All curtained up...

I am not a staunch believer in letting things brew.. I love quick fixes even though my craft teaches me otherwise on a daily basis.

Following are photos of my sewing cave! It took me ages to upholster this tiny nook, from finding the appropriate material to sitting down at my table and cutting every piece to size. And despite my general outlook as expressed in the opening statement, once finished, these curtains and covers and cushions and pelmets sat in their bag for months on end. Only yesterday I decided to get it all done in one fell swoop.. I wanted to start the second week of the year in style!





I now have a comfy place to wind down.. theoretically. By the end of the week the bed will be suffering (once more) under piles upon piles of textile and paper bags full of more textile.





Can't help feeling happy with the place so long as Gustav's happy with it too!



This is the material I want more of.. 1/2 a metre just ain't gonna cut it (excuse the pun) to cover the sofa and armchair :/



And to end. Here's a green hat I just finished for the 'Hey Birdie-pie!' stall.. I was temporarily donated a green hat with dead netting and a limp velvet bow at the back so as to work some magic back into it. I love the colour especially, however it's the shape that inspired this up-do.. an unusual shape that sort of mimicks a jockey's cap and makes it possible for one to wear it in several ways. It must be tried on and played about with.. so keep your eyes peeled for details about Birdie's next event!

Anticipation and a dose of satisfaction

What bliss it is to be able to take some hand-sewing tasks to the sofa at 9pm, make tea and make the best of someone else's lp player to listen to an ever-increasing record collection which you had no time (or speakers) for before. It's restful to not have to look at your laptop everytime you wish to listen to something else.. with a record player you usually opt to stay put and listen through the whole thing.

It's also nice to find time for old projects, more precisely, old unfinished projects which have stood the test of time. To be even more precise, pieces of embroidery started some four years ago and abandonned for other pressing projects. This coat was one of the first things I had sewn, in fact it's a relatively shoddy affair. I had drafted out its pattern after attending a pattern class and I remember taking it to the teacher to inspect and getting a 'what were you thinking, dear?' look. Very few got it and even less emphatized with my Nordic priest look. It is now finished, just yesterday I decided to sit down and not let go of it until I did .. whilst listening to a mix of Brahms, My Fair Lady and Joanna Newsom.





What anticipation for the next Patches on the 27th! click on the link to view all the participants' profiles (mine included of course) .. this should be a good one.. and this time round I mustn't forget to put on cosy thermal socks! I'm expecting soup and tea and lots of familiar faces.

I made it - dubious means and all!

I really wanted to make an event of this first post. My inexperience in everything marginally related to technology makes me want to celebrate my finally making it here. However now that I am here I feel quite overwhelmed by the ordinariness of the whole thing so I shall refrain from celebrating and start to write.

A small introduction is due: I am Maria, a Malteser (yes very crunchy on the inside unless left in the fridge too long); and I had been meaning to set up this small Babettopolis enterprise for quite some time. So I took part in the first edition of Patches Market http://www.patchesmarket.com/ and the response gave me the impetus to pursue the ‘handmade thing’ less sporadically. I am now sewing made to order/commissioned works and also designing one off shoes for fellow enthusiasts of all things 'one off'. Oh and I am doing this in between moving out (or is it fairer to say 'moving to and fro!'?), looking for a (part-time?, full-time?, am i really?) job, curtaining the new place, replenishing the Patches basket and dreaming time-consuming dreams of going to Russia, Japan, Rome, Istanbul, Cuba ... in a hot air balloon.

I have grander plans for the next Babettopolis sign

Maybe I ought not to give you the link to the Babettopolis facebook page since I'll be uploading same photos here (that is until I actually get a decent photographer to help me out!); but anyways, here goes: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/babettopolis?ref=ts

And here is something I finished yesterday before I was reluctantly (perhaps even unnecessarily obstinately) dragged away from my sewing machine to watch Howl's Moving Castle.. little did I know I would find it saturated in Babettopolean (yes it has come to this!) imagery; so yes, the hatters, Howl the crow and that blasphemously beautiful, intricately detailed imperial city kept me drooling and relatively sedated.

Haven't been sewing anything for myself lately, but sewing for others gives me, surprisingly enough, the same high.

And this is my cat Gustav Monocle (- agent of chaos!). He is very excited about my starting this blog (told me so in a dream) and zealously looking forward to the change in location of the Babettopolis 'empire' so he'll have all of my neatly organized ribbons at his disposal.

PS: ‘First Post Ever’ was Alexandra Aquilina’s doing. She helped set up and polish this blog. (this is her band which we will be sailing the seas for this afternoon: http://www.myspace.com/skimmedtheband)

... in conclusion, I would like to promise you regular photo-laden posts related to every project I happen to take up (and I must outline that these are generally multiple and varied).