Spring is sprung

Spring is most definitely here- not only have I finished my first warm weather dress of the year (and my first bit of sewing since moving house in September!), but it was still light enough when I got home from work this evening to have a bit of a photoshoot on the roof terrace.

The dress is dress 101A from the March issue of Burda, and the fabric has been in my stash for ages. It came from the same sales shelf at the back of the fabric shop as the cloth for this, this and this (among others- I think I'm the only person who buys from that shelf, and I take that responsibility seriously...)

I really love the fabric, and have been mulling over what to make with it for years- I had considered the Whirl Away dress, and the one I made a while ago was meant as a kind of wearable muslin. I wanted something with quite a lot of volume, so the bird motif had space to (ahem) sing, and the Whirl Away's huge skirt seemed ideal. However, I don't really wear the one I made, and it's a nuisance to walk around in, so back to the drawing board I went.

I'm very pleased with how this turned out. It has the volume I was after, but the yardage is actually relatively contained, so I even have enough fabric to make another! (I had to keep telling myself this as I mucked around with seam allowances- Burda does not include any, and I'd never made up a pattern with no seam allowances before...)

On another track completely- thank you for still reading! I'm glad this blog is still lingering on the odd RSS feed. Yay!

A year and a day

So, life has been mostly offline in the last year...

I've changed jobs, moved house, made some stuff (but not as much as I'd like). I've thought a lot about blogging, and about what it's for. I've skipped my blogiversary. Can a have a blog-hiatus-iversary instead?

I think I'll try to post weekly here again, but I'm not going to feel guilty if I don't. I might cheat and show you pictures of things from the year's gap- nothing like a bit of time travel!

Like the little quartet of images above: spring in the garden of my old house, in last year's London "snow event"; summer in Italy, craning the set for an opera I worked on into place; autumn in the doorway of my new house, with Flatmate Alice's boyfriend, the first time we all went to see it; winter in Italy again, driving to the seaside to eat fish with friends and celebrate the new year. Not a bad haul!

Messy Tuesday

I feel I'm somewhat going against the spirit of Messy Tuesdays by posting a stage-managed picture of some mess, but it turns out that I'm far too vain to post the real mess currently engulfing me, and besides, this particular mess is a beautiful and interesting one, which I quite wanted to talk about anyway.

This mess is my embroidery thread box- but it's messiness precedes my ownership of it. It is one of the many textile related things I inherited from my maternal Grandmother. She (like me, as Flatmate Alice can testify) was a great saver of things. Among other oddments of hers I have a large bag, and several tins, of her odd buttons, a box of empty cotton reels, and this box, which I decanted from a bag, of her embroidery thread ends. There are also several boxes of full skeins of thread, all sorted into cottons, silks, etc, and arranged by colour, but I do not have those. I was never a big one for embroidery (to my her slight disappointment, as it was her favorite craft) and I only have this lot because I once rashly declared that I enjoy untangling thread, and my mother responded by presenting this bundle to me. As you can see, I got about halfway through before getting bored, not too bad! And in a way, I'm glad I didn't untangle it all. This is a mess that is older than me. Some of it is probably older than my mother. There is enough untangled to do what little embroidery I am likely to do, and enough left for the next person to untangle. Or add to.

(The fabric in the background is from my Paris trip, it's 3m of silk from La Folie des Coupons, and I think it will mostly be lining. Unless it turns out to be very, very frilly cocktail dress. You never know...)

Spacerific

The future keeps creeping up on me at the moment, so I thought I'd share these two future based ladies. I embroidered them onto pillowcases using this most excellent Sublime Stitching pattern (purchased as part of this expedition), and embroidery thread from a box of scraps which belonged to my Grandmother. I believe the stitch is called split-stitch- I followed the instructions here...

Unfortunately their rocket packs were not quite powerful enough to carry them across the Atlantic, so I had to resort to Royal Mail to get them to their destination in LA


In other news- I've been boinged! They linked to Craftster, not here, but I nonetheless felt I ought to spruce up my sci-fi crafting credentials...

A warm welcome

(It seems I am unable to post things when they actually happen. So, let us assume it is last Monday, and carry on regardless)
I have just got back from a very brief trip to Italy via Paris. Nobody was in when I got home, but I felt amply welcomed by this lot on the windowsill by the front door!

