Five garden fruits

The tomatoes might be dismal this year but at least there are some other fruit to admire...

 

Watermelon just starting to form, almost ripe passion fruit - our first one ever,  pumpkins along the side fence, delicious plums, thornless blackberry.

Are you enjoying fruit from your garden at the moment?

Belladone rouge

Here is  my finished Belladone. I'm pretty pleased with it, although the fabric - a medium weight cotton from the op shop - does have a tendency to  crease.   After all the adjustments I made at the social sewing last week, the fit is pretty good.  It is not super-fitted around the body, but I wanted it to be comfortable (which it is), and it means that can wear along sleeved top underneath in the winter.  My invisible zip went in without a hitch (thanks to Jo for answering my question on this one!), although looking at these pictures it might be a bit lower than it is supposed to be. Never mind! I was originally going to add some length to the skirt but I like it as is.  

 

 
Things I really like about this pattern:

1. The back cutout. It was tricky to get this to fit right for my abnormally small back but I really love it. It's bra-friendly and just adds nice detail.

2. The pockets. I used polka dot cotton for the lining for a little bit of interest, and they are the perfect size.

3. The bias finished armholes and neck.  I made my own binding - 2.5cm total width, so 0.75cm finished so it's thinned than other versions that I've seen but i think it's OK. If I make this dress again (I'm thinking about it!) I might use thicker binding.

4. The faced hem. I think I could have done a better job of pressing my hem before these pics but the facing makes it really easy to finish the curved hem. I catch stitched mine in place when I was watching the tennis last night.  Murray - you are on fire!

5. The nice instruction booklet. It doesn't explain every step (for example it just says " add binding to the neck and armholes" but the diagrams are great.

6. The little peats in the front skirt.  

I feel as if I learnt so much during the process of making this dress: how to sew bias binding on neatly (I used my clear embriodery foot which helped see what I was doing), how to make pattern adustments, working with a hem facing, and sewing on the bias.

Things to do differently next time? I think I should probably have chosen a fabric that didn't crease so badly, but I really wanted to make it in the red, and perhaps I should have used a thinner fabric for the hem facing as it is a bit bulky.

And I thought it would be interesting to look at the cost breakdown - totally copying Christy with this one.

Pattern: Belladone by Deer and Doe, $18 including shipping
Fabric: 2m of op-shopped red cotton,  $2. Brown and white polka dot cotton scraps - free from the op shop (the guy threw them in when I bought some other stuff!)
Thread and zip : from op-shopped stash, 50c

Total = $20.50

Finally a big thanks to my neighbour Bea, a budding 12 year old photographer who took these great pics!

 

On tomatoes...

We've have been harvesting tomatoes recently, but not nearly as many as we would like because it is a very bad tomato year  in Funkbunny's garden.  See those lovely fruit in the bowl?  Most of them are not ours. Our neighbour Mr C took pity on us and brought us some of his (his plants are green, bushy and laden with tomatoes) .  He looked at our poor, withered tomato plants in bewilderment. "What you do?"  "This is terrible"  "What's  the matter?"  He declared them all finished, and not to bother wasting any more water on them.  *Sigh* 

We don't know what has gone wrong this year. Bad seeds? Disease in the soil?  Disease  in the potting mix? Not enough water? It's a mystery.

But you know, even if the harvests have been meager, they've been worth it.  Here are a few favourite ways that we've been eating them:

Homemade cherry tomato pizza
Top homemade pizza dough (I use Jamie Olivers recipe) with halved cherry tomatoes, ricotta and basil.  Grate over some parmesan, drizzle over some olive oil and season well. Bake in a preheated hot oven (250C) for 15-20 mins.

Simple tomato sauce for pasta
Tomatoes, olive oil, garlic and basil, cooked briefly and stirred through spaghetti or penne. Add a few chili flakes if you like.

Tomato tart
Score a square of puff pastry round the edge with a knife and prick all over with a fork.
Smear with some basil (homemade is best), and top with thick slices of tomato or halved cherry tomatoes.  Season with salt and pepper and bake for 15 mins @ 220C until the pastry is puffed up and golden.  

Brown tom
Make a mixture of 2 cups breadcrumbs, a finely chopped onion, chopped basil, 1/4 cup parmesan and thyme. Season with salt and pepper.
Put a layer of the breadcrumbs on the bottom of an oiled  gratin dish then layer with sliced tomatoes, adding some olive oil between layers.   Finish with a layer of breadcrumbs, top with some thin slices of butter and bake for 30 mins @ 200C until golden.

How are your  tomatoes going this year?  Have you got any favourite recipes?




 

Belladone: the muslin, and helpful hints from the social sewing group

Having never made a proper muslin before (sorry all you proper sewists out there!) after my experience with the Belladone I have to admit that I'm a bit of a convert. Use bright thread that doesn't match at all? Sure! How about some purple thread in the bobbin? No problem. Wait.. let's get out the texta and write all over the dress. Yay! Wonky zip? Who cares!

In all seriousness I was really glad that I made a muslin as it has shown up a couple of fitting issues that I need to work out. I cut the 38 according to the measurements, knowing that this is the European size that I usually wear (I used to live in the UK), and reading somewhere that Deer and Doe patterns are drafted for a C cup.

