The Nest Community INC...

Because I want my stash of yarn and fabrics to be all stowed away in the large cupboard in my sewing room, rather than boxes stacked on the floor, 'something had to be done'! So for a few weeks now, during the cool of the evenings, I've been reassessing/ rationalising/being ruthless with my dressmaking fabrics.

Asking myself questions such as for example, 'You bought this fabric 10 years ago. Every year you look at it, say you love it and that you must make that skirt/dress/blouse soon, and then put it away knowing you'll never get the mojo to even cut the garment out'. Tough talk eh? Well this time I 'listened' to myself and I soon had a rather large pile of beautiful fabrics. My first thought was that I would bag them up and place them in a Lifeline bin...but then I thought that the op shops probably get a lot of fabric and possibly some donations get rejected and dumped. 

And then I remembered The Nest Community Inc which is in my suburb. This is a place where young people can learn craft skills at workshops...and the not so young too! You can read about it here...

To raise funds the group has collected donations of craft supplies, including fabric, yarn and haberdashery and operate a shop 2 days a week. 

So I contacted them and asked them if they would like my fabric...they sure did! So on Saturday I dropped off  3 big bags (well they were rather heavy so DH did the lifting and carrying up the stairs). 

We didn't take photos of every room but just a few to show some of this beautiful old house.

Visitors/customers are encouraged to linger over a cuppa and there is a roster of baking volunteers who make goodies to have with the cuppa.

The verandah has all sorts of items for sale...

I've driven past this gracious old home for years and often wondered what views it would have...

Readers from overseas, this home is typical of the type of homes built in Queensland by modestly wealthy people in the years after World War 1...this one has been beautifully kept. And I might not want to buy any fabric, yarns, patterns etc, but I'm going back again to have a cuppa...that's for sure.

And best of all, I have heaps of shelf space in that cupboard now! 

Enjoying some crafting time...

I mentioned in a recent post that I was working away at a few projects. Unfortunately this has tended to mean, that in various locations in the house, there are little 'piles' here and there. I have had one finish...
The knee rug that I was working on for FNwF has now been completed. I used 24 of the donated white rectangles that were similar sized, added three rows of crocheted squares, using the same variegated yarn that I joined the rectangles with. Then I crocheted a number of rows around the edge using a lovely soft yarn in royal blue. So this will go to Knitting for Brisbane's Needy ready for distribution. I still have a number of the white rectangles left to join up into something useful, but I'm going to have to come up with a nifty way of making them all fit together, (and not look boring!!) lol

 Another project that I've been working on, involves cut out felt letters. I'm using the pure wool felt pieces that I bought from Winterwood last year. Winterwood is a family company based in Victoria (Australia) It is absolutely gorgeous felt to work with. I'm 'making do' with the 'Christmas colours' pack that I had; luckily there are a lot of colours in the pack, not just red,green and yellow! lol

I'm making a surprise for my great niece's birthday this week. Lucy will be 3! You can probably guess what I'm making when you see what I've been stitching:-) Hopefully a gift that can be used for years.

I'm working on the 'long word' to night and hopefully will sew it all together tomorrow...and then post it off on Tuesday. We're having a family get together to celebrate miss Lucy's birthday next weekend, but as her birthday is actually St Valentine's Day, I want her to have this gift before that so they can use it. More photos when it's finished!

Another on-going project has been making squares for a 'Raggy Quilt'. The basket is filling up with novelty fabrics' squares and quite a few of the squares have been stitched. It won't be long now until I will have enough to make a child's sized quilt.

I'm also working on a knitting project at the moment but have only done the ribbing, as stitching seems to be taking precedence at the moment.