Feeling Blue...

... in more ways than one! The new year brought with it a rejuvenated sense of sewing mojo, for which I've been incredibly grateful. Truth be told I had been finding it quite hard to sew since losing my mum a few months back, so it's been great being back at the sewing machine for long stretches of time and actually enjoying it. I also did manage to get an incredible amount of design work done over the last several months, both in the way of new fabrics and some cool new patterns - lots to look forward to in 2020!

My first sew for the new year was a blue version of my Desert Windmill cushion, which is one of my oldest patterns, dating back to 2015. The original version (below) was pink, and I wanted to see how it would look in a different colourway. The blue prints from Rhapsody worked pretty well! You can find the cushion pattern here, there is also a matching quilt pattern.

The second reason I've been 'feeling blue' is because of the horrific bushfires in every state in Australia - the whole continent is literally on fire!! The beautiful illustration below is from @melanippe_art on IG - it's so beautiful and sad at the same time. We are incredibly thankful that there have been no fires immediately near where we live in South Australia, so we have been safe so far - and in a bit of a blissful ignorance too if I'm honest. But last night the wind changed direction and the smoke from the bushfires on Kangaroo Island (over 100 km away as the crow flies) descended on our area. Oh boy. We woke up coughing at 2 am with the bedroom full of thick, rancid smoke. After running around and ascertaining the house wasn't on fire we hit the internet to discover where the smoke was coming from. It was suffocating, and we were SO far away - I can't even imagine how bad it must have been in the actual fire zones!

To do my little part for the bushfire relief and recovery effort I've made personal donations to the following two organisations. There are so many different fund raising efforts all over Facebook / the internet right now, and it's hard to know which ones would be the best to support!  I've had a lot of followers from overseas contact me asking where they should donate to, so I wanted to share these links with anyone else who may also find them useful. There are obviously many other worthy relief efforts out there, these are the two I have chosen.

Red Cross Australia (disaster relief & recovery fund) ----> donate here
WIRES Australian Wildlife Rescue (for animals / wildlife) ---> donate here

Also as every little helps, I made some silver plated bookmarks with those cute sewing machine charms from my last post, as well as some initial charms I had. I've popped them all in the shop - I will be donating all proceeds from the sales of these to Red Cross Australia. These were made following a tutorial from An Enchanted Life blog.

Sewing machine charms ----> buy here
Initial charms ----> buy here

Till next time, dear friends, and please keep Australia in your thoughts and pray for some rain!