tessuti fabrics

I've died and gone to fabric shop heaven. I swear. This place is gorgeous. No more Spotlight or Lincraft madness for me. This is how finding beautiful fabrics was meant to be.

Tessuti in Flinders Lane, Melbourne, near Russell St. Plus they also have shops in Sydney.

And they have a cute blog too.

I'm in the process of making 2 new skirts in light of my success with sewing and printing hanabi. So I've purchased some luscious dark, dark denim (almost black) and some cherry red 100% linen. I could have bought a lot more fabric in that gorgeous shop but kept myself in check. I am proud to say this as I am known to go overboard with these things. My new challenge is going to be learning how to put a lining in the red linen skirt. That will be interesting.

all stitched up

This post is a bit of a show and tell because I've made my first skirt ever! And what's more surprising is I even like it :) It's made from very dark light-weight denim with a very simple pattern that falls just below the knee. But it does have a zip! This is a big deal as it took 5 goes on crappy fabric for me to get it right. I patiently unpicked the mistakes very time to re-use the zip until I finally understood how to do it properly. I listened to about 4 podcasts from craft sanity while I was sewing so I had good company. The skirt's not finished yet as I plan to screen print either hanabi or dragonflies on the front of it when I get around to repairing my silk screen after it spontaneously burst 2 nights ago. I think this top from Queen (swoon) looks perfect with it.

Edit a few hours later: I printed hanabi on the skirt (see 2nd pic). It took 3 layers of red to get it to stand out like that on the denim because it's so dark. I was saved by Jezze's innovative credit card method of screen printing.

macha froth

I'm craving a really good cup of macha today. The kind that you can make yourself in Ippodo in Kyoto and you can drink along with a delicious Japanese sweet. It looks just like this pic from Ippodo too. All frothy and gorgeous green. I think the craving is because I had a late night and for me a cup of good macha is a tonic like the way some people eat big greasy breakfasts. Weird I know but it works for me. So does the Ippodo website. It's too cute for words. So I've taken a few illustrations from it to share with you here.

books, books, books

I love a good read and Marina Lewycka is a sure bet. I'm halfway through her new book, We are All Made of Glue, and am really enjoying it. It's not outrageously funny like her previous novels A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian or Two Caravans are (even though they raise some serious issues about immigration and exploitation) but still so readable. She's got a knack of writing about everyday issues along side bigger more complex stuff. It works for me. There's a review here if you'd like to know more about the plot.

Have you noticed there's been a bit of rush of interesting fiction coming out lately? I'm almost beside myself with happiness. Though the stack of books beside the bed threatens to topple over and knock me out while I'm sleeping if I add any more to it.

sento in art

This ukiyoe print (click to view larger size) is an old one by Kunisada and happens to be one of my favourites. It's a quite a wide print so it's hard to see the full view here but I did notice that someone lovely has put it up on flickr in sections (see 2nd row of prints). I bought a copy of this print while living in Japan because it reminded me so much of my daily journey to the local public bathhouse (sento) to bathe as I didn't have a bathroom in my teeny tiny Kyoto apartment. In the full print you can see some of the antics of the local women as they bathe together. The sento is a lively place, that's for sure. Women (and men but not together) gather nightly to catch up on the day's news with each other, gossip a little, relax and wash! And I LOVED it all. Even on the coldest of winter's nights when the last thing I wanted to do is walk 3 mins down the road for a bath, going there and soaking in those tubs was the best way to treat a tired body and was like a big sleep sedative.

a little bit Irish

I can remember having eaten Irish Soda Bread only once before and strangely enough that was in Japan. It was in an Irish pub though and the chef was Irish too and he put soda bread on the menu. At the time I thought it included some magical, mysterious ingredients but oh how wrong I was. Inspiration for trying came from seeing Jezze's loaf, and then seeing how easy the recipe was, I had a go myself. My goodness! Easy peasy and so tastey too! Especially with lashings of butter and jam. It reminds me a lot of damper (a kind of easy camping bread made with a fire) but soda bread has butter milk (substitute 1/2 yoghurt + 1/2 water) in it so tastes even nicer. Jezze tells me you can make a savoury or sweet version too. Savoury with feta, olives and anchovies. Sweet with dates or sultannas.

hanabi print tea towel

Screen printed by hand on cotton/linen blend fabric in bone. I even made the tea towel! Now that was a lot of fun. It didn't take long for my teenage memory of sewing to kick in again once I put my hands on a sewing machine. The tea cup in the first pic is one of my favourite pieces from a pottery village called Shigaraki near Kyoto.

Hanabi means fireworks in Japanese. Thanks to hiki-san for the name suggestion.