The Difference....

between old and new...

I opened up my brand spanking new snap press dyes yesterday, very exciting for me, as snapping has been at a stand still lately due to having a dodgy (or worn out as you will see below) socket dye.

I get asked often how you can tell if your snap press dye set has worn out. So I thought I would be informational for once and give you a looksie at old versus new. I will note before hand that the old dye set is black and the new shiny and silver, that is not part of the wearing out, the old one was black when I got it.

For those of you familiar with snap presses, you will have already figured out that this is the socket dye. The pokey outey bit (oh yeah I make up words as I go too!) has the socket piece snapped onto it and then the cap is placed in the base part then you squish them together and that forms the socket piece. (on a piece of fabric of course!) 

You will notice on my dye that looking at it from the side (right side) the old dye has lost alot of its squishyness, making the snap press more likely to break the snap due to it being too hard a force pushed onto it (this is my assumption by the way) I know the lack of squishyness has made a difference in the rate of breaking snaps. There is not alot of difference in the size of the part that the snap sits on, but on my last worn out dye set, it was half the size of the new one! 

With things like metal (I am now chanelling my boilermaking partner!) things as small as 0.3 of a millimetre can make a massive difference, so its really important to make sure you change your dye set, otherwise your snaps really wont be as well put in as they should be. You will also notice on the picture on the left that there is an indent around the part the snap sits on (its bigger in real life), this is from the snaps wearing down on it.

Here is the stud dye set. There is not a massive amount of difference here. For me, because I make nappies, for every 10 sockets I do only 4 studs so they really don't wear out as quickly. I do change both dye sets at the same time though. Its a habit. You will notice that there is a small amount of wear on the old stud dye in the photo on the right, the part in the centre of the hole the stud sits in is starting to push in, in the last one I changed, once again, there was a larger difference due to wear.

The main things to look out for to decide if your dye needs a change or not are...

1. Breaking a lot of snaps. I always know its time to change my dye set when I break more than 2 snaps per nappy on a regular basis. 

2. Your snap doesn't clip onto the dye very well any more. A sure sign that the parts they are meant to clip onto are wearing a lot.

I'm sure there are more, but these are the main things I have noticed. 

I hope this has been information filled for you. If you have anything to add to my info please add it in the comments :) I'm by no means an expert, just recalling my personal experience.

For the record too, I always buy my new snap press dyes from here.

Ahh A Day off...

Well.. today is SUPPOSED to be my day off. I have to clean the house, the sewing monster in me has ignored the cleaning for far too long and it has become quite a mess! I have some great ideas floating around in my little head for some new nappies and have some fabric arriving today so that I will have enough microfleece and bamboo to make them! I have also worn out yet another dye set on my snap press! I must be making alot more nappies this year than I was last year!

Anyway... so today is cleaning day. We wont call it a day off, because really, cleaning isnt fun, and days off are supposed to be fun! Tomorrow I am heading into Brunswick to the ANN meet that we have monthly there. Lots of lovely clothies getting together, we have a coffee (or tea etc) and a snack and the kids play. We have a small discussion about a chosen topic and then generally try to coax our children into leaving the miriad of toys that are there. It is great, and all are welcome!

Nappy Network Meet - 10.30am - 12 midday (ish)
Brunswick Baptist Church Hall (its down the back!)
491 Sydney Road, Brunswick VIC.

I will have the nappy kit there if anyone wants to have a looksie!

I think I also might head over to the fabric store afterwards if I have time. I saw a poster for it on my way back from the market yesterday (which we got blown away from by the way!!) and I think I might check it out. :) They sell bamboo fabrics.. I wonder if they have fleece??!?? See I am having fabric dreams from the store before Ive been there!

Oh and good news... I have finished sequining one of the outfits for callisthenics. I am super excited about this! now to finish the rest of the costumes by August 22nd. EEK!!!!!

Anyway... better get back to my cleaning day... I hope you are all having a wonderful day too! :)

Wordless Weekend

More Here

My Latest Store Front

Hi Everyone! I just wanted to let everyone know that I started a store on Madeit today. I have listed some of my latest nappy creations on there and I'd really love it if you headed over and had a look at my store. I will also have some of these beautiful nappies, and some other gorgeous creations with me at the Shirt and Skirt Market on Sunday in Abbotsford.

I'd like to thank all of you for your support :)

Amy xo

My Creative Space

Its been a while since I joined in, school holidays are a massive drain on my computer time, I dont get much done online but nevertheless I AM back!!

This week I finished setting up some shelving in my sewing room. This means that the space is looking SLIGHTLY less cluttered. I am thinking that I need at least one more set of shelves before the place is going to start looking organsied. Or perhaps I need to finish sewing up all of the nappies that are cut out and sitting on the shelves in pieces!!

