Flea market finds - best week ever!

My op-shopping karma was pretty good this week.  MMSTL took a Saturday morning visit to the tip shop  and came back with lots of goodies including this great chair which is now residing in our hallway.  I also picked up a corkboard for my sewing room that I'm going to paint in a nice bright colour, some chicken wire print fabric and he got a wool suit and a shirt - $20 for the lot!

On the way back I stopped into the local oppy and found possibly the craziest pair of shoes I have ever owned- these leather 70's platforms.  They are from Raspini in Italy which  I looked up online and is some Italian boutique and at $8 I reckon they were a real bargain. I can actually walk in them, (in a slightly wobbly way) although I'm not sure when I'll wear then or what to wear them with.  Maybe a new 70's style dress will be  sewn up soon!

I also had an awesome fabric find.  I was browsing in Savers and caught a peep of the selvage - Marimekko 1970 - and on further inspection found two pieces of what I think is original screen printed fabric. Marimekko is a Finnish designer famous for his large flower prints which are still made today.  This fabric has a broad diagonal royal blue strip running through it,   One piece is 2m by 150cm  and the other 3m  by 150cm and both are in good condition. Apart from a couple of yellow spots it looks like new.  I'm not quite sure whether to keep it and make something very groovy like a doona cover -  I'm thinking big chevrons - or to sell it on to a serious vintage fabric collector.

Also at Savers I scored two bags of buttons.  The turquoise and the orange ones  are my favourite.

What a week!   See what other treasures have been found at Her Library Adventures.

My creative space - sewing my winter wardrobe

I apologise to all the gardeners out there as this is the third sewing-related post in a row.  What can I say?  It's coming into winter.  It's dark and cold outside and the sewing room is warm(ish) and filled with lovely colourful fabrics to play with.   I promise that I haven't been neglecting the garden.  We have all our winter veg in - peas, brassicas, broad beans, garlic, onions... and I promise I'll do a post on all of that soon.

But for now, back to the sewing stuff. First off apologies for the awkward pics.  How difficult is it to take pics of oneself?  Especially in bad light with a fairly crappy camera. Anyway, I needed more winter work clothes.  So, Inspired by all the lovely pencil skirts out there and Burda 8155 that I found in the op shop I went to work.

This is my first attempt, a navy stretch cotton that I also got in the op shop.  I made the size 36 and had to take in the hips and waist a bit but apart from that it fits pretty well.
 

Pencil skirt #2 is from the same Burda pattern using some more mystery op shop fabric, possibly cotton sateen that I was drawn to for the slightly pixelated roses,  I made this one a bit longer, mainly by accident but I like how it looks, especially with my new blue tights!

I went back to old favourite, Simplicity 3835 for this dress, a pattern that I've used before here and here. This dark grey cotton fabric wasn't op-shopped (gasp) but it was only $3 a metre from Brunswick fabrics which was a total steal. It sewed up beautifully. It's darker than it looks in the close-up picture, more like the picture on the right and it has a nice weave through it.

I decided  to change the pockets on this one and took the pattern from McCalls 2021, a vintage 1960's skirt pattern and added some little buttons that I covered in a black and white floral print   I'm totally in love with this dress. The fabric is a little bit thin for winter but I wore it today layered up with a long sleeved top underneath, a cardi and tights and I was cosy.

Find out what others have been getting up to in their creative spaces here.

Sustainable sewing

There are a number of  reasons why I sew: it saves money (look at that price tag - $2!), for the creative outlet it provides, the buzz of learning a new skill and the nice reactions from friends and colleages about stuff I've made.  Because I tend to buy most of my fabric in op-shops and when I can, thread and notions too, it is also much more sustainable than buying cheap, imported factory-produced items.

The first thing I do when I hit an op shop is head for the fabric section. Here are some of my recent fabric finds:  lovely grey wool with red lines though it, some loud retro orange and brown with bits of gold (I'm thinking a 50's inspired frock like this one), black polka dots and some navy and white striped jersey.

Just a note about op-shopped wool; it can have moth holes in it so hold it up to the light to check.  I bought some lovely soft grey wool recently and one end was quite damaged with moth holes so when I got it home I marked the holes with tailors chalk before cutting out the pattern pieces.  There was still plenty to make a skirt though.    

I'm also frequenty found rummaging in the manchester section looking for vintage sheets and pillowcases which are great for summer frocks, PJ pants, quilts or for adding details on bags and kids clothes.  I know that some people are a bit funny about making something out of sheets that someone else has slept in but really, what's the problem?  Just give them a good wash!

And then there are the embriodered treasures that can be repurposed into something new.  It seems such a shame that the all the work that went into these is no longer appreciated. I think this lovely but somewhat worn tablecloth might become a bag of some kind, maybe mixed with some linen or denim.

What about you? Are you an op-shop fabric shopper or do you prefer to buy new?

The quilt that took 49 years to make

My Mum started this quilt back in 1963 when she was a nurse in London. She worked nights and needed a project to do when they were sitting on the ward, waiting for the patients to call for them. Things seemed a bit slower in hospitals back them.  She sewed the patchwork top by hand using little cardboard squares to keep the edges straight.  The fabrics come from her old clothes, old dresses of my grandmother, who is still alive and other places that she can't remember.

It took her about 20 years to finish the top and it was made into a duvet (doona) cover,  I remember it on my bed as as a little girl and I used to match up the squares before I went to sleep.  I especially loved the little pink roses.  Somewhere along the line it got ripped and ended up in my parents attic in Wales.  Years later, after I had moved to Australia and Mum was having  one of her big clear outs I asked it she could bring it out next time she visited.  That was a few years ago and it sat  draped over a chair, admired but un-repaired.

At the start of this year Mum and Dad planned a visit to come over again and I knew this was the incentive that I needed to do something with the quilt.  Having made a few other quilts, I  felt confident enough to tackle this one, and I wanted to do the project with Mum. It just felt right. Before she arrived I fixed most of the ripped squares, patching up the ones that were beyond repair and hand stitching the ones that had come loose.  Considering some of this fabric is over 50 years old it was in surprisingly good condition.

When Mum arrived  we decided on the backing - a soft cotton vintage sheet with pink stripes - and a black and white dot for the binding.  The binding is modern but we both liked it, and it was a nice contrