lovely pip

You guys know Pip right? You must. Meet me at Mikes? Sew La Tea Do? Writes for Frankie magazine? Maybe you saw her on The Circle spreading the crafty love? She a Craft extraodinaire; surrogate mother to a million crafters all over Melbourne? If the answer is no then I definitely recommend you get to know her...



Pip is a MASSIVE inspiration for us. It's difficult to over state just what an impact she has had on the way we imagine our futures and our lives. And Pip is a very busy lady. She's a shop keeper of a lovely shop called Meet Me At Mikes on Brunswick st.



She's already published 2 books and we learn from her blog that she's currently working on 2 more! Through her books we've learnt a whole lot of skills. As well as being extremely beautiful they are full of pretty great projects that are very very do-able. Mostly we owe Pip big time because by her example she makes themaybepile... seem like not just a pipe dream but a genuine possibility.



Pip's not really into specialising which is great because neither are we, instead she works in any medium that takes her fancy. She's sort of on a mission to revive the lost art of crochet which she is really good at. Go here to get a nifty pattern with step by step instructions to crochet the some decorative baubles you may've seen in frankie magazine in Decmber. Knowing my crochet skills i'd probably have to start now to have them finished in time.





Mostly we love the way she's interested in making the world a little bit more beautiful and bringing communities closer together and making everyone feel involved and special and talented, which everybody deserves all the time. We both have personal stories of how pip has affected us so here they are:


Steph - After about a year of living in Melbourne, I returned to my home town of Perth, Western Australia. To ease back into the company of my old friends, My dear friend Ashlee suggested we have a craft circle. So we packed up our mums sewing boxes, dipped into spotlight and made cupcakes before heading to Ash's house for our very first afternoon of craft. Before we began we looked through Pip's first book 'Meet Me At Mikes!' cover to cover and were so inspired by what we saw. So we began - it took us 6 hours to make 4 fabric coasters each... Ash was the only person who could use a sewing machine so it made it a bit slow!! Well 18 months later, my ability to sew has greatly improved, and my love of craft has grown and grow, all thanks to one lovely lady!






Ainsley: back in way before before time, such a long long time back, when I was still in high school, Meet me at Mikes was located on Bridge Rd and I happened upon a sign in the window asking for crafters to put their wares in the shop. This was before themaybepile.. was even a glint in my eye. Back then my medium of choice was wire. I know it sounds yuck now but in the early 00's wire and beaded jewellery was a hot commodity. I was so so nervous to show anyone my stuff let alone a shop owner I didn't know but Pip was so sweet. She said "these are works of art", she said "you are very talented and creative", I can almost remember everything she said. She said I should price them up and up. She was the best. And when I went in to collect the unsold pieces and a cheque for $83 I was the happiest 14 year old in the world. It was the best $83 I ever made. It was the beginning of my craft empire. Thanks so much Pip. It still means a whole lot to me.



You can check out Pip's blog here.
And I defs recommend you check out her Flickr. It's pretty spesh.
And check out her books "Meet me at Mikes" and "Sew La Tea Do" or drop into the shop sometime. You won't regret it!

How to hold an Afternoon Tea Party

Today's tutorial is on How to hold an afternoon tea party!

Step One:
Decide on a date, place and time ( the best time for an afternoon tea party is around 3pm)
Then find some invitations and send them out to your friends and family.



Step Two:
Decide on what to bake, make and buy. Ive put in brackets what i decided.

Traditional English Afternoon Tea are served in three courses. Savouries ( sandwhiches and quiches), Scones ( freshly baked with cream and two choices of jam), and Sweets ( trifle, hedgehog slice, lemon slice, carrot cake, messy meringues with passion-fruit and blue berries, fairy cakes and birthday cake).









Then you need to select a range of teas ( english breakfast, french earl grey, green rose, and vanilla mint.) We also served coffee and punch!

To add a personal touch I made napkins, and table cloths - Easily done by cutting fabric into squares or rectangles of sizes of your choice, and then hemming all of the edges.



Ainsley then made tags for the tea and also name tags for our punch cups.





Step Three:
Once everything is prepared for the day, put on a party dress and enjoy yourself!!

++ take a bow

bows are pretty great. they are nice in your hair and nice around boys necks. they're a pretty good embellishment and to be honest a good hand sewn bow is a bit of an art form. we've had lots of practice.

my pockets and handbag have small stashes of scrap fabric and a needle and thread and now i can rassle up a pretty dandy bow in under a minute. they are a lot better if you press them though but also a bit of a bus- time- passer and pretty good still iron free. i like to be able to craft wherever i go and this is a good on the go past-time.

so here a few ways to make bows. this is my first ever tutorial so be gentle. it might seem obvious to some but it's also sometimes a little tricky. we're going to add to these techniques over time until we have a whole ca-bow-dle.


ok so first cut a rectangle. it can be any size. the bow will end up roughly a quarter of the size of the rectangle. my piece is as big as a $5 note



cut a second piece 2 fingers wide in the same or contrasting fabric



fold the long edges of the large piece in towards the center with a little cross over and then the short edges in to the center and press



sew together using a running stitch



pull it tight and wrap the smaller piece around. be sure to tuck the sides in so the seams don't show and without cutting the thread sew the small peice together at the back of the bow.



slide a bobby pin in the back and you're ready to rock-a-billy it. make some for your besty or sew a safety pin in the back of a big one and pin it to your boys collar.

have a great day!