Hey all, how crazy is this time of the year?! I haven’t had much time to make stuff for Christmas (despite all good intentions) – perhaps if I start in January I’ll be totally ready for Christmas next year! :-)

Hope your holiday season preparations are going much better than mine!

Just wanted to let you know that Pattern Press have released my newest pattern in the One Red Robin range – Lucinda:

You’ve probably seen her before (published in Australia’s Handmade Magazine a few years ago). I am not sure which stockists have the pattern in stock at this stage, but if you’re keen to get this pattern, please contact Pattern Press and they should be able to let you know about your nearest stockist or you may be able to buy it directly from them. Pattern details are here.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank all the stockists and lovely crafters who do buy patterns from my range – I sincerely appreciate your support and I do hope you have fun making the softies and dolls. And thank you to Pattern Press (and Helen!) for all their work in publishing and distributing my sewing patterns. I’m looking forward to releasing more patterns in 2011!

After much procrastination, I spent some time on Spoonflower this week and set up my little fabric shop :-)

I’ve received a lot of enquiries about my fabric designs and whether I would have more on sale. Admittedly I am quite hopeless when it comes to ordering things online, then waiting for it to arrive, then cutting it all up, then packaging it, then sending it out again :-)

Thankfully Spoonflower recently opened up the ability to sell your designs directly from their website. All you need to do is register/login, pick the design you want, pick the base cloth, choose the size of your order, and make a payment via Paypal. Spoonflower will ship it to you directly. Easy peasy lemon squeasy (as my kids would say!). And there are so many gorgeous designs to choose from within the Spoonflower community.

So here are the designs that are currently available from my Spoonflower shop:

Find them all here: Spoonflower: Fabric by Jhoanna Monte

I would love to see anything that you happen to make using my fabric!

Thank you for the well wishes received on my 3 year old’s first day of pre-school! She was such a star – no tears, just smiles and giddy excitement.

She went straight into her classroom and didn’t look back at me once. It broke my heart but in a good way :-)

P.S. Thank you to Leigh for choosing me to be the featured blogger this week on Blog Chicks (a fantastic blogging community for women)! You can read my ramblings here: Blog Chicks Featured Blogger – Jhoanna Monte (One Red Robin)

I once read a quote by Robert Benchley that goes like this: “Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment” :-)

That’s pretty much procrastination in a nut shell, isn’t it? Well, in the midst of preparing for the show, I will admit to doing just that. Instead of sewing up softies, there I was (for no real reason other than just to be distracted) cleaning up my craft room. I was putting away things I would have actually needed; folding up fabric I was going to cut into anyway; dusting down surfaces that were going to be covered in mess again in no time; even picking up the stray miniscule pieces of fabric and thread off the floor!

At least this strange form of procrastination yielded some fruit – I found some fabric I had printed with Spoonflower yonks ago and had completely forgotten about!

Two fat quarters of Michi in grey and yellow on cotton:

A few fat quarters of Woodland Girl on cotton (I made a cushion with this fabric that you can see here):

And way back in June I had received my order of some designs printed on a 55% linen/45% cotton blend basecloth (Spoonflower no longer offers this basecloth as an option). So I also found a number of fat quarters of the following designs on the linen/cotton blend fabric:

Woodland Cutout in blue and grey:

Woodland Cutout in yellow and black:

And Woodland Girl on the off-white basecloth:

I’ve put all of these fat quarters up in my shoppe. I only have a limited number of pieces in each design. I won’t be re-printing these designs or printing new designs onto fabric until mid-next year so you might want to buy them now if you are interested in any of the designs.

They are all available in fat quarters only, which is a good size for things like small bags/purses, softies, placemats, cushion fronts, aprons, oven/pot holders, and a few panels on a quilt.

Find them all here.
(BTW how hard is it to photograph fabric?!)

Thanks so much for all your lovely comments about the show! I can’t tell you how much I really appreciate your support. I’m sure all of you can understand the feeling of making a whole bunch of things – putting a lot of time and effort (and love!) into each one – and then just putting it out there, wondering if people will like it or loathe it. Whether it’s in a store window or posting them up on the internet, I still get those butterflies whirling around in my tummy.

So thank you, thank you for your feedback!

Have you heard the good news?? The annual Softies for Mirabel appeal is now on for 2009!

Organised by Pip, Softies for Mirabel seeks softies and dolls handmade by YOU. Pip will collect them and they will be donated to the Mirabel Foundation at Christmas, who will in turn distribute them to children affected by parental illicit drug use. This is a great opportunity to use your creativity for a worthy and invaluable cause.

For all the details, please go over to Pip’s here. Donations need to arrive at Mike’s by December 10 – that’s PLENTY of time to pick a softie to make, cut up the peices, sew it up, and make it lovely!

Also in softie news, The Toy Society have started organising the co-ordinated Christmas Toy Drop for this year. If you want to be kept in the loop on progress and details, make sure you’ve got their website bookmarked. I understand a mailing list for the Christmas Toy Drop 2009 will be up shortly. Also, have you heard that they had their first ever toy drop in IRAQ? How awesome is that?!

I’ve realised that I haven’t put up a freebie in quite a while so to celebrate all this softie goodness I hope you will enjoy this new free Softie Pattern: Oh-Oh the Owl Cushion :-)

I made him originally for my nephew and he came together really quickly so I thought it might be a good project to share.

You can download the pattern (instructions and template) by clicking here (it’s a PDF file).

