Tuesday, 19 November 2013

Sheer panels


Cutaways and sheer panels seem really trendy at the moment. I've seen it in lots if couture garments and high street shops alike.

Donna Karan


Anthropologie



I've got a staff Xmas do to go to in a few weeks and thought I'd make a skirt inspired by this trend. Work in progress below:



Reverse appliqué detail:


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New fabrics, new projects


I've mixed up my new purchases with fabrics I had in my stash. Just need to decide what to do with them! I'm thinking of trying out circles for my next quilt project.

















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Friday, 15 November 2013

Fashionary



I'm loving my new fashionary and most of my students now have one too. It's so good for fashion sketching when your drawing ability of the anatomy isn't great.








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Sunday, 10 November 2013

Finished polka dot dress

Finished my spotty dress for work. I based the style of the bodice on a Stella Jean dress. It's a good for, but why does everything I make always look better on the stand?!








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Saturday, 9 November 2013

Productive Saturday

I love this quilt made from Tula pink fabrics, so thought I'd try sewing a circle patch/ drunken path design.





Pattern:





Easing the curved seam together:





Not bad!








Progress on my polka dot dress. To pleat or to gather, that's the question...



Bought lots of gorgeous cushion covers on India that just sit on a shelf, so stapled one to a frame and it's now on the wall!





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Sunday, 3 November 2013

French Toile Fabric from Lille

Bought this lovely French toile cotton on a recent visit to Lille and I've been wondering what to do with it ever since. I settled for a simple log cabin design. It's currently cushion-sized, but I may keep going and make a baby quilt.









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Dutch wax print and shwe shwe patchwork cushions


My mum gave me this piece of gorgeous Ghanaian wax print cotton that she purchased from the African Fabric Shop at the Knitting and Stitching show at Ally Pally recently. I've combined it with some South African shwe shwe fabric and some chambray.























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Thursday, 17 October 2013

Quilt show

Visited this show at the NEC in the summer.

Art quilts




















Indian quilts











Stunning Mandy Patullo




















Kaffe fassett circles


Nel Whatmore quilt at the Cotton Patch stand


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Sunday, 13 October 2013

Yoga mat bag

I started a yoga class recently and absolutely love it! I bought a mat, so thought I'd better make myself a bag to carry it around.









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Thursday, 29 August 2013

Mother and daughter trip to Lille

Just got back from a wonderful little trip to Lille, France with my mum. There was lots of shopping, eating and drinking, but also culture in the form of a magnificent museum in a converted swimming pool building and a very educational and exciting trip to a textiles factory, where we saw working looms from across the centuries. I uploaded some photos to Facebook and mum said they make a lovely collage, so I took screen shots of them.




Stunning architecture, signage and stained glass windows in Old Lille.





Musee La Piscine:an absolutely stunning building with a tranquil atmosphere and amazing artworks, including fabric swatch books. The museum is in the district of Roubaix, which is about thirty minutes from the city, but well worth the trip. Roubaix used to have a thriving textiles industry, but since more and more production is done offshore, this has sadly died over the years. The photo below shows the beautifu, Art Deco, stained glass window and the photo underneath is of reels of thread at the Manufacture de Flandres, which housed the looms we saw.




Of course there was lots of gluttony too! This amazing raspberry tartlette was enjoyed with loose leaf Earl Grey tea (there were hundreds of varieties of tea) at Meert, an eighteenth century salon de the.






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