Here is the muslin on Matilda (I have done the fitting on me but wasn't up to a picture this morning!).

And here is the fabric choice - a red denim/cotton for the dress and a brown polka dot for binding at the neck and arms.

 

After I went to the social sewing,  thanks to all the helpful tips from the talented SS ladies I made a few more adjustments so in total here are the changes:

 

• Took out 1cm from each of the back panels, tapering to nothing at the seam.
• Took out 1cm at the CF, tapering down to nothing at the seam, and adding a few mm to the side seams for some breathing room.
• Moved the side bust darts down and shortened the vertical ones by 1cm  2.5cm.
• Lengthened the bodice by 1cm using a French curve (thanks Claire)
• Took out 1cm from the top of the CB.

Rachel helped me transfer the changes to the pattern pieces which I used to to cut out my fabric. I learnt so much during this social sewing day and was so busy working on fit that I didn't get any actual sewing done apart from making some bias tape using the Collete Handbook method (not very good, won't be doing this again) and sewing 3 darts. Never mind. It was a really lovely day.

As well as all those great sewing tips there was also a great swap. I came away with some treasures... more on those later.

Thanks again ladies for a great day!

 

C'est fantastique! My Deer and Doe patterns arrived..

Ooh I'm excited! I got home from work to find a package all the way from France waiting for me and inside was...

... three Deer and Doe patterns which have recently been translated into English.  If you haven't heard of this pattern company, they are based in France and some lovely versions of the dresses, coat and blouse have been popping up in the sewing blog world - some of my favourites here, here and here.  It was hard to know which patterns to chose but I decided after some deliberation to go for the Belladone dress, the Sureau dress and the Pavot jacket.  I ordered these online on Jan 7: how's that for super-speedy shipping?! They are lovely to look at too - packaged in big envelopes with nice illustrations and the patterns themselves are printed on sturdy paper.

I've decided to make these properly, ie make a muslin  first, and I've already traced one pattern rather than cutting it straight out of the pattern paper like I usually do.  I think I must be growing up!

I'll bring these along to the social sewing on Saturday if anyone wants to trace them off. You can even practice your French with the version française of the instruction booklet.

Now to decide what to make first..
 

Garden update Jan 12

We took the shade sails down last night after the cool change came through so I thought I'd snap a few pictures of the garden to share.   I've actually been feeling a little disappointed in how things have been going this year which is probably a bit unreasonable given that we are still picking plenty of produce, but the lack of rain, and high, temps have meant that some things have struggled more than last year.

But, I'm not going to focus on the negative: here are lots of good things that are happening in the veggie garden right now.

Capsicum going strong with cucumber and trombone zucchini starting to take over the pergola.
  

Some of our tomatoes (we have about 30 plants!). I'm ignoring all those dead and yellow leaves. La la la, positive thinking, happy garden.

 Bush beans and buttons squash.

Watermelon starting to climb up its trellis; just about the only thing that doesn't seem to mind the heat.

Corn - a bit crispy sun-challeged in places but the ears are starting to form and it's looking promising.

Grapes - proper bunches for the first time on our two-year old vine.  Our 80 year old Italian neighbour pruned the vine in the winter and did this crazy thing where he snapped the ends of the vine about a metre along where, he said grapes would grow the next summer.  And they did.   Got to love that kind of gardening knowledge in the community.

Donut Peaches on the dwarf tree.  Sooooo good.

And finally plums, another fruit-first for us.  These are really delicious and there is about a kilo left on the tree for us to enjoy.  So far the birds haven't figured them out which is lucky.

 

Actually looking at all these pictures has made me feel much more positive!   Go garden!

 

Where sewing meets gardening, and a new name

I haven't posted for ages (sorry Mum!).  Partly because I think my blog has been suffering from a bit of an identity crisis.  Over the years Funkbunny's kitchen garden has become about much more than just  our garden.  As my love of sewing has increased I've wanted to be able to share that with the blogging community, and we've been learning other skills too: preserving, cooking with solar, making bread.   For me, learning all these new skills is part of living a simpler, happier life.  Growing our own food, cutting down our energy use and re-purposing materials all mean that we are less tied to the consumer-driven treadmill.   I constantly find inspiration in the blogsphere and I hope that by sharing some of what we do here, in our small part of suburban Melbourne, I can make a contribution too.

So, instead of separate blogs, I've decided to rename this one, to simply 'Funkbunny' so that it can include all these things and hopefully still be of interest to those of you who read it, whether your interests lie in crafty things, gardening, sustainable living or maybe all of those.

For the first post of 2013,  here is an example of where all those things come together.  Yesterday MMSTL and I  spent a few hours making shade sails for the back garden.  Our poor veggie patch has really suffered with the heat and lack of rain this year in Melbourne and really needs shade on the hot days.    He measured out the required sizes and screwed in some hooks and I sewed some op-shopped sheets together. It was like making a giant patchwork quilt! We added ties, made from strips of sheets onto each corners and secured  these to the hooks.   The sheets seem to be holding up against the wind quite well and will provide some much needed shade on this 37C day.