Please excuse my hand-drawn template pieces – I really wanted to get this out to you as soon as possible so I haven’t had a chance to polish up the templates but hopefully they will make sense to you! :-)

He is super easy to make and there is a lot of scope to play with and combine different fabrics and prints. Feel free to make one (or more) for the Mirabel and the Toy Society appeals!

P.S. You can also find a whole heap of free softie patterns and softie-making tips over at the Softie Making website!

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◘ Don’t forget that the September Sale is now at the One Red Robin Shoppe! 15% off softies and cushions and a 2-for-1 offer on all art prints (i.e. buy one and get one free!). Ends October 2nd!

. . . I’m finally making a small dent in my To-Do list:

And patiently waiting for some newly arrived and just washed linen/cotton blend fabric (received from here) to dry:

More creative spaces over here!

Spoonflower swatches of my “Woodland Cut-Out” pattern arrived a few days ago:

I’m very happy with how they have turned out. I’d like to try out a few other colours. I am also looking forward to getting this pattern screen-printed locally in the near future :-)

Also on my cutting table, a little snippet of a new doll I’m working on and hope to complete by the weekend:

You can find more creative spaces over on Kirsty’s here!

Also, you might want to check out Angela’s blog – she has been sharing the most delightful blogs and websites. I’ve been enjoying every single one of her recommendations. Angela also has a beautiful new blog called “Open” filled with snapshots of indie shops and cafes in Melbourne – well worth bookmarking too!

Still on an op-shopping kick, the Youngest and I popped in to the Vinnies shop in Ascot Vale and came home with the following -

Assorted fabrics (some vintage) and a brown/yellow/orange crocheted cot blanket in excellent condition (not for me this time, but for a friend who has just had a baby boy):

Vintage bed-sheet and London souvenir tea towel (to be cut up for some softies):

And this superb vintage (like new) Prince Charles & Princess Diana souvenir tea towel – I don’t think I have it in me to cut this one up!

On the sewing front, I think sample-making will be the plan for the next few months. These two are samples off to “A Little Different” in Geelong:

And more samples are to be made for the Houston Quilt Market later in the year. Unfortunately for me I won’t be going with them, but Helen from Pattern Press will be taking them with my patterns to the market :-)

In the mail, two fat quarter samples arrived from Spoonflower -

“Suburbia“:

And “Little Mushroom Girl” in a new colour combination:

I like them both and the only change I will make will be to decrease the size of the pattern.

So I think it has been a fun few days and I am hoping for more – I will be going back to full-time work next month and suddenly feel like there’s a whole heap of stuff that needs to be done before then. I’m determined to make the most of every single day this month! :-)

Inspired by the paper-cuts of Elsita, Loobylu, Angry Chicken & Roby Ryan, and fully aware of my impatience and inability to work on a delicate paper-cut project (my clumsiness plus a sharp knife = not a good idea!), I turned the sketch from the previous post into a new fabric design, “Woodland Cutout“:

In different colour combos (fat quarter size to illustrate the scale of the pattern):

Hope to get a few samples printed soon (just waiting for the Aussie dollar to inch up a little more!).

I’ve been itching to do some op-shopping for weeks and finally had a chance yesterday. I was up at Watsonia to visit a good friend and popped into the Salvos store there just before. I know Pip, Kirsty and Cindy have been busy hooking up crocheted granny squares (something I would love to learn how to do this year), but I think I may have stumbled across the biggest crocheted square I have ever seen! Behold:

It measures 1.5m by 1.5m and is in absolutely perfect condition. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Just imagine how long it must have taken for someone to make this. Of course, I quickly paid the $7 for it and went back to the car to marvel at it :-) So happy! It will definitely come in handy now that the nights are getting very chilly.

Thank you to Cindy for asking me to pick an Eye Spy theme for this week. Here it is: “Eye Spy . . . my new favourite blog!“.

What’s a blog that you have stumbled across in the last month and have instantly become smitten with? It’s always exciting to come across new blogs, so here is an opportunity to let us all know what you love reading at the moment and gush about why you love it so much :-) I’m looking forward to reading about your good find!

Just a quick one to let you know that my “Folksy Teaparty” fabric in blue-red-green is one of the 6 fabrics participating in Spoonflower’s fabric contest this week:

The way it works is that voting is open to everyone. The fabric with the most votes is printed up by Spoonflower and sold by the yard in their etsy shop for a limited time (until the new competition starts for the following week).

I think this print would look really cute made up as an apron, over mitts, coasters, place-mats – anything kitchen-y actually :-)

So if you would like to snap up some of my Folksy Teaparty fabric please hop on over here to cast your vote :-)

Voting closes next Wednesday.

The chorus of this song has been buzzing around in my head a lot over the last week – because that’s exactly how I’ve been feeling! :-)

But the feelings of zombie-ness are fading quickly as excitement takes over. In a few hours I will be off to the Melbourne Showgrounds to set up my little stand for the show. The nerves are starting to swirl around but I am making a concerted effort to ignore them for now ;-)

Five little Peg Bunnies (with bells) are finally ready:

(Individual pics are over in my flickr).

And a batch of fabric packs (2 fat-quarters each) have been packaged up:

Now off to pick up the eldest from school. Hope to be back tomorrow with some pics of the stand. My apologies to those who have emailed or commented lately – I am running behind on getting back to emails and comments but I do hope to respond by the end of the week.