The Vintage and Handmade Fair is nearing...

One more sleep to go!!  

Fingers crossed for a bit of sun

Pennies at the ready....

See you there, I'll probably be the one in a tartan dress?!

New mood board

In honour of Spring, it's time to change the mood board!

Pillowcase dresses

As promised, pics of yesterday's playing. Using Sew Hip's pattern from issue 3, I've been accumulating old pillowcases and I finally got brave enough to cut some of them up!

The arm holes look larger than they do in the magazine's photo's, so these hang quite low. Haven't got any models to try them on yet (!) but with a white tee underneath I'm hoping they'll not look too bad, my youngest (3) is notoriously fussy so I'll not even sure she'll try it on yet!

I've left the inside fold on the purple one, I wanted to use them as pockets, but not sure how to make it work at the front, if I cut a slit in the front do I need to trim it with bias binding or just hem back?

I've had an enjoyable day cycling into town today with my little co-pilot in her seat behind me and trawling through the library and most of our town's charity shops. Her favourite game is hiding behind the clothes rails and browsing through the toy sections!

If I had a lovely wooden dresser or simply any shelves I would so love to . bring home more homewares/knick-knacks, saw lots of lovely cups, plates, glass dessert bowls, trifle bowls, jugs, trays etc. but sadly in our small space it's not very practical, so I'll just enjoy looking!

Course I did come home with some fabric, two marching denim pillowcases - yes more girl dresses! but this time I'm just going to try my own idea/pattern. Not quite sure who or why you'd want denim pillowcases though?!!

I also had a mad moment and bought a dress for myself! Now I'm NOT a dress person, I don't own any, well I have a few long things like tunics or shirt dresses but they are worn with trousers, well jeans! But I couldn't resist, it's a red & white floral pattern which I loved and it was reduced to £2.75. Oh, did I mention it's also a size 18? Am I a size 18? No, I'm a 14-16, (why can't they make a size 15, it would make my life so much easier! So it's HUGE on me!

But I couldn't put it down, I had to have the fabric, so I'm trying to work out the best way to alter and make it into a shorter dress to wear with jeans! Or leggings (?) still not quite sure if I'm a) to old, or b) have chunky legs to be able to pull leggings off?!

If I manage anything, will let you know!

Right it's time for an early night, work tomorrow (boo hiss, answers on a postcard about ways to give up work and be a SAHM like most other bloggers!) still have time for a last cuppa and a flick through the last Country Living in bed (it's my birthday soon, I'm hoping for a subscription if anyone's reading!).

Recent booty!

The sun is shining, the car boots are full, jumble sales are springing up, it only means one thing, it must be Spring! The one good thing about spring cleaning is when other people chuck out their old things, which means rummaging & finding!

I found these in a carrier bag in our local boot last Sunday morning, the sun shone, I went alone ! (no kids, yay!!) and cycled down in relative peace & quiet, it was bliss!
All of them have been pieced and basted, I can't imagine the time it took for some one to lovingly create all these and then sadly never get round to putting them together. The cards are all from the 80's by the look of them, so I can only imagine that an elderly relative had them and never got round to finishing them before they were 'inherited'? All that work for only £3, I felt quite guilty.

I'm playing around with a pattern and then I intend on putting them all together, should be a lovely intro to patchwork.

This whole box was at our local 'Sobell House warehouse' for £3! Lovely selection of patterns from the seventies to the nineties, I'm currently going through them all to see if they are all complete as I would like to put them onto Folksy to sell cheaply. I've managed to set up my shop - ThriftyFab, so will be listing soon...
This lovely tin was from today's WI jumble sale, was a bit of a bun fight! Got this for only 10p!

From all the above places I've also been stocking up on pillow-cases, sheets, duvet covers etc for making summer dresses for the girls. Today I've been working on a pillow-case tunic from Sew Hip, will take pics tomorrow....

AND only 1 week to go to the Vintage & Handmade Fair in Chipping Sodbury, I'm already excited!!

Easter Tree

HAPPY EASTER

Hope you all had a lovely relaxing time, the weather has been kinder and we enjoyed a day out at Blenheim Palace for the annual Easter Egg hunt, which we all really enjoyed, the girls won chocolate bunnies for our efforts!
Got my hands on one of the last two copies of Homestyle Sewing in my local 'Smiths. Has seen this advertised on Facebook, from following Poppy Treffry's fan page. It's quite expensive at £7.99, but as a one of purchase I allowed it! It came with a generous piefce of polka dot fabric, so that you can make the bag advertised, doubt I will as I'm not a bag person, but would like to do some applique or covered buttons with it.
Got the latest Sew Hip too, which has a lovely blouse pattern, marked advanced! And a cupcake pattern by Kitty Eden, which I have to try!



And here is the second mitten I have been working on, the first was WAY too big for my eldest, think I got carried away knitting!! This fits much better, it's for the youngest and had a brain wave to draw round the girls hands to make templates to work from! That way when I'm knitting, mostly at night when they're in bed I can use the template to roughly measure!

The only thing is that I now need to do the second one and the weather's getting warmer!! Still it's all good practice and my seaming is still untidy!