Lucky Lantern

We’ve moved!

Lucky Lantern — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 09:13:50 +0000

Lucky Lantern’s online store is officially open! Our blog has moved to our new site and we’ll be deleting this one shortly.

Come have a look and say hello!

www.luckylantern.com.au

Beautiful Japanese fabrics coming soon…

Lucky Lantern — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 06:44:12 +0000

We’re hard at work preparing for the opening of our online fabric shop. It will be a few more weeks yet, but if you would love to know when we’re officially open – subscribe to our newsletter and we’ll email you as soon as we’re ready for visitors!

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sneak peak – sevenberry fabrics

Lucky Lantern — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 01:27:39 +0000

Lucky Lantern’s online shop is coming along super nicely, but it will be a few weeks away yet. I know, I know, you have to wait a little bit longer! I’ve been working on this online shop for a while now and it’s so exciting – especially when all these beautiful japanese fabrics have started to arrive.

Anyhoo, I thought I’d post up a sneak peak of what’s to come. These two fabrics are from Sevenberry – the purple one is a made up of 45% cotton/55% linen and the teal dragonfly one is 100% cotton. I can’t wait to use these in my projects! Stay tuned for another sneak peak…

vintage men’s fashion

Lucky Lantern — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 05:17:30 +0000

A friend sent me these cracker vintage men’s fashion ads. I don’t know how old the ‘one easy piece’ ad is, but you wouldn’t see an ad with that sort of wording now – I wonder if it was complained about? There were a few in the email, but I’ve only put up the ones I liked the best. Maybe the men’s jumpsuit will return?

my week in pictures

Lucky Lantern — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 03:52:21 +0000

jinxy found a new place to hang out in our shade sails

we finally received our marriage certificate!

Ordered a stack of Sevenberry fabric for the new website - so exciting!

played with my new overlocker

sewing with paper

Lucky Lantern — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 06:12:42 +0000

I would never have thought to combine paper with my sewing machine. Now that I have discovered this little craft, I am hooked! I found a tutorial a year or so ago on a website that no longer exists. It showed you how to make these super cute butterflies using fiskar’s templates and a sewing machine. I have made lots of these as they look so cuuuTE around your house, but also on presents as a part of the wrapping. Because the website no longer exists, I shall show you here how to make them as they’re so simple!

Besides needing a sewing machine and coordinating thread, you need:

Paper - 80gsm works best with the shape cutter. If you use thicker paper, you might require a craft knife to help cut through the design.

Fiskars Shape Cutter

Fiskars Template Butterfly 2

Then follow these simple steps:

Using your shape cutter cut out two of each butterfly size (2x small, 2x medium, 2x large).

Here are my butterflies - 2 of each size. Because the paper is double sided, I've flipped over the paper on some of them to get more patterns into the mix.

Place the butterflies on top of one other so that the centres of the butterflies are lined up evenly.

Using your sewing machine, stitch down the centre of the butterfly using a stitch length of about 3, then reverse stitch back over your stitching. I like to go up and down the centre 3 times to make sure it's secure. When you finish stitching, tie off the top and bottom threads as a knot and trim so there are no threads hanging loose.

Keep going with each set of wings. You don't have to bend the last pair.

The butterfly is finished and now you can use it to decorate just about anything!

I do

Lucky Lantern — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 06:00:02 +0000

My wonderful partner and I got married last weekend, so my lack of sewing and blog posting has been due to the wedding preparations. We had a small wedding at Balmoral Beach in Sydney and our delicious dinner was held at Flying Fish at Pyrmont. Everything was just perfect and even though it was small and not as traditional as some weddings, there was still so much to prepare! I spent the day before the wedding with my girlfriends having a morning tea at the QVB tea room, which was oh so delicious and fun – and then we stayed both nights at the Four Seasons – the best experience ever! And no… I did not make my own dress – I wish I had the skills and experience to have done this, but I had a dressmaker do this for me. I designed the dress using an Alex Perry gown as inspiration. She did a fabulous job and I am just over the moon with the garment. My bouquet and table arrangements were done by Anliette from Palais Floral – she is a floral artist. Her knowledge of flowers and design is just exceptional – you don’t just get a bunch of flowers for your tables – you get an artwork that is just exquisite! After the wedding, we spent 3 nights down at Rick Stein’s Bannisters, which is in a beautiful spot in Mollymook. It was so relaxing and wonderful to spend time with my hubby. This wasn’t our honeymoon – we are due to go to Japan later in the year for it… woo hoo as we’ve never been!! I’ll post up some more photos when I get them.

Swaps

Lucky Lantern — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 07:10:10 +0000

My mailbox doesn’t get much action and to fix that I’ve started to swap! Check out Swapbot and find a swap to particpate in. There are international ones and even ones for fabric/sewing/crafting supplies yippeee!

Let’s Be Bubbly has written a post on why she swaps and some info on swap-bot. There are even some pictures of some really cute envelopes she’s received. As she’s said – it doesn’t have to be expensive. Go on give it a try if you’re curious ☺

I’ll post up some pictures when I start receiving bits in the mail – I’m so excited!

first draft

Lucky Lantern — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 11:47:53 +0000

Wow, how satisfying is it to draft your own patterns! Not only do they fit extremely well, but you can design your clothes however you like. I had made up my basic bodice block using Aldrich’s book a while ago… I just hadn’t got around to drafting a pattern from it for a design I wanted. After much tracing, refining, cutting, adjusting and taping I have finally done it! I started off with a very simple design as I am a novice when it comes to pattern drafting.

I wanted a simple, sleeveless, cotton top that was not too revealing so I could wear it to school. There’s nothing worse than teachers wearing inappropriate tops I say! I also hate paying for tops like these because they look so easy to make.

✄ All I used was about 60cm of fabric, 12mm bias tape and an invisible zipper. Because I wanted the top to be quite fitted I needed to add a zipper on the side. This was my first invisible zipper – it took me a couple of attempts, but now I don’t know why I was so scared of them!

It seemed like it took me forever to work out how to adapt the basic bodice for a design, so next time I make one of these, I will do a post about the whole process (and I’ll step it up a notch with some cute details).

measuring wacko

Lucky Lantern — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 05:15:52 +0000

In Australia we learn the metric system at school and I’ve used the metric system my entire life, until I started sewing. For some reason, I like to constantly change between using inches and centimetres! I could be drafting in cm’s and then I’ll use inches for the seam allowances. Seriously, what’s that about? There is no other part of my life where I will use the imperial system, except sewing. I’m not sure if there is anyone else who has experienced this weirdness.