My creative space: baby pinafore dress

Sorry about the grainy phone pic.

My friend's gorgeous little girl turned one last weekend which was a perfect opportunity to do some cute girl sewing - something that I don't get to do all that often (not to say that I don't enjoy making lots of groovy pants but a change is always good)

The pattern for this apron pinafore dress is from Issue 1/2012 of Ottobre magazine.  It has lots of cool patterns for kids clothes from babies through to bigger kids and even though most of the patterns are a bit complicated for me at the moment, it's a good source of inspiration.

I decided to stay away from pink and went with some denim that got from the op shop for the outside and a blue spotty quilting cotton for the inside.  I made the pocket and bias tape using one of the lovely vintage sheets that I received in this swap. A couple of blue flower buttons from my stash and it was done.  This pattern doesn't say that it is reversible but I guess that it could easily be made that way by adding some more buttons on the inside. 

It's only one pattern piece (if you don't count the pocket) so it went together easily, the only tricky part was sewing the on binding especially those tight curves round the straps. A really fun project.

To see lots more creative spaces, go here.

  

Harvest Monday (on a Tuesday): Fabulous Feijoas

I can't take credit for these feijoas; they come from a friend's tree which produces a huge crop every year. The reason for her giving us so many? Her whole family dislike them! Great for us  though because we love them, particularly the Kiwi in the house. 

My Mum and Dad who are staying with us at the moment had never heard of feijoas, which are also known as pineapple guavas.  They are rarely available to buy - I've never seen them for sale here in Australia - partly because they are at their best when they they fall from the tree and don;t store well and they bruise easily which makes them difficult to harvest and transport on a commercial scale. Feijoas are high in anti-oxidants, high in minerals and fibre, a great source of vitamin C and they are low in calories.

They are nice eaten fresh, just cut in half and scooped out with a spoon. The flesh has a perfumed, slightly acidic taste - it reminds me of bubblegum! - and the texture is a little gritty. We have  far too many to eat this way as they don't store very well so we will need to do some preserving.  They can apparently be bottled in the Fowlers, as well as frozen, made into juice, jam and chutney. Sally Wise has a few interesting recipes for them here. 

For more harvests, head over to Daphne's.

Preserving: street-tree apple harvest

Hello! Gosh it has been a rather long time since I've posted.  So long in fact that one lovely follower sent me an email asking if I was alright!  I'm fine, and the lack of posts has been due to a combination of work travel (a trip to Latin America no less), and general laziness.  Anyway, enough excuses, let the posting recommence!

I have mentioned here before that we are lucky enough to have a street tree that, for the past two summers has had a pretty decent crop of apples.  Last weekend we got together with the neighbours to pick some before the lorikeets ate the whole lot.  Mr B cleverly invented an apple picking system: a bamboo stick with a shorter cross piece of bamboo on the end for pulling them off the tree and a second stick with a plant pot attached to the end for catching them. It worked a charm and in the space of an hour we must have picked close to 40kg of apples.  They are a little sour for eating but perfect for preserving so today we got out the trusty Fowlers and filled some jars which are now sitting happily cooling on the bench. I'm already looking forward to having some of these on my porridge in the winter.

There will more apples left over so I also made a couple of trays of apple leather (cooked apples with some honey added for sweetness) and some dried apples. 

What have you been preserving lately?