Waterslides, bungee runs and dress ups = the coolest wedding ever.

 This wedding was honestly the coolest, most unique wedding I have ever been too. 

There was so amazing live music including Mark Lowndes and the Fergies.

Hula Hooping for everyone - this one was massive and I may have been playing with it for too long because today my ribs are bruised!!

This craft tent was fantastic, jewellery ready made you could choose from OR hang in the shade and make something of your own. 

 The kids got to enjoy a full day of jumping caste while the adults battled on the 'Bungee Run.'

Did I mention this was a dress up wedding? 

Moneth and I dressed up as Robin Hood and 'Merry Man' or variations of Peter Pan  and lost boys... You decide. I made the costume as a simple A-Line construction, basic placket with a half dozen buttons and a variation collar/collar stand from the Archer. 

There was so many cute spots to sit and eat. 

I seem to have lost the photos of the other cool things... I will have to add them later! But there were also gorgeous woven baskets hanging from trees with snacks in them, a very long and very cool water slide set up down a hill and giant mushrooms. 


On the blog later this week: My Clemence Skirt (I am working my way through my Birthday gift of the book 'Love at First Stitch')

Bye for now!

I used to do more then just sew..

Before I began my obsessive sewing journey I was studying a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Arts. Art and creating, making, imagining has always been a part of my day to day life. It has been a while for most of these activities... But I used to sculpt;

Make dolls;

Paint (sometimes with a politically geared agenda);

 And come up with unique, sweet characters to brighten up desks. 

I will do some more posts on more of my work as none of this is current or in my preferred style of fine lines, delicate features and water colours. I hope to find some more time to create not sew. 

Growing my Bernina family.

My first sewing machine was a Brother GS2700 purchased from Spotlight. It has served me quite well - albeit with lots of testing of patience and snapping, jarring, tension problems, buttonhole problems etc. But, really, it was good of it to put up with me smashing it for over a year. 

Sadly it is now no longer working. This was a bit of a worry as I had outstanding orders at the time. Luckily I was able to borrow someone's Elna 21.

Definitely would not recommend this machine to anyone. It is very noisy and gets hot FAST. It did save me though in my time of need and I was very grateful that it did quite a nice button hole.

This series of events put me on the hunt (I was already planning on getting a new machine) for my dream machine. I thought it would be really nice to have a Bernina Bernette 20 after trying my sisters and being amazed at how beautiful it was and its stitches. But unfortunately I realised an electronic machine was not the way to go for me. For my heavy duty sewing I needed a mechanical work horse.

I checked on Gumtree a few times and found a few really excellent vintage machines. There was even a Bernina 850! This machine however was priced at $600 and had not been recently serviced.

I decided to check out a Bernina 801.

I loved it! All the reviews said they were awesome and I was not disappointed. I picked this one up for $150, although I know many people get them for $20 and less regularly from thrift stores.

Luckily for me this one had hardly been used. I found out it was made in 1980 (For Bernina's add 60 to the first 2 digits of barcode). I took it in to get serviced to make sure everything worked. The capacitor was busted so that needed to be replaced as did the light. All up it cost me $220 for the service making this machine $370 all up. 

It now runs like new and will outlast almost all machines on the market today. It is borderline industrial. It is very heavy being fully metal. It is so quiet! Almost silent running. The stitch quality is amazing.

I am a little in love.

 Everything printed on machine is still perfect.

 View from the top showing the stitch options.

 Close up of stitch options.

 Only minimal rust - but works better then those on new machines as it is spring loaded.

 Very easy to access bobbin case.

 Proof everything still works.

 Slowly growing my Bernina family.