Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Wishing you a year of good madness!


"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and
good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone
who thinks you're wonderful…and don't forget to make some art…
write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope…
somewhere in the next year…you surprise yourself."
~neil gaiman

I've posted this before but I wish it for you every new year!

I'm not much of one to make New Year resolutions…they never last
much longer than my memory these days …but this coming year I hope
to begin selling some of my art in my Etsy shop. I've been working on
some hand painted fabric brooches made from original drawings..
some by hand and some by thread. I'll be adding a link to my shop
here on my blog so look for that sometime soon. Here's one of the
brooches that will be heading to Etsy……


I plan to bring in the new year in a quiet…peaceful manner…
much like my life has been for much of this year. I don't
have a lot of bad things to say about 2013…I've been blessed…
I just hope 2014 treats me as kindly…



Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Wishing…….


wishing each of you a 
merry christmas...

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Peace…….


what i learned today….
NEVER use stretchy fabric…
even if it is the color you want!

maybe i should have learned to 
sew before embarking on this 
new journey….but i'm still 
having fun.


Thursday, December 19, 2013

When Your Mother Says She's Fat…...

 Written by Kasey Edwards
this is so TRUE….
and so sad….

Dear Mum,
I was seven when I discovered that you were fat, ugly and horrible. Up until that point I had believed that you were beautiful — in every sense of the word. I remember flicking through old photo albums and staring at pictures of you standing on the deck of a boat. Your white strapless bathing suit looked so glamorous, just like a movie star. Whenever I had the chance I’d pull out that wondrous white bathing suit hidden in your bottom drawer and imagine a time when I’d be big enough to wear it; when I’d be like you.
But all of that changed when, one night, we were dressed up for a party and you said to me, ‘‘Look at you, so thin, beautiful and lovely. And look at me, fat, ugly and horrible.’’
At first I didn’t understand what you meant.
‘‘You’re not fat,’’ I said earnestly and innocently, and you replied, ‘‘Yes I am, darling. I’ve always been fat; even as a child.’’
In the days that followed I had some painful revelations that have shaped my whole life. I learned that:
1. You must be fat because mothers don’t lie.
2. Fat is ugly and horrible.
3. When I grow up I’ll look like you and therefore I will be fat, ugly and horrible too.
Years later, I looked back on this conversation and the hundreds that followed and cursed you for feeling so unattractive, insecure and unworthy. Because, as my first and most influential role model, you taught me to believe the same thing about myself.
With every grimace at your reflection in the mirror, every new wonder diet that was going to change your life, and every guilty spoon of ‘‘Oh-I-really-shouldn’t,’’ I learned that women must be thin to be valid and worthy. Girls must go without because their greatest contribution to the world is their physical beauty.
Just like you, I have spent my whole life feeling fat. When did fat become a feeling anyway? And because I believed I was fat, I knew I was no good.
But now that I am older, and a mother myself, I know that blaming you for my body hatred is unhelpful and unfair. I now understand that you too are a product of a long and rich lineage of women who were taught to loathe themselves.
Look at the example Nanna set for you. Despite being what could only be described as famine-victim chic, she dieted every day of her life until the day she died at seventy-nine years of age. She used to put on make-up to walk to the letterbox for fear that somebody might see her unpainted face.
I remember her ‘‘compassionate’’ response when you announced that Dad had left you for another woman. Her first comment was, ‘‘I don’t understand why he’d leave you. You look after yourself, you wear lipstick. You’re overweight — but not that much.’’
Before Dad left, he provided no balm for your body-image torment either.
‘‘Jesus, Jan,’’ I overheard him say to you. ‘‘It’s not that hard. Energy in versus energy out. If you want to lose weight you just have to eat less.’’
That night at dinner I watched you implement Dad’s ‘‘Energy In, Energy Out: Jesus, Jan, Just Eat Less’’ weight-loss cure. You served up chow mein for dinner. (Remember how in 1980s Australian suburbia, a combination of mince, cabbage, and soy sauce was considered the height of exotic gourmet?) Everyone else’s food was on a dinner plate except yours. You served your chow mein on a tiny bread-and-butter plate.
As you sat in front of that pathetic scoop of mince, silent tears streamed down your face. I said nothing. Not even when your shoulders started heaving from your distress. We all ate our dinner in silence. Nobody comforted you. Nobody told you to stop being ridiculous and get a proper plate. Nobody told you that you were already loved and already good enough. Your achievements and your worth — as a teacher of children with special needs and a devoted mother of three of your own — paled into insignificance when compared with the centimeters you couldn’t lose from your waist.
It broke my heart to witness your despair and I’m sorry that I didn’t rush to your defense. I’d already learned that it was your fault that you were fat. I’d even heard Dad describe losing weight as a ‘‘simple’’ process — yet one that you still couldn’t come to grips with. The lesson: you didn’t deserve any food and you certainly didn’t deserve any sympathy.
But I was wrong, Mum. Now I understand what it’s like to grow up in a society that tells women that their beauty matters most, and at the same time defines a standard of beauty that is perpetually out of our reach. I also know the pain of internalising these messages. We have become our own jailors and we inflict our own punishments for failing to measure up. No one is crueler to us than we are to ourselves.
But this madness has to stop, Mum. It stops with you, it stops with me and it stops now. We deserve better — better than to have our days brought to ruin by bad body thoughts, wishing we were otherwise.
And it’s not just about you and me any more. It’s also about Violet. Your granddaughter is only three and I do not want body hatred to take root inside her and strangle her happiness, her confidence and her potential. I don’t want Violet to believe that her beauty is her most important asset; that it will define her worth in the world. When Violet looks to us to learn how to be a woman, we need to be the best role models we can. We need to show her with our words and our actions that women are good enough just the way they are. And for her to believe us, we need to believe it ourselves.
The older we get, the more loved ones we lose to accidents and illness. Their passing is always tragic and far too soon. I sometimes think about what these friends — and the people who love them — wouldn’t give for more time in a body that was healthy. A body that would allow them to live just a little longer. The size of that body’s thighs or the lines on its face wouldn’t matter. It would be alive and therefore it would be perfect.
Your body is perfect too. It allows you to disarm a room with your smile and infect everyone with your laugh. It gives you arms to wrap around Violet and squeeze her until she giggles. Every moment we spend worrying about our physical ‘‘flaws’’ is a moment wasted, a precious slice of life that we will never get back.
Let us honor and respect our bodies for what they do instead of despising them for how they appear. Focus on living healthy and active lives, let our weight fall where it may, and consign our body hatred in the past where it belongs. When I looked at that photo of you in the white bathing suit all those years ago, my innocent young eyes saw the truth. I saw unconditional love, beauty and wisdom. I saw my Mum.
Love, Kasey xx 

