage.

After much pondering I purchased a $49.00 portable wardrobe from Kmart.  Once it was up, I could measure the shelf compartments as their size wasn't noted on the box.  BigW had white baskets that fit well.  I bought four baskets and two large grey tubs - another $47.00.  Everyone has a basket and clean clothes are sorted accordingly.  As the youngest, Vaughan's is on the bottom but I may change than as it's quite low and bending can be an issue for me.

We bought a second-hand dryer very recently.  It won't receive a lot of use but is a handy thing to have.  It's sitting on an old coffee table adjacent the washing machine.  I've placed one of our folding camp tables over the coffee table, to fold clothes on.  The ironing board is set up in the same area, so clothes can be ironed and hung directly on the racks.

The window had an ancient, too-long venetian blind covering.  It fell down every time I tried to adjust it, so has now been stored out of the way.  Nick put up a curtain rod this afternoon (which was part of a lot of block-out curtains I purchased soon after moving in).  I'd been given a set of long maroon curtains and we hung two of those behind the wardrobe, though I expect they'll stay open most of the time.

You can see some of the floor in the photos.  The tiles are cracked, broken and there are bare patches.  I'd like to put down a mat but in heavy rain periods, some of the downstairs area suffers flooding.  We've had ankle deep water in a former bathroom and less deep but still annoying issues in other places - hence our hesitation to use anything that could be damaged.  

I did some ironing this afternoon and folded a few clothes also.  I'm liking the ease of having everything in the one place.  Nick and I were culling downstairs the other night, so set up a bluetooth speaker and listened to Spotify while working - and that could be an option for longer ironing sessions, too.  

It's early days yet but I can see an improvement upstairs and feel we've done great work for less than $100.00 (or just over $105.00 if we count the $10.00 cupboard).  Three cheers for us!

Not board!

The current cooler weather is very welcome for our reorganisation projects - hooray!  Even better, we can see progress being made.

We hired a skip bin recently, which was great for clearing out the garage/shed.  (Some stuff had survived the Great Cull of 2015 but was superfluous to our Queensland life).

Given the downstairs flooding of early 2020 (and lesser incidents since), we have become cautious about what we store - and where. More culling and organisation is on the agenda.

The various reshuffling has also prompted other projects.  Yep, I made an ironing board cover today - finally!  

I can't remember exactly when I bought the board but it was after arriving in QLD.  The cover was well-used, so I put a bright tablecloth over the top.  Easy, no-sew fix!

Last night I unpicked the old cover while watching TV.  It was funny to see the flower imprints!

I trimmed that batting piece this morning, as it had been too long for the board.  I then rediscovered an insul-brite remnant in the stash, for extra padding.  (I think the remnant was $4.00 and I still have another one for the intended use).  It wasn't exactly the same size as the original layer but covers the top and most of the overhang.  I sewed both pieces together with a zig-zag stitch.  The floral fabric was a $2.00 Dalby op-shop find from our overnight trip last September.  It had some marks and fading but I was able to use the best area for the cover.  

I'd watched a few YouTube tutorials yesterday and pretty much followed the common construction method, using elastic to fit the cover snugly over the padded layer.  It turned out really well, which made me wonder why I hadn't made one sooner! Of course, there was some fabric left over and I've used a bright section to trim two hand towels, upcycled from an old bath towel.  I'm really liking the co-ordinated look (and may also make more lingerie bags, trimmed with the same fabric).  The laundry area never looked so good!

Bee happy!

I really liked using my travel bowl cosy while away in Canberra - and decided to (finally) make a set for home.

The sunflower bee print is one of my images, printed on metal.  It's displayed in the kitchen and other bee art (including a gorgeous original painted and gifted by Kerry) hangs adjacent the kitchen doorway - so it made sense to feature this lovely bee fabric.  

I don't remember where the sunflower yellow batik came from but I'm sure it was a bargain!

I've watched many YouTube tutorials on bowl cosy construction.  There is much emphasis on using cotton fabric, batting and thread to ensure safe microwave use.  I watched a different presenter this morning, who offered an alternate view in terms of safety - and I was pondering her approach while viewing the next clip, of a cosy that had caught fire in someone's microwave!  

Although we used our travel set in the hotel microwave without incident, I'm thinking I'll mainly use this new set as bowl holders, to protect hands/laps after food has been reheated.  They fit our standard soup bowls quite well, though are a bit roomier around the pasta/porridge bowls.  I went out today and tried various Kmart and BigW bowls.  They were all quite similar in size.  It occurred to me that I could adjust the darts for a better fit around the deeper bowls but then the shallow bowls wouldn't sit well, so I'm just going to accept that's the way it is - and bee happy!