Toot Toot! I’m blowing my little party horn!

I bloody love the sewing community!! I’ve been nominated for another Liebster award and a Super Sweet Blogger Award.

Jo from Sew Little Time is an awesome kickass sewist. Her blog is great fun to read, she’s a good twitter friend and, as I learned at the blogger meet up, an excellent dinner partner.

Check out her Mad Men dress, Anise and all her lovely knitting for starters!

Jo has thrown down the gauntlet with questions for her nominees. There wasn’t any of that last time around so I’m happy to play along.

1. What is your favourite film of all time and why?

I don’t see any shame in admitting this. I totally heart First Knight. I wish I could say a cool film but it’d be a fib. I can’t really say why but I love Richard Gere as an American Lancelot and Sean Connery as a Scottish King Arthur! Awesome fun. Maybe it’s the mystery of Camelot. Who knows. Have you seen it? Have I gone up or down in your estimation?

2. What kind of holidays do you like – beach? city break? raving in Ibiza?  Do tell!

I love the sun. It’s not about baking myself that much, more about being totally warmed through, getting vitamin D and feeling really healthy (doesn’t everyone feel more healthy in bright warm sunlight). My favourite place to visit is Melbourne. Let me sit in the sun with a good book at St Kilda and I’d be a very happy lady.

3. I spend a lot of time commuting – if you had a spare hour on the train, what would you do?

I do the same! I have an hour each way to waste on the way to my office. I read blogs, work on Almond Rock posts and play on my social media accounts. I really want to get back into reading books on the train so I need a bigger handbag me thinks!

4. What is the best sewing book you have read?

I think my current favourite is the Merchant and Mills sewing book. Its very cleverly written to be gender neutral, charming and inspiring. I learnt some great new tips and really responded to the design and layout used.

5. Knits or wovens?

Wovens all the way baby! It’s one of my New Year ReSewlutions to get better at knits… but hey crikey we’re nearly half way through the year already! I should probably mobilise on that.

6. What is your favourite blog?

Oh no you don’t. I’m not picking a favourite!! I love so many. There are blogs with amazing layouts, great clever features, beautiful clothes, diys and crafts, and most of all hilarious happy people who I enjoy reading about and chatting to.

7. What other crafts do you do and which is your favourite?

Honestly I’m afraid I don’t really do much else. I dabble with jewellery making but not enough to say it’s a secondary craft. I read a lot, watch epic movie marathons and wax lyrical about James Bond. I also like to think I’m a pretty decent baker and cake decorator. I’ve learned from the best though so is that really a craft or more of a handed down family secret?

8. What is your karaoke song?

For a big old extrovert I’m not really a fan of karaoke. I do have one ace up my sleeve. Think Nelly….

9. Sweet or savoury?

Sweeeeeeeet. I’d love to live off dessert without consequences… and bread! Give me a banoffee pie and I’ll call you my best friend!

10. What is your favourite accessory?

At the minute it’s my red leather satchel. I can’t stop using it! I got on my way home from the epic London meetup so it always reminds me of sewing adventures.

11. If I gave you £50 ($78 US, $82 Aus) to spend on fabric, patterns or craft supplies, what would you make from it?  Links please!

Eeeeek I’d want a spending spree! But to be more restrained… I’m currently cooking up a plan for a shirtdress so I’d buy 2 metres of pale pink carline rose tana lawn (£44) and Simplicity 1880 (£8). Then I’m out of budget. Oh.
If I got the pale pink cabbage rose cath kidston print fabric (£25) instead of Liberty I could also squeeze in an order of a belladone from Deer and Doe perhaps?

Phew that was harder than I thought. I wonder if you all feel like you’ve seen into my soul now…

Next up the Super Sweet Blogger Award which was given to me by lovely Lara of Dreaming of Avonlea. Thanks very much Lara. I had the pleasure of her company in Birmingham this weekend. She is fun and talented and dreams of dresses!
I mean after hearing that you’ve GOT TO check out her blog!

She’d like me to answer 5 Super Sweet questions.
And to nominate a baker’s dozen (13) of other deserving bloggers.

Questions!

Q: Cookies or Cake?

A: Cake I think… just edges it out.

Q: Chocolate or Vanilla?

A: CHOCOLATE are you crazy?!

Q:  Favorite sweet treat?

A: Banoffee pie all the way. Or as close as you can get to it!

Q: When do you crave sweets the most?

A: As soon as I go on a diet. But mostly after dinner time.

Q: Sweet nickname?

