Monthly Archives: March 2013

Make do and mend – don’t throw it away!

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Make do and mendI hate to throw things away.

I like to think it’s because I was a child before the true throwaway society of the 80s really started to take hold. You know what I mean? Once things started to be made to be replaced…

I’m terrible with clothes. There never seems to be a reason to throw anything away. If a button falls off then use the spare. If there’s not a spare can you re-jig the buttons so you can use a replacement where it won’t be noticed? Like the cuffs – you can get away with using similar or statement buttons there. That’s another thing. I save all my buttons. Spare buttons all get put in a tin. If I have to buy a new set of buttons, I save all the old buttons. Why would you throw them away? There’s nearly always something the salvage from clothing – removing sleeves, turning into a skirt, shortening etc!

It’s the same when I get presents for birthday or Christmas. I save the gift bags and re-use them. I save the trim as I’m sure there’s going to be a use for it. I’ve got another box that’s full of trim and ribbons from all sorts of things (posh chocolate boxes have fab ribbons). Also, I save Christmas cards and cut them into tags to put on pressies at Christmas.

AllotmentWe’ve got an allotment too and it’s full of things we’ve re-used. We bordered the beds from things we salvaged on the plot – and believe me there was a lot of crap including 12 huge gas canisters. The council wouldn’t take anything away so we re-used as much as we could and took the rest down the recycling plant. All the borders shown on  the piccie are made from things we’ve re-used either from the allotment, the house, or when friends have been getting rid of things like bricks. Even old DVDs and CDs (free from Sunday papers) make good pigeon scarers!

When I go to the garden centre the first place I look is that sad little shelf or corner where all the half price plants are left to die. You know the ones I mean? The trays were one plant has died, or the big plant that hasn’t been watered properly and looks half dead. Well they’re the ones I buy. Most of my garden is stocked with plants that weren’t at their best when I bought them. There’s something quite cool about buying these half-dead plants and making them look all lush and healthy again 🙂

What do you save and recycle? What can’t you bear to throw away?

It’s snow heels for me today!

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The Beatles in the snowWhat is going on with the weather?

This time last year, I’m sure we were having a little mini heat wave.

Only a few weeks ago it really looked like spring was starting. The bulbs in my garden were poking out of the ground and giving a lovely splash of colour and the trees in the street were starting to get their blossom.

Quirky Purple TARDIS hot water bottleQuirky Purple zombie hot water bottleThen boom – people have started ordering my hot water bottles! These two particular bad boys have been flying around the world!

I’ve also taken UK orders this week for a bee and a purple flower design.

I thought I’d be packing these away until winter!

I know show evokes all the childhood memories of how excited you were when you woke up and the world was suddenly white. You could throw the stuff, build with it and slide on it. What could be a better toy?

Audrey Hepburn in the snowWhen you’re an adult, snow very often becomes a bit of a pest. It appears and finds a way to stop you doing things. Something that might seem a good thing is when you can’t get into work so you can have snow day. At the weekend it’s going to be a pain for vintage and handmade sellers, as even if they themselves can make it to the fair or markets, the chances are, their potential customers won’t be able to.

For me today, the snow if stopping me wearing heels! I’m meeting friends for a shop (I’m playing personal shopper again) and then some lunch. I was going to wear heels but when I looked out fo the window I decided that I didn’t really want to see the inside of casualty later so it will be some chunky boots!

Quirky Purple wrist warmers and head warmerOn the plus side, at least I get to wear the alpaca and cotton wrist warmers and head warmer that I made myself just before Christmas!

And a big bonus – I found some of the purple alpaca and cotton on sale this week so grabbed some to make myself a set to go with my purple coat 🙂

Crochet toilet roll cover doll

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Quirky Purple crochet doll toilet roll coverQuirky Purple crochet doll toilet roll coverWell, I blogged about these a little while ago in Crochet toilet roll dolls.

The dolls arrived a couple of weeks ago so I had a look around online for some patterns and they were sadly lacking. Lots and lots of pictures of various styles of these dolls but hardly any patterns. I’d already got some wool that matched the doll’s eyes – that’s not weird is it?

Quirky Purple crochet doll toilet roll coverIn the end I found two. The first one I tried just didn’t seem to make sense. I crocheted a few rows and couldn’t work out which bot of the dress it was! It didn’t help that there weren’t any pictures with the pattern, just the finished article. The second wasn’t much better. I started the bodice of the dress and it quickly became apparent that it was wayyyyy tooooooo big for my dolls. Also, again it was just a pattern and no real explaination of which bits of the dress you were doing.

Quirky Purple crochet doll toilet roll coverQuirky Purple crochet doll toilet roll coverSo, like I usually end up doing, I made it up as I went along. And it came together pretty well.

I liked one bit of one of the patterns and kept that. Quite nifty idea that I’d not tried before. You do your first chain around around a small elastic band. You end up with a stretchy piece of crochet. I used this to make the very top of the bodice so that it would fit nice and snug. It also means that the dress is removable and not sewn onto the doll.

