A bean bag chair (of the not-so-beany-baggy-OR-chairy variety)

OK, so what I'm trying to tell you is that yesterday I made what is in essence a large floor cushion, only I can't call it a floor cushion because I used this (very excellent, helpful, easy, FREE) pattern, which quite specifically calls the end product a Bean Bag Chair. 

Actually, it's kind of tuffet-esque, or at least what I imagine a tuffet would look like.

I'm on a big stash-busting bender this year. I don't have a massive stash, but in fact I've decided that 'stashing' is not the approach I want to work with any more. It just feeds my consumer mentality at both the op shop and the fabric store.  So recently I've been pulling out the fabrics that I already have and seeking out projects that will suit them. I'm very happy to buy fabrics, new and old, but in future I will try to gather materials for specific projects rather than 'just because'.

Anway, these half-yards of Echino (Etsuko Furuya's Flower Bed) were originally purchased (from here) with the intention of making a bird-themed quilt. I've since decided the prints are too big and bold and look best in big pieces, so I hunted around for a project which would use them well. Given the weight of the fabric, a home-dec project was the way to go.

I think the Echino looks great teamed with the large piece of dark denim I scored from Savers.

I chose not to stuff mine with beans - apart from being environmentally disastrous, those little balls would find their way out of the inner bag and into my boys' nostrils faster than you could say 'death by polystyrene'. See, William was already checking out potential hidey-holes...

Instead, I've stuffed my cover with several old pillows, cushions, an eiderdown quilt and our sleeping bags, so it's actually doubling as storage. BONUS!

Turns out it's a great place for a kip, after the hard work of tackling one's younger brother.

PS Giveaway is now closed, I will draw a winner tonight. Thanks for playing!

A Very Significant Refashion

I love a good refashion.

Of all the projects that I've done in my year of blogging, its the ones that take old stuff and give it new life that I feel most thrilled about. And in spite of the fact that I have lovely new materials to play with, and various from-scratch projects planned, I continue to find myself distracted by the large pile of unloved clothing and discarded fabrics that are sitting patiently in the corner of my bedroom, waiting to be renewed.

Today my family and I are celebrating something that is at the absolute heart of who we are: the resurrection of Jesus. Or, as I have taken to calling it around this household - no doubt offending Christians AND Refashionistas around the world -  The Great Refashion.

You might wonder how the rumours of a dead preacher guy coming alive in the Middle East two millenia ago can have any bearing on our lives today. I'm not here to convince you that it happened - that's for you to weigh up for yourself. Over a decade ago, I (rather reluctantly) decided that the evidence was compelling enough, and chucked my lot in with the disciples. I believe.

But what I believe is about so much more than just Jesus getting a shiny refashioned body (bully for him, you might think). According to Jesus' own teachings, his resurrection is to give the rest of us hope, proof, a down-payment if you will, of the reality that one day his Father, the Creator, is going to take this broken world that he loves and give the whole thing new life. 

Imagine... a renewed earth. One with restored beauty, harmony, peace, meaning, creativity. One where injustice, pollution, illness, even death, have no place any more. 

Sounds pretty good to me. My husband jokes that his big question about this refashioned world is whether I'll finally have time to complete my pile of refashioning projects... or whether they'll be made redundant! I prefer the theory that there will just be even more time to amass works-in-progress...and no deadlines :)

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away...

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”

One year of clutterpunk... a 'thank-you' giveaway

I started this blog one year ago today. (April 1st - foolish, no?!).

I just went back to read my first post, in order to remember why I started this blog. And, unbelievably, I discovered that my core aims for blogging have indeed been the ones I have focussed on! These were:

1. To live more creatively

2. To live more sustainably

3. To create more sustainably.

Now the ways in which I have been exploring, and fulfilling, these aims during the past year are many and varied, and I will save for further posts a more detailed round-up of my growth (or not) as a crafter and a sustainable homemaker. 

The main point of this post is to say thank you! I did not at all expect to have so many readers join me on this blog, nor did I at all expect the astounding level of interaction, community, and real life friendship that has come from blogging.

So here's a little thank you giveaway for you. It's open to readers of this blog from anywhere.

The main prize will be this coffee-sack market bag, which I had great fun making last week:

This bag will come to you with some goodies included, but these goodies will be tailored to the winner and will depend on who you are, what you like and where you live.

There will be two other prizes as well, but you'll just have to wait in suspense to see what those are!!

To enter, leave a comment, and answer me this: why do you think I called my blog 'clutterpunk'? Do I like clutter or hate it? Am I a punk? Do you care? This post might give you some clues. Don't worry, I will not choose the winner on the basis of accuracy...most likely I will employ random.org. But I DO want something interesting to read in the comments!

Anyway, thanks again... without you guys, the journey so far would've been a whole lot less satisfying.

Oh happy day... Cadbury goes (partially) fairtrade!

I heard this morning that Cadbury^® had finally got their long-awaited (by me, anyway) Fairtrade certification through on their plain Dairy Milk range of chocolate blocks and bars. Of course, I had to swing by the local consumer-mart to verify the rumours, and was delighted to return with... ahem... five blocks of the stuff.

Make that four. 


For me, this is thrilling news. Not because I'm passionate about Cadbury, but because I'm passionate about Fairtrade.


You probably already know what 'Fairtrade' is all about, but here's the wrap from the Australia/New Zealand Website:


Fairtrade is about better prices, 
decent working conditions, 
local sustainability, 
and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world. 
By requiring companies to pay sustainable prices, 
Fairtrade addresses the injustices of conventional trade, 
which traditionally discriminates against the poorest, weakest producers. 
It enables them to improve their position and have more control over their lives.


This is PARTICULARLY important in the cocoa industry, where child trafficking and slavery continues to be rife.


Cadbury could, and should, still go a lot further in its efforts to source ethically-produced cocoa. However, it is still very exciting to see this move. Partly because the gauntlet has now been thrown down to other major companies to get onto the ethical bandwagon. But mostly because this means that the average Joe Consumer, for whom Fairtrade is an unknown or irrelevant concept, will still end up buying ethically-sourced chocolate. 


And furthermore, the many many people who ARE educated about the importance of choosing Fairtrade - the people who understand and grieve the horrible injustices that young children suffer for the sake of a measly bit of chocolate, yet who continue to be swayed more by their wallets than their conscience - will now also have a cheaper, more readily-available source of Fairtrade chocolate.


 I know how hard it is to value the living conditions of an unknown person in a far-off land over the lure of a cheaper and more readily available chocolate bar. In the last few years I've struggled with this temptation many times and failed. Hopefully, this move by Cadbury will make choosing the right option just a little easier for everyone.

Pincushion dilemmas

My name is Gina, and I have Creative Attention Deficit Dissorder. 

After signing up to Kate's pincushion swap and getting my creative brief, I made up my mind to do some English paper piecing with tiny precious scraps.

And, according to plan, my Cookie Hexagons are coming along very nicely:

But then, last night, after a few hours of creative playing with gingham and coffee sacks (for an upcoming giveaway) I cobbled THIS together from my scraps:

Now, I love this pincushion. I love the textured hessian, I love the colours, I love the chunky feel (it's quilted as well as stuffed), and I love the text.

I also love that it's finished.

Do I:

a) Accept that I am prone to changing my design ideas mid-stream, rejoice that I've finished something, send it to my pincushion recipient, and stick the Cookie Hex on a skirt?
b) Persist with my original hexagon pincushion idea so that I feel like I have some ability to follow through, and keep this one for myself?!
c) Pretend that it was all part of the plan to make another pincushion for my upcoming 'blogversary' giveaway,  send it off to one of you guys, and get on with my Cookie Hex?

Over to you...

My creative space... all in pieces

Pieces, pieces are dominating every available (and unavailable) creative space at chez clutterpunk.

Pincushion pieces (about to be packed up to take to the Northern Craft Bonanza tonight):

Kaleidoscope pieces (slowly sashiko-ing my way around the circles):

Rectangular scrap pieces sitting in my newly pieced scrap-gatherer, which are being cut into varying widths and sorted into paper bags: 

(They are being amassed for what I am calling my 'scrap management quilt', which will hopefully look something like the quilt below, found in THIS book):

Let's not forget the yo-yos:

And these pieces, lying around waiting to become something pretty to be given away in a few weeks... maybe to you.

Really, don't you think it's high time I started putting the pieces together?

Please drop into Kirsty's place if you'd like to play along with My Creative Space this week.

A bag of sunshine

The glorious weather of the last week had me thinking about Spring rather than Autumn... I felt like getting all Northern-Hemispherical, frolicking in fields of daisies with a gathering basket on my arm, skipping around in swishy romantic clothing, and sitting down to a picnic high-tea. None of which I did, obviously, except for fleetingly, in my head, during a particularly dire episode of Postman Pat.

So instead, I riffled through my fabric cupboard and spied some very Spring-y vintage pillowcases and sheeting, which I proceeded to butcher thusly:

Of course, I started butchering well prior to knowing what I wanted to make with it. I just knew that I wanted to do some patchwork, because, well, it's becoming an obsession, and surely it is the favoured indoors pursuit of breezy, romantic Spring girls?

OK, it's true, I have been gazing far too frequently at THIS picture:

(front cover of Daily Patchwork Goods, a Japanese crafting book I obtained from here)

Now I realised after cutting out and sewing back together a bunch of 4-inch squares that I should have been working in hexagons, because what I really really wanted to make myself was that very basket, the one on the cover, the frolicking-in-fields, dressed-in-flouncy-frock, flower-gathering-basket (perhaps not the actual title, but who knows? It's Japanese, and I wouldn't put it past them!)

So I went ahead anyway, and here's my interpretation:

The instructions for making the bag were all in Japanese, but were fairly easy to interpret visually. Given that I'm usually rather too impatient with patterns anyway, it is my cup of tea to just 'catch the drift' and see what happens. And it happened, and apart from a mostly-salvaged handle diasaster, I'm pretty chuffed with the outcome.

Serendipitously, when I was looking for something sturdy to line the bag with, I came across a denim skirt in my refashioning/mending pile. It had been cast there by my neighbour a year ago, for the unforgiveable sins of being both a daggy length and impossibly small at the waist. But Lo, when I inverted the skirt, the waistband matched the circumference of the bag base perfectly, and then flared out at the same width as the outer bag. So all I had to do was turn the skirt upside-down, lop it off at the appropriate height, add a base, and voila, I had a bag lining! I even left the side-zipper in and turned the bag back through it to right-side-out once I'd finished sewing it together. Ahhhh... slack short-cutting disguised as refashioning. Perfect.

Now I'm using my lovely bag of sunshine to go a-gathering... picking up the scraps of fabric in my house which seem to be multiplying at an alarming rate. Oh well, I guess it's breeding season right, being Spring and all?