A: Nothing to report here. It’s very hard to abbreviate a three letter name into something cuter!

I’m very grateful to the sewing community but for these awards I’d like to nominate my favourite food bloggers for a bit of redirection! Maybe you’ll discover someone you like too?

1. Stasty
2. Little Red House
3. Spoon Fork Bacon
4. Ari’s menu
5. Family Style Food
6. Lolly’s Sweet and Savoury Treats
7. Mandy’s Recipe Box
8. Just My Delicious
9. Angel Loves Cooking
10. Sweet C’s Designs
11. Domestic Rebel
12. Bakerette
13. Delicious Shots
14. Cocktail Remedy (bonus one for all the cocktail lovers out there)

Me-Made-May 13 – week 5 round up

And its over….

This final week I wore nothing but repeats so I won’t bore you with photos of my outfits.

This was my second year of Mmm13 and I’m a little disappointed with my performance. But hey that’s how you learn right, by examining how to improve in the future.

Quick maths using my photos and unblogged repeats meant I achieved 21 days out of 31… Oh that’s quite nice I suppose but I wanted to do 26 really!

What did I learn about Me-Made-May?

I liked trying to make my photos of a better quality with a variety of locations and different posing.

My will to upload pics to flickr dissolved around the time I was packing for my holidays. Sorry lovely flickr peeps but the android app is horrendous to use.

I liked adding an extra challenge with my polka dot week.

What did I learn about my me-made wardrobe?

I have plenty of me-made tops. I said this in a previous post but I started out sewing thinking I’d make oodles of dresses, but ended up with oodles of tops!

I need more day dresses. Especially since my office has relaxed its dress code. I need dresses that make me happy but don’t look too formal. I know the best way to do this is make cotton sun dresses so I am going to put that into action.

I don’t like any of my me-made skirts as they fit terribly (I didn’t wear them a single day!) and I hope to rectify this soon: I’ve signed up a to a skirt pattern drafting course.

If I can nail the fit of skirts for my body shape I’d like to make a beignet, a classic circle skirt, and possibly a kelly skirt.

I also fell back in love with a dress I very rarely wear. It’s just a touch too short but that’s easily fixable on a second version.

Will I do MMM next year?

I think I’ll give myself the year off next time. I enjoyed this year as much as last year but I think I’d prefer to sit back and look at everyone’s posts, take inspiration and let myself choose me-made items for my daily wardrobe on a more relaxed basis.

I hope you found MMM13 enjoyable if you were taking part or just soaking up inspiration!

I really enjoyed finding new blogs to follow as well as swooning over wonderful outfits.

Me-Made-May 13 – week 4: The Portuguese edition!

This post covers the me made items packed in my suitcase between May 20th and 28th!

I’ve been in Portugal taking some relaxation time!

Back to reality with a bump. I landed in the UK Tuesday and I was back in work yesterday.

Although it’s a short work week for me I have plenty planned so thought I better get my me mades onto the blog sharpish!

Day 20: I flew in my green bias stripe top. Not pictured as it was 7am and I was a wee bit sleepy.

Day 21. This dress will now be called the “when are you due?” dress after a ludicrous man asked me this twice when I wore it out. To be fair I had just eaten three courses… but still! He then turned to the barman and said “That’s what we call a ‘gaffe’ in England”.

Day 23: This is the first dress I ever made. Its got terrible construction compared to recent makes but I love it. Lovely colours and mystical optical illusions going on to make my waist look so small.

Day 27: This is my nautical-inspired braided headband. I keep meaning to do a tutorial for this one. Its jaunty and I love it.

Day 28: my heading home outfit. Arrrgh I have to wear jeans again!!

Just five items and a few repeats here I’m afraid. Why the hell haven’t I made more sundresses?! If I had made a beach cover-up I’d be owning it this week. Only a few more days of May to go!!

I’ll leave you with some more holiday pics.

Luvverly Liberty

During my time in London I got a chance to go to the fabulous and famous Liberty of London.

My Aunt bought me a gift card at Christmas and I managed to wait until I could go in person and see all the wonderful items available up close!

The actual building is amazing. I love its grand Tudor facade in black and white. It was 1924 when this incredible icon was constructed from the timbers of two ships: HMS Impregnable and HMS Hindustan.

We approached from Argyll Street so we could see Liberty’s own flower shop at the entrance. It was a lovely spring day and plenty of lavender and roses were arranged at the doorway.

The haberdashery and fabric section contains plenty to keep you distracted for hours. I had a one hour time limit to select some fabric.

