Kelly Doust introduces readers to her wonderful world of reviving and customising vintage pieces, while bringing a modern and unique twist to wearing vintage clothes – Dita Von Teese
Garage Sale Trail
Raggedy Ann 1930s sundress - before
Have you heard about this huge annual sustainability event, organised by the clever people at City of Sydney and local councils across Australia?
This Saturday 5 May’s Garage Sale Trail is looking to be massive, with ambassadors Marnie Skillings and Liane Rossler (Dinosaur Designs) on board, and sales all over the city at Cloth Fabric, The Society Inc. etc. Let’s hope the gorgeous weather holds out for some enthusiastic bargain-hunting. For some excellent guerilla garage sale shopping tips, click here.
I’ll be doing a workshop at the Sydney Antique Centre from 2-4pm this Saturday on how to upcycle vintage & secondhand clothes. There’s a few spots left if you’re keen to sign up, and I’ll be posting some images here on the blog soon so you can see some of the transformations we made to tired & damaged pieces.
... and after
Waxing Koigu
Knitting with Koigu - socks designed by Barbara Brown
How darned cute are these? Socks from the new Koigu Magazine in ‘Autumn Berries’ and some scarves to make you wish for colder weather.
I’ve almost completed a crochet project with Japanese Koigu yarn in various shades from lemon to hot pink, and it’s such a buzz to work with. Not for the delicious texture alone, which is soft and fine and anything but sticky, but the delight in watching its variegated colours play out. And it looks amazing on smaller items such as roses or scarves for little people. I’m going to give the knitted iPod case just completed at my Corner Shop workshop a go in a zesty lemon-lime-tomato combination next, with Koigu from Calico & Ivy Balmain.
Now the days are getting cooler, I’m keen to be knitting and crocheting when I can. And I’ve gotten to the sweet spot with crocheting where I can watch a film or chat and still concentrate on keeping up a pattern, which is heaven.
The challenge this winter? To learn how to make socks, so I can give a pair or two to friends with mid-year birthdays. Wish me luck.
Home sewing is easy!
Esther Han interviewed me for this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald today.
Apparently dressmaking courses are seeing a huge surge in popularity, with much of the buzz about recreating all the vintage-style frocks we’re going in for of late. Lovely news (or at least nicer than the other headlines I read this morning) because not everyone can find a true vintage frock to fit, much as they’d like to.
I’ve been dying to make a vintage frock from scratch for aeons. Inner Westies should try the Summer Hill Sewing Emporium if you can’t get to Beverley’s classes in Penshurst, or any of the squillion on offer at TAFE.
Convinced? For inspiration, see Cara Mia Vintage for some lustworthy original designer pieces from the likes of Balenciaga, Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Pucci, Moschino, Vivienne Westwood and Ungaro. Cara Weinstock’s pieces had me positively drooling at the last Love Vintage.
Bellissima, darlings!
Itchy fingers
Carmen Cass gets toasty
I’m like the grasshopper who sang all summer (except I was getting superfit working out five times a week – no weight loss, but I can run up hills now, big ones, and not pass out or be sick, bonus! – and writing books not blog posts and making monumental plans to overhaul my life), and now it’s autumn and I have 50 projects to make for the next book, which I handed in last February but is about to be shot in just over 2 months time, and it’s scaring the bejeezus out of me. Yikes!
Met with my lovely new publisher, Tracy Lines (former Creative Director of Inside Out) on Wednesday, and she succeeded in lighting a fire underneath my butt (totally necessary – I even had Olive help me overhaul a hatstand yesterday, how desperate is that? Just a tip, three year olds make rubbish helpers). Fortunately I won’t starve or go begging the ants anytime soon, but it’s time to stop squawking.
Naturellement, this was all feeling a bit stressful. So I took off to The Corner Shop in The Strand Arcade last night to learn how to knit as part of the Campaign for Wool (thank you Corner Shop, you’re my favourite) and despite now fantasising about making my own clotted cream-coloured slouchy knit for winter (I can purl!), à la the one spotted here on the enigmatic Ms Kass, I’m also considering signing up for the always-fab workshops at Calico & Ivy Balmain over winter because my fingers are itchy, dammit, and I’m going in for a spot of work avoidance behaviour (WAB) this week. When you make for a living, making for the selfish hell of it feels gloriously subversive.
Wool week at London's Selfridges
What else?
Cloth is selling off cute bundles of all their archived fabrics at their online store, so I might pop in for a nosy at those this afternoon and urge you to do the same.
I went to Rozelle Markets for the first time in months last Sunday and was wooed by my ruggedly handsome paramour all over again (don’t tell my husband). Sometimes a vintage vixen starts to feel pure Second Hand Rose when she’s up to her ears in marketeering, but I bought a bangin’ black miniskirt, secondhand Sass & Bide tux jacket and lambskin floor rug for under 50 bucks, and now I’m biding my time until our 8am tryst tomorrow. Gotta love those cheap thrills.
Rozelle Markets, I heart you
And I’m appearing at Sydney Writers’ Festival in a month with Indira Naidoo to talk DIY! All the superlatives in the world can’t cover how XXXXXXXX I am to be part of the best festival in The Showgirl’s calendar. Love SWF to pieces. I will finish reading The Marriage Plot and Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? before I see Mr Eugenides and Ms Winterson next month, I will I will I will.
I won’t promise to blog more, and I won’t wish to fit more in my week. I broke fast with one of my dearest friends in the world this morning, and life is GOOD (I’ve been up since 3am, can you tell?)
Much love to you & yours & keep on truckin’.
Knit-in at The Corner Shop
You know knitting’s on-trend when they start doing it at The Corner Shop… check out these free classes being offered in-store to promote the Campaign for Wool, and look to Lion Brand and Purl Harbour for inspiration on the coolest knits this winter. Planning to crack out the crochet this weekend… toasty!
Lion Brand Yarn catwalk event
Craft for every season
Stripy shopper
Okay so it’s Autumn here in Sydney, but to celebrate the release of Crafts for Every Season (a.k.a. The Crafty Minx) with US publisher Thunder Bay Books, here’s the instructions for my super-simple ‘Spring is Here shopper bag’, made from lovely linen fabric from No Chintz. Fold and pop one of these cloth shoppers in your handbag year-round to avoid plastic and remember: it’s all about the print!
Thinking stencils
Damask Fleur de Lys Stencil, hennydonovanmotif.co.uk
We have a sort of alcove in the hallway which, up until recently, was decorated with mismatched frames portraying family photographs, illustrations, artwork and favourite postcards, but I took them all down in readiness for a change. I know the entire hallway would look striking and gorgeous wallpapered on both sides, but I’m loathe to make such a big commitment (have you seen what a faff it is to remove? Scary). So my new thought is creating a stencil to repeat in the alcove, then try out down one wall and then the other, depending on how it looks. At the very worst, I can paint over the lot.
Here’s a few motifs I’m considering – fleur de lys, crowns, tropical birds or orchids – but perhaps we’ll steer away from the traditional with a Banksy-inspired graffiti print, which could work a treat. Decisions, decisions.
Graphics Fairy crown motif
Rainforest mural, madstencillist.com
Orchid, madstencillist.com
Banksy poster
Another favourite Banksy creation
Aprons in your downtime
This is Mabel. Mabel’s mother Alison came along to the handmade gifts workshop at Surry Hills Library just before Christmas, and knocked up this oilcloth apron in an hour or so following instructions from my book, The Crafty Kid: projects for and with children.
These aprons have to be one of the simplest and most gratifying craft projects to create. Excellent gifts, the oilcloth also renders them perfect for little ones in the kitchen because they’re so utterly food-proof – simply wipe clean. I even made a grownup’s version for myself.
MINI-ME APRONS
Materials
For an apron fit for your favourite five-year-old, a 35cm wide x 45cm high piece of oilcloth
2 metres ribbon
2 metres bias binding
2 colours embroidery thread; one to match bias binding, one in a contrasting colour
Embroidery needle
Scissors
Ruler
One round saucer or small plate
Pen
Instructions
1. Take your rectangle of oilcloth, ruler and pen. Measure and make a small mark 10cm in from the top right hand corner of the oilcloth, and 15cm down.
2. Place one quarter of the saucer on the spot where these two lines will intersect, and use your pen to draw around the outside, directly onto the oilcloth.
3. Use scissors to cut away the excess fabric beyond the line you have made.
4. Repeat the above two steps on the top left corner of the oilcloth.
5. Take your bias binding, apron-shaped oilcloth, and fold the binding over the edge of the bottom left-hand corner. Secure in place with a couple of small, firm stitches, then use a running stitch to affix the bias binding around the entire border.
6. When you reach a corner, fold the bias binding under itself and keep stitching. You might want to insert another stitch diagonally at each corner, just to be safe.
7. When you get to the end, leave a few millimetres and chop off any excess binding. Fold underneath at an angle and stitch firmly in place.
8. Place one end of the shortest length of ribbon to the top right corner of the apron, at the back. Use your contrasting embroidery thread and needle to affix with three small, ‘x’ shaped stitches.
9. Close the loop by securing the other side in place as well.
10. Secure the remaining lengths of ribbon to either corner just underneath the armhole with the same ‘x’ stitches. Et voila, you’re done.
Cute Christina in her adult-size apron
Crisscross
With the birds
Sydney sunrise, courtesy Peter Lee
I’ve always been an eary morning person of sorts, but lately I have taken an almost perverse pleasure in rising with the sun. There’s something subversive about greeting the dawn. It’s like sucking a few more hours from the day. Never mind that I’m toast by 9pm, it’s worth it for the colours alone. Today’s task: find dye to match sun-orange, salmon pink and grey slate water before dawn. I’m staring at a batch of old white silks and linens, done with neutrals, envisioning India in a basket.
An Indian colour powder stall
Nani IRO fabrics
Shall we polka?
Last weekend at Surry Hills Library I ran a craft workshop for around 25, making early xmas gifts whipped up by hand and sharing favourite places to source materials. There was much discussion on Japanese fabrics, yarns and pattern books because as a rule, I think the Japanese have nailed the quirky craft market, consistently producing covetable materials I can never seem to own enough of.
Nani IRO is one such collection of stylish, unique designs. Some are printed on lovely cotton, others on linen blends or 100% cotton soft double gauze, and they’re perfect for fashioning homewares, bags, wall art and clothing. Duckcloth stocks an enviable range, as does Calico & Ivy. I’ve used them for skirts, cushions, curtains and lightweight scarves to name a few. And they wash so beautifully, too – well worth purchasing a metre or two in time for holiday crafting.
Love a wonky stripe
Poppy field