Monday, December 16, 2013

I'm Liking It………..


Still practicing and playing around with
thread drawing….definitely getting better
with "the machine"!

Since I'm unemployed….and if the government
doesn't do something in the next couple of weeks…
out of even an unemployment check…I've been 
making my Christmas presents.



This is a necklace I made for my oldest grand daughter.
I stamped the cat onto the fabric before making this. The
cord is made from bias tape that I did a little free motion
drawing on then colored with permanent marker before
spraying with alcohol to get the tie dyed effect.


I also made her this brooch…it's just the center part…
I've attached it to a piece of card stock. This one I drew
with thread and then ran a blanket stitch around the outside
to attach it to a piece of felt before adding the pin.

I'm not sure what direction I'm heading with this thread
drawing but I'm liking it…..

Monday, December 9, 2013

Hoping Practice Makes Perfect…..



still practicing……birds…..

Saturday, December 7, 2013

Drum roll please……...

I posted a while back about painting cloth to make my youngest a
cuff bracelet. The cloth painting was the easy part….the sewing
….not so much! But I've been practicing free motion sewing…


For about a week I ranted…raved…cussed…and generally
ran my blood pressure up trying to get the sewing machine
to work. I finally got a friend to come show me what I was
doing wrong and found out the machine was broken….well
duh…but glad to know it wasn't just me! She gave me a 
loaner and I've now become an EXPERT thread untangler. 
I AM getting better…..

This is a cuff from Alisa Burkes book…Sew Wild…that
I based my cuff on…


And here's the one I finally finished…..


Thank goodness I was going for the "messy" sewing look!
She'll like it anyway 'cause it has her chillrens on it!

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Misty Mawn Class…….






i would so love to be able to take this class……

Misty Mawn's Full Circle Workshop







Sunday, December 1, 2013

being (t)here…...





India Flint….

i proudly own two of her books:




these books are not only full of 'how to'
but the pictures are most beautiful…..