Liberty has a long history of artistic and inspiring collaborative projects on their Liberty Art Fabrics – from William Morris and Gabriel Dante Rossetti in the 19th century to Yves Saint Laurent and Dame Vivienne Westwood in the 20th.

Every season staff scour the archives for historic prints that could be reissued for a modern audience. Watch this video on some of the design processes that go into selecting a new season’s fabrics.
Or this one about the printing process at the Lancaster factory! I swear I was so distraught when I realised I’d been so close to the factory during my uni days. Maybe I could have applied for a part time job or something! Sigh…

Recent collaborations include renowned brands such as Nike, Dr. Martens, Hello Kitty, Barbour and Manolo Blahnik to name but a few. My favourite was the Converse collaboration.

I’m pleased to report I got two metres of lovely Melly paint splodge/splatter style tana lawn which I’ll be using for a happy smile-inducing dress!

Have you been to the Liberty store? Would you love to?

Backstitch Giveaway: winner announcement!!

I’m so happy to be announcing this giveaway.

I was amazed at the number of entries,  53 in total! And there is a good variety of ways people are following.

It was selfish of me but I really wanted to know which platforms my blog is mostly being viewed on, and now I do!

Without further ado….. the random number generator calculated the winner was commenter number 4!

So our lucky winner is….
Sabs

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

Sabs is also known as Mini and Merky if you follow on social media.

She has some fantastic sewing skills so you should check out her blog. Her turquoise washi dress is gorgeous and makes me eager for summer to get here.
Plus she has the cutest pair of cats! I love their little faces!

If you didn’t win then not to worry, there will be more giveaways in the near future! And I’m really glad you entered.

The Sweetheart Dress (oh don’t get all soppy on me)

Last week I showed you a dress I hadn’t blogged about but it went down quite well so I here are the details.

I wanted to make the Colette Truffle bodice into my go-to dress bodice block as it was so close to being perfect on my Christmas party dress.

I made a rub off pattern from a lace dress I love and then combined this with the Truffle pattern to make what should have been a perfect fit. It’s sooo close to perfect but not quite as the neck gapes a little, though it seems to suit Beryl.

I also drafted an A-line gathered skirt by using the hem and drop measurements from the lace dress and after eyeballing the amount of waist gathering figured out the waist length I’d need. I like A-line gathered skirts more than dirndl because a lot of waist gathering makes me look too wide there. Plus you still get a good twirly skirt from them!

The fabric was from Fletcher’s Fabrics in York and was a birthday present from Mr AR. It’s a popular quilting cotton which has been in stock for years and comes in a variety of colourways.

I did my new trick of encasing the zip with bias tape and I lined the bodice in cream poly lining but didn’t line the skirt… that was my major mistake.

Unlined cotton dresses stick to your tights and I hate this. But I convinced myself otherwise! Now this dress rides up when I wear it. Even when I wear a half slip for goodness sake! I live the dress so I think I’ll retroactively fit a lining. I just need to mull over how….

**Please remember**

You have one day left to enter the giveaway.

Entries must be received by Midnight BST Friday 10th May!

Me-Made-May 13 – week 1

Well hello!
May is upon us. And for everyone in Europe we had a bank holiday to kick  things off too!

I managed four out of five days in me-mades this week. I had agreed with myself a goal of six out of seven days in each week but hey, this was a short week!

Day 1: green bias stripe top from self drafted pattern. Not blogged because its the same fabric and pattern as my bias stripe dress!

Day 2: sweetheart print truffle bodice with self drafted gathered a-line skirt. More about that later.

Day 3: one of the first ever things I made, my georgette star print top using New Look 6962.

Day 4: strappy top made from the skirt of a topshop sundress using Butterick 5653.

I had an awesome weekend. I saw my little brother on Saturday and went to Abakhans where I bought chevron print fabric for an unbelievably good price. Saw friends and ate good food on Sunday. And larked about around the canal and docks before having a bbq yesterday! Plus I watched three good films and snuck in a smidge of sewing!!

Hope you had a fantastic weekend too!

Blogiversary Backstitch Giveaway!

That’s right, one year ago today I started blogging!

It’s gone soooo quickly. I started so I could post about my participation in Me-Made-May. I barely had anything to wear and I was still figuring out how to manage a blog. I was  pretty sure no one out there was reading.

But here I am, a year later with a lovely wardrobe full of me-made clothes and I’ve met amazing interesting lovely people (in real life and virtually) all through the blog.
So to show my appreciation I’m hosting a giveaway.

