good intentions

Hello!  I've not been a very good sewer recently but it's all for a good reason - since coming back from Italy we've been away again - this time a lovely long weekend back in Scotland.  I went home on Thursday for my Granny's 87th Birthday and we had a lovely party at my Dad's house - 12 of us in total, covering 4 generations!  before heading out to my Gran's I popped up to see a friend Lisa who runs an amazing coffee shop 'C, C & T' in Glasgow - she roasts all the coffee on site, they hand-make chocolates on site, they have the best Moroccan Mint Tea leaves ever - if you're in Glasgow you have to stop by for a visit!  Then a night in Bridge of Allan staying with a good friend (where the sun shined all day, it was unbelievably hot!), followed by Saturday night at the Lake of Menteith Hotel.  This last night was a real luxury treat courtesy of two of my best pals who got us it as a wedding present - thanks Lisa and Kath!  All in all a wonderful long weekend away.  Now I'm back to the reality of work, and hopefully, plenty of time to get on with some sewing!

I was going to get started on the Sorbetto top (a free download from Grosgrain last month).  However after the problems with the sheerness of the yellow stripey top I decided to buy a white fabric to underline it - except I'm not going to properly line it, I'm just going to cut 2 layers, the print and the whit fabric and sew them together - will it work?! I'll let you know how it goes!  I got a white muslin in John Lewis, and then popped into Liberty to get some bias binding (the pattern says you can make your own but I thought I should have back up, just in case).

Of course a quick visit to Liberty rarely turns out like that and I came away with some gorgeous sale fabric.  It's called Durie B and it's by the children's illustrator Brian Wildsmith - whose illustrated version of 'Child's Garden of Verses' I used to love (alas I think it was culled in one of my many attempts to reduce a lifetime of books to a reasonable/moveable number).  I loved the colours of this fabric, the mixture of different pinks, red, and the very mustardy, yellow colour.  Plus the dark background means it'll go great with tights in the winter - I've still got to get over my fear of dark tights with light coloured fabric as I've seen it on lots of girls and it looks great.  It's one of those irrational decisions made early on, like my decision that black and brown or black and blue don't go - once again I've seen other people doing it and know it can work, but am too stubborn - old habits die hard!  I thought it would make a lovely winter dress - and going by my current standards of sewing productivity I think that's being a bit more realistic than starting on more summer clothes.

My new fabric beside another treat to myself, some Sweet Williams