Quirky Purple crochet doll toilet roll coverSo, I worked the bodice in a singe crochet until it reached the waist of the doll and then started to increase until the circle sat in top of the toilet roll and reached the edge. The I just worked the rows the same size in double crochet until it reached the bottom of a toilet roll and then for the final row I did a scalloped edge

The it was just a case of doing a strap for a halterneck and doing a few daisies to sew onto the dress. I also did a belt around the waist and a headband with a daisy.

This is what she ended up looking like – not bad eh?    Quirky Purple crochet doll toilet roll cover

I think I’ll sort out the pattern next and I’ll post it up. Let me know if you want a copy. I’ll try and make it easier to follow and with some pictures 🙂

If you would like one of these dolls to grace the smallest room in your house – then you can find it here Quirky Purple crochet toilet roll cover doll on Etsy.

Etsy Nottingham meet

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On the 8th March I popped into town to meet up withe some local sellers. It was a lovely day, meeting lots of people making and selling all sorts of things.

When you have an online shop, you are generally working on your own quite a bit, especially if you are crafting. I think some things like vintage get you out and about a bit more as you ae sourcing goodies. That’s why I try to vary my days a little. Some days I do handmade and remade, then other days I’ll go out and about sourcing vintage in my favorite places.

So it was nice to meet up with such and eclectic bunch and swap stories and ideas. Here’s a group piccie of us all:

Etsy Nottm MeetThe picture is courtesy of the Lazy Pineapple who took some amazing pictures!

I wish we’d taken some individual piccies of us holding our business cards as I’m terrible at remembering names and faces. Anyway. here are some of the lovelies that were there – I know as I picked up their business cards and spoke to most bods. Sorry if I’ve missed you. Drop me a note and say hi 🙂

We’re also in the weekend Nottingham post (Saturday 16th March). Here’s a piccie of the article.

Nottingham Post articleNot my best side…. 🙂

Leftlion were also there chatting to people and doing interviews to find out how people find time to make things and how they became Etsy sellers. Can’t wait to see the article as there were some interesting stories that I overheard.

Hopefully we’ll get something similar organised again!

What’s in a name? Playsuits, culottes and jumpsuits!

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70s jumpsuit from Quirky PurpleIn 1977 the Queen came to visit my local town of Mansfield. It was the Silver Jubilee and if I remember correctly, she had come to open the new library.

When we were kids we only used to get new clothes at certain times of the year, like Whitsun or summer holidays. Well I was getting old enough that I could choose what I wanted, obviously within a pretty strict budget, and this particular time I chose a jumpsuit and a blue nylon bomber jacket.

The jumpsuit was fabulous! I was in a khaki brown colour, full arms and legs and had patches on it like an American car mechanic overalls. I was rocking it. I was so enamoured with it I wore it to see the Queen. People like Charlie’s Angles were the sort of girls that wore jumpsuits…

See how I called it a jumpsuit?

Jumpsuits were quite new, modern things as in the 60s the word ‘catsuit’ was used to describe an all in one. Think Cat Woman in the old Batman series, which incidentally was my favorite thing on the telly when I was 18 months old (and I have pictures from the local paper to prove t).

80s playsuit from Quirky PurpleRoll on a bit to the 80s and something similar crops up. In the 80s there were a lot of culottes. These could be skirts or dresses, the dress was usually being the button front style and not really being noticeable as being culottes rather than a dress. Calling them jumpsuits would have seemed old-fashioned.

In the 90s I remember dungarees being the closest to jumpsuits or culottes, but I’ve got to say, I wouldn’t have been seen dead in them…

So moving forward again we seem to have had a little resurgence of these similar styles. This time around they are called playsuits. They look a little like the 80s culottes but more suited to the beach or a night out

80s playsuit from Quirky PurpleIt’s actually been very interesting from a vintage point of view as 80s culottes have been very popular again and I’ve been sending them all around the world. I guess they are very wearable and can look smart enough for work, or dressy enough for a night out. Some are really lovely takes on 40s style tea dresses.

There’s one thing I’ve omitted to mention so far. Rompers. Hmm, to me these are something that a child would wear, or maybe one of those adults that like to dress as babies. Clearly I haven’t got the full picture as I discovered last year that this is what some other countries call our culottes.

So, it just brings me round to, what’s in a name?

Foreign fleas!

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Athens' Flea MarketI’ve just come back from a little trip to Athens. I’ve been to quite a few Greek islands but never actually been to the capital.

One of the things that surprised me a little was that they have a Flea Market. Lots of lovely little shops selling all sorts of handmade items (and some tat from China too, but I could ignore that). It was really nice walking through all of these on our way to the Acropolis. There were lots of cool things made from olive tree wood which I really liked. Quite a few artists and various clothes.

Athens' Flea Market StreetAs we got nearer to the Acropolis the shops gave way to a sort of car boot sale without the cars. Lots of locals selling all sorts of things.Some really nice bits and pieces there. Lots of books stalls too which I usually like to browse, but these ones were all Greek to me 🙂

There were lots of nick-nacks that I wanted to get but we’d only traveled with hand luggage – otherwise I’d have grabbed lots of stuff!

I wished I’d taken a few more photos now, but we were short of time and supposed to be concentrating on making our way to the Acropolis so this was really a bit of a whistle stop trip through the streets…