Big May Giveaway

I'm having a featherstitch fantail giveaway! Simply go to my featherstitch fantail blog and choose your favourite design, leave a comment on it and I will pull out a winner at the start of June. The winner will win a brooch in similar colours to the design favoured. Remember to leave your email so I can get in contact with you. Good Luck! Here are a few of my most recent designs listed...

www.featherstitchfantail.blogspot.com

Mission Accomplished

I've been wanting to do this for ages...

...and now finally I've managed...

...thanks to Curious Llama who I met at the Melbourne Etsy meet up a few weeks ago I found an outlet that supplies wool felt balls. I had started trying to make the balls myself, but they were just taking far too long to make it possible...

...but now I can spend my time on embroidering the felt balls and piecing them together...

...to make a fantail felt necklace!

I'll bring it with me to Rose Street Artists' Market this Saturday. There is a fashion show happening this week which should be fun and hopefully bring lots of people. I've heard the market is going to be chock-a-block full of stalls, so it would be a good week to check it out if you haven't been before.

Fantails For Sale!

Here are a few more new fantail brooches I've added to my Featherstitch Fantail blog. I'm very pleased with myself for working out how to use the paypal thingy! Also I have donated one of my brooches to the Australian Bushfire Appeal shop on etsy which is still full of lots of delightful goodies and all proceeds go to the red cross to help victims of the Victorian bushfires.

Fantails and Frogmouths

I've been goccoing again after a long time of it sitting on the shelf. I've been meaning to try this idea for a while now, and now that I have done it I really like it and need to buy more gocco supplies because I've very quickly run out AGAIN!

If you're new to my blog and don't know what gocco is have a look at my post on the technique.

My idea was to make prints inspired by the colours and patterns in my featherstitch fantail brooches. I've made the print in a number of colour combinations and listed one on etsy. More will be listed soon.
I've also been making lots of new fantail brooches, I try and make at least 6 a week. They are so slow to make and I have so many other things that I should be doing, that when I just sit down to sew I feel I should be doing something else. So they always get pushed to the back of the 'to do' list, which is a shame because I do quite like making them. Here are a few of my favourites at the moment, including an experimental square one. I'm really into the soft yellow these days.

I've changed my Fantail website a bit to make it easier to purchase, there is now a 'buy now' button on each brooch. I've also mentioned that buying my brooches on a friday, saturday or sunday from the website may create difficulties because I take all my available brooches to market with me and I can't update the website until I return home after market (often with a few gin and tonics in me!)




I thought I'd also keep my readers up to date with my Tawny Frogmouth. I was worried last week because he wasn't in his usual tree along the Yarra River, but I walked (even ran some way!) along the river this morning and there he was sitting in his tree accompanied by another Tawny Frogmouth! They were snuggled up together on the branch. I wish I had brought my camera with me, but I only had my ipod and a hanky! I only stopped one person this time to point them out and she was very appreciative and we had a little discussion about other birds we'd seen along the river. I have to keep an eye out for kingfishers apparently.

Bridget's November Giveaway!

I should be cleaning and scrubbing and packing up our flat, we are moving this weekend (as long as the real estate agents get back to us to let us know if we have our new house, we're cutting it fine here!)

My kitchen is chaotic with half filled boxes everywhere and dirty dishes.The bathroom is clean from waist height up but I haven't quite got down to the bath and sink etc. and our living room is chockablock with cardboard boxes, so much so that I can't get to the skirting boards to scrub or the floor to vacuum.

So I decided to have a rest and I came up with a giveaway idea!

You could win the Featherstitch Fantail, 100% natural wool, 100% hand embroidered brooch of your choice! All you have to do is let me know which your favourite design is on the Featherstitch Fantail website by leaving a comment on your chosen brooch. I will pick the winner at random at the start of December and then make the brooch and send it to the winner.

Good luck!

Feather In Your Hat

I've been stitching and stitching trying to get ready for Christmas. I've started making more of my fantail hat/ lapel pins since they seemed popular at market last weekend. They are made up of the same layering and hand sewn embroidery as the Featherstitch Fantail brooches with hand felted balls to embellish!



I'm also happy because I have finally sorted out my packaging for my brooches. I bought myself a rubber stamp of my "Bridbird" label and I found the most perfect little boxes, in a $2 shop would you believe! Unfortunately the shop has now run out of boxes but I think I may have found a (very cheap) supplier online. I've given them my card details and now waiting to see if anything arrives! Hope they come soon, fingers crossed they come at all!


I've added more brooches onto my Featherstitch Fantail sight too!

Featherstitch Fantail Blog

I've been working on a new blog specially for my felt bird brooches which I have now named Featherstitch Fantail. I will post all my designs on the site, partly for my own archives (because I get sad when I sell them and never see them again) but also so people can see my designs and make orders. I will then remake to order. Obviously I can't make them absolutely exactly identical, but I will use the same colours and make the stitches as close as possible to the pictured image, in the end though each brooch will still have its own individual character.

Here is a new brooch, I really like the colour combination in this one, especially the lime green/yellow thread in the tail surrounded by the black.

I was cycling over to Swan Street the other day and past by lots of beautiful big daisies with black centres, they inspired me for this birdie's tail!

Now I really must get the washing off the line. It's so windy outside, I hope I still have some clothes left on it!

To Add To My Collection

What a weekend of markets, I think I deserved my lie in this Monday morning.

I thought I'd show you a new style of bird felt brooch. It sort of came about by accident while I was cutting out the shape at the end. I just didn't make it circle and it turned tear or leaf shape instead. I quite liked it. A nice man bought this one at the Convent Art Market on Sunday to put on his hat.


Also I had a bonanza day for my photo collection. I collect photos of three legged dogs. It isn't a very fast growing collection, (these are numbers 3 and 4 in 3 years) but that's why I was so excited to double my numbers in just one weekend!

This is Olga (I think, if I remember correctly) she was at Rose Street Artist's Market.

And this is Murph, he was at the Abbotsford Convent with his friends.

Today is quite exciting because later this afternoon Jeremy and I are going to look at a new house. We might be moving! It would be a shame to leave the lovely Yarra River and the goats at the Collingwood Childrens' Farm, but this place has a GARDEN! and enough room for Jeremy to have his studio at home. But we haven't seen it yet, so we don't know. ALSO tonight is the night that Jeremy is taking me to dinner to celebrate my 100th sale on Etsy, hooray!