The two sets of shelves I put against the wall stacked to the top with fabric, notions, half assembled nappies and patterns. You can see the nappies all over the ironing board (all sewn up now though!)

This rack was against the wall where the shelves now are. I love it against here it opens the room up soooo much! You can see all of the callisthenics costumes that I am working on. 5 in total for this girl! I might officially be able to say that I hate sequins. You can also see some fabric hanging on a hanger, I intend to do this with all of my dress, quilting and denim fabrics to free up space. I still have a massive pile of fabric sitting on the bed (my sewing room doubles as the spare room) to be sorted and this is how I will be storing it for ease of finding it and accessing it.

Ive also been spending alot of time playing dressups and getting all kinds of loving looks from the little man :)

Until next time... More creative spaces here

Stitched Post Card Swap

A little while ago I signed up to participate in a stitched post card swap over at Beth Nicholls' Blog The theme was "time"

For me, this was a very hard topic, I so wanted to let my creative juices flow, but having a theme made it very hard for me.. Perhaps I, Like Bing Crosby am singing "don't fence me in". Or when I am fenced in I get a massive amount of creative plague... it all dies a sudden death!

So after umming and ahhing for 2 of the 3 weeks I had to make the card, I finally opted to do a clock. I so wasnt going to do a clock. For me, it was stereotypical!! I didnt want to be stereotypical but the other ideas I had were unfortunately slightly too difficult for my level of hand sewing, and I decided to go with the clock. Quote beside, and make it look great, rather than a half baked attempt at something awesome that turned into a massive FLOP! 

So after my indecision lead me to the decision, this was my final product....

I am actually very impressed with myself because I did ALL of it by hand, no machine here people... I rocked it old school with a needle and thread and impressed myself LOADS!! And really enjoyed myself being social sitting in front of the telly and watching tv with the other half whilst being productive :) Something I wish I could do more of!

The quote I chose was "dont count every hour in the day, make every hour in the day count" this is something I struggle with, my umming and ahhing generally leads to alot of procrastination around here! Something I had drummed into me when I was a missionary was being a good steward of my time... lets just say it works sometimes!! I think making every hour in the day count was also something that became very important to me during the timeless mayhem that was the hell of my post natal depression I suffered after having my son. So it is a quote near to my heart.

My postcard went off to SVM from over here. and travelled all the way over to New York :)

I received a very lovely card from Mrs Spots. 

Enclosed was a lovely little note saying that balancing time is her biggest problem... seems we are in a similar state of mind, and chose similar themes for our cards! :) I love the bird, Im forever attempting to draw one of these for the back of nappies but the shape just evades me somehow. I cant get it right! and the use of the selvedge of some fabric (I have so much of that laying around and have no idea what to do with it all!) was a great idea.

Thanks so much for my card, I loved it. Thanks to Beth for organising the swap too, I haven't done a swap for such a long time and this really broadened my horizons and taught me that my skills as a hand sewer have come such a long way (even though I have a long way to go!). I had FUN doing this, it was great!

Market Monday!

Tomorrow at THE SHOP, I'm having a Market Day! You can get any of my products for the "real life price" without having to pay for postage! 

Head over now and grab some weepantz for a bargain, its only for one day!

My Creative Space

Today my space is on my bed curled up with a hot cup of tea and fabric that I am cutting out for appliqué.

Its a lovely snuggly escape from the kids who are driving me INSANE with the school holidays on and Olly getting his first 3 molars all at the same time. 

I have also this week completed a couple of tasks. Oh you lovely readers probably thought I had been kidnapped or something... well in some description I was probably kidnapped by my sewing machine. I have a market this Sunday so its all stations go with the mass sewing spree!

I have finally completed the first batch of wet bags for the shop . Mind you, with the lack of computer time around here lately I haven't had time to upload them to the actual store, but you can view all of the designs on my facebook page.

I also took part in a stitched postcard swap recently, this is a scanned image of the front of my card. It was my first ever stitched postcard, and I am SUCH an ametuer when it comes to hand stitching and hand appliqué. But I really enjoyed it so much and will probably complete some more stitched post cards in the future. I will do a post about the swap when my card arrives. It is coming from the USA so it might take a little while to get here :)

Anyway, so lots happening here, I am also working on costumes for Ruthie's callisthenics costumes, but I wont be able to show photos of those until after the first competition I don't think. Just the rules. But they are very involved and I do believe I HATE sequins and also Lycra in general. But they are really going to look great when I finally get them finished.

Once again I do apologise for my long gaps between posts. I am spending so much time at the sewing machine that when I'm not there, I am generally feeding the children, at the gym or cleaning my house which most of the time even when cleaned up looks like a small atomic bomb hit it with the kids pulling the toys out as soon as I put them away!

Until next time... I'm hoping it wont be such a long gap this time!

Now I'm off to stop whining about my un-updated website and update it!!!! For more creative spaces head over here