Up for grabs is a £15 gift voucher to the Backstitch shop!

Choose from the fantastic fabrics available, including Riley Blake, Lizzy House and Liberty Lifestyle.

Or spoil yourself with a pattern from one of the wildly popular indie pattern companies, such as Sewaholic, Victory Patterns or Megan Nielsen.

All you have to do to win is be a follower of the blog and simply leave a comment telling me how you follow. That’s it!

New followers are welcome to enter. The giveaway is open internationally too.

Closing date for entries in Friday 10th May at Midnight (BST).

I’ll draw an entry at random and announce the winner shortly after.

Good luck!

How was your weekend?

“So what did you do this weekend?”

“Oh I went shopping in London with 50 strangers off the Internet and we took over a Lebenese restaurant. What did you do?”

I want to say that this weekend’s meetup in London was so tremendous that I’m finding it hard to describe. I tried to summarise proceedings in an email to my brother and pretty sure I didn’t convey how amazing it was (plus I know I missed bits out).

So forgive me if I opt out from trying to do it justice. If you were there, well you know. If you weren’t, our delightful host Rachel and many of the FIFTY other attendees will do a much better job than I.

Instead of a full round up I wanted to hone in some of my highlights of the day.

A big highlight for me was how much more confident I felt at my second meet up than my first, especially given the scare factor of such a huge gathering. I think this was partly down to seeing lovely familiar faces. Rachel makes you feel like you’ve known her years. Marie is such a sweetheart, she always makes me laugh. Roisin is like a fantastic whirlwind and didn’t stay long but made a point to catch up with me. And it was lovely to chat with Catherine again (I had a feeling she’d pick my sparkly jersey from the swap).

Another highlight was meeting so many new people – people I’ve admired and read their blogs from afar and people that write wonderful blogs I’d not heard of before. Sitting with Camilla, Jo and Janene for lunch was great because they were all so chatty and funny. Finally meeting Sallie and confirming my suspicions of her Yorkshire roots was ace. And of course meeting LIZZY! Our international attendee. She really is so so friendly in real life. I felt a bit star struck to be honest; I didn’t get a photo of us together and I felt like I didn’t convey how grateful I was that she brought over for me!

The V&A is so spectacular I can’t believe I’ve never been before! I’m definitely going again.

Goldhawk Road was kind of a revelation. It was so neat to see all the fabric shops along one road where we could bounce in and out of them all hunting for bargains. Now some of you may have noticed my desperate desire to find horse print fabric. And since Goldhawk Road is famous for getting end rolls from commercial fashion companies I felt optimistic.

I wasn’t disappointed. I also picked up some other delights. Not much mind you as I’d already spent all my money in Birmingham. My swap freebies included this amazing bird print rayon from Lizzy, and a printed silk plus a cute simplicity sundress pattern from a mystery source.

Finally, I was amazed by the generosity of Minerva Fabrics and Abakhans. These two companies effectively sponsored our day out. I can’t even begin to convey the amount of fabric, notions and trims Abakhans supplied to the swap. And Minerva gave everyone goodie bags they’d thoughtfully put together – see the awesome felted wool knitted fabric I was given (above). I always thought the blogging community was surpisingly separate from the sewing supply companies but lately my eyes have been opened.

* Meet up photos by Digpal Singh

MMM Day 28: Hello sunshine!

Wow the weather was so good recently. And I spent a lot of time away from my sewing table and my computer! I went out for a wander in town in this little number on Saturday. It’s one of the first things I ever made and I still love wearing it! It’s made from quilters cotton in a print called Brooklyn heights. There are little dots arranged in an unusual zig zag pattern and the colour is beautiful (to me anyway). I HAVE to get better at my photos. This was taken in the courtyard and again, we missed the sun and the best picture turned out to be my crazy face snap.

Now moving on, time to brag about my Mother again, AND my Dad this time too! Remember the car boot?

They went back and cleared it out!!

45 zips in varying colours and sizes, some double ended zips too!

3 patterns, some lilac cotton, cream satin and brown satin bias binding and some pink braided cord

3m of blue polyester lining, 7m of peach polyester lining, 2m of peach chiffon, and 1.5m of royal blue silk

9 bobbins of mercerised thread, and then a whole load of colours and sizes. Yummy

🙂

I’m a super lucky girl. And you know what I’m going to say. This lot was an insane bargain!! A massive £12 for the lot. Amazing!!