I was only gone six days, and before I went I planted up another one of the very fine wine boxes from Nicolas with some bulbs and pansies, as a window box.
Here it is, looking promising before I left...

It's just an empty fine wine box I begged from the shop, filled with half and half bought compost and wormery compost, and planted with forced daffodils and pansies from the flower shop down the road. I was lazy and didn't bother lining it or treating the wood- it was going to be chucked before I got to it, so I'm ok with it rotting over time...

In between the two pictures above was quite a lot of fabric and yarn shopping (which I will come back to at some point), a great many good meals

and several trains.

A dress!

Finally, after much talk, and more buying of fabric and patterns than I let on here, I have actually sewn up a woolen winter dress- just in time for spring!

It is McCall's M5464, made up in a wool/acrylic/polyester mix (not even pure wool, after all that!). I saw the fabric in the King's Fabric sale in Oxford for very cheap, having just seen a beautiful olive check dress on a woman in a restaurant. Irresistible, despite the low wool content!
The dress does have the sleeves I've been coveting, and has already done plenty of work-dress duty.

I wore it to a Bluestockings meet up, and mentioned I felt it was a little plain. Lara suggested a giant bow- so I had a bit of an experiment. I may have got a little carried away...


Um, suggestions?

(eta- Pattern Review here)

10

This post contains two tens, both courtesy of Flatmate Alice.
The first ten (above) is what ten pounds will buy, if sent to America with a willing and able flatmate. Last November Alice went to a conference in the US, and then on a mini visiting tour. She owed me ten pounds for some domestic reason or another, so I asked for it back in crafty goodness instead of cold hard cash. She scoured the country's finest craft emporia for bargains and came back with what you see (there are three whole yards of the blue floral cotton!). Thank you Alice!

The second ten is a piece of chain-mail goodness: Alice tagged me for a "You Make My Day Award", which has been doing the rounds of the knit-blogosphere. The rules demand that I pass on the warm fuzzies by selecting my own list of 10 blogs which "bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blogland". An arduous task, but one which I shall bravely embrace.

Of course, I will start with a big fat cheat. I have disqualified both Slipped Stitch (as she tagged me) and Tres Chic Veronique (as she tagged Alice)- and I would also like to take this opportunity to clear my name: I do too read Slipped Stitch! I just rarely comment- since I have usually already said whatever it was I would have typed. So, without further ado (and alphabetically):

Blue Garter: Sarah publishes engaging, beautifully photographed posts about things I really wish I'd knitted, with plenty of "real life" titbits too.

Dab Hand: It turns out I actually (sort of) know Ingrid- we met once at a wedding, both as our partner's plus ones, and I very much enjoyed her company. She got in touch when she recognised me in a picture of the Wonder Woman Jumper and I've been hooked on her beautiful blog ever since.

Fehr Trade: Melissa is the most fabulous seamstress/designer that ever lived in a Thames boat. And why, yes, that was her you spotted in the Ikea shower curtain dress.

Green Kitchen: I came across this image of Michelle's Wool Felt Cloche Hat, and fell in love with her work- it's the colours she uses that really get me- dark and faded and beautiful.

I May Be Knitting A Ranchhouse: with that title, what's not to like?!

Needled: This is intelligent, mindful crafting at its best. Kate writes thoughtful essays which hold your attention, and makes the most beautiful things.

Oxford Bluestockings: This is such a cheat! I get seven blogs for the price of one here. Geography and logistics have had me miss more Wednesdays than I would like lately, but I still very much consider myself to be part of this group.

Soulemama: Amanda chronicles her crafty, creative family life in this beautifully photographed blog. It's gorgeous, inspiring and well written. I'm sure she's been nominated by any number of people, but checking Soulemama is so much a part of my daily routine, it would be dishonest not to list her here.

Ysolda: Do you know that if you type "ysolda" straight into the address bar in Firefox it sends you here? This pleases me no end, as, of course, do Ysolda's posts and patterns.

Zeitgeist: Kate is a grad student studying textile design- I love her colour-work, and I really enjoy seeing machine knitting in a blog.

Ouf! That was hard! More pure knitting blogs crept into the final 10 than I expected, but I think that's a reflection of the blogosphere- knitting does seem to be exceptionally well represented. Or maybe I am not enthusiastic enough in my exploration of sewing blogs- guidance gratefully received!

The Rules: Give the award to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blogland. Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so they can pass it on. Beware you may get the award several times.