Creativity or chaos?

I always enjoy peeping at the Creative Spaces, originally hosted by Kootoyoo. And it got me thinking about my creative space. While I have stuff all over the house, I tend to actually do the creating in a small area - my desk mostly, with a bit of cutting on my dining table (which is next to my desk) and hand sewing on the sofa (or outside if it's a really nice day).

Yesterday I snapped a few pics to illustrate my creative day.

Firstly there was a bit of freezer paper stencil cutting:


Then I had to help Nicholas build a house for his stone collection. The tidy bits are mine, the creative bits are his.

Which led Isabella to create too.

Back to my desk and on to pattern tracing.

After an interruption to dash down to Georgia's school to give her some desperately needed moral support for a vaccination it was back to the desk for cutting. Yes I cut small garments in this tiny space because I am too lazy to clear off the (adjacent) dining table.

And on to painting. (Note the coffee cup in the upper left corner. Same cup of coffee from the previous pic. Which I finished before it got cold. Rare event)

That was all I could do on this garment (for a baby shower on Saturday) until the paint is dry and heat set and I can get white overlocker thread today, so it was on to beading.

After upsetting the bead dish twice I took the hint and put it away and went on to plain stitching.

Looking at all that makes me feel like I was very productive yesterday! In around all that I built more duplo, dropped David at work after lunch so he could drop one car off to be serviced and collected him after work so he could pick it up, did laundry, finished reading the last chapter of "Dead Until Dark" (I really like Charlaine Harris), fed the ravenous hordes (repeatedly), refereed the who-gets-the-tv debate after school, went to the gym (the most peaceful bit of the day) and visited the supermarket.

And while I'm feeling really really smug, here's how David and I celebrated our wedding anniversary on Sunday - the inaugural Stadium to Surf fun run. Supposedly 10km, but the 10k mark on the map looked to be almost 1k from the end!

That's me in the white top right next to the marshal. David is right beside me but you can only see his feet. I should have given Oliver more direction in photo taking! This is just around the corner from our house, about 7km into the run. I wish I'd got Oliver to take a pic of Georgia holding up the "Happy Anniversary Mum and Dad" sign she'd made to wave at us as we ran past our street. It was great!

You know, I think all this post does is prove that I have a very short attention span.

At what point am I officially obsessed?

I got this far on my sister's Alabama Chanin corset top - centre front panel stitched, beaded and snipped.

Then I ran out of beads. It'll be a few days before she gets more and I tell you I was positively ITCHING to do more. You know how it is when a project gets under your skin and you just can't settle to anything else? So I started this:

It's the tank top from Alabama Studio Style, with their paisley pattern, which can be downloaded here. I have decided that I require a hand work project of some sort to be at hand at all times. Something I can easily pick up and put down frequently and which can be abandoned at any point when required. (Machine sewn projects are harder to drop instantly when someone screams.) And which can be worked on while parked on the sofa watching tv in the evening.

So, I have completed three hand sewn corset tops for me and have the fabric for a dress (once I decide on embellishment), I'm in the middle of a corset top for my sister and have started a tank top for me. I think I need a shrug or bolero in this style as well..... These garments take a Very.Long.Time. (an estimated 80 hours for the first one I made) What possesses a rational person to want to spend this long on one garment? More than once? I just find the whole process so enjoyable - it's very relaxing and somehow the fact that it is going to take so long makes it easy not to be in a pointless hurry, which is a big contrast to most of life! (I'm a process and product person - I enjoy the process as much as the finished result.) I thought the first corset top I made would have scratched the itch, but all it did was inflame the passion!

I haven't abandoned my beloved sewing machine though, I made a pair of pants for David to wear to work, and these for Nicholas:

We both love the dragon freezer paper stencilled onto contrasting fabric then appliqued on.

I've drafted this design from a couple of different blocks, and annoyingly grabbed the wrong one (regular fit) instead of the slim fit Nicholas needs. Oh well, I need to make him more anyway.

And in closing, here's a random twin shot.

I keep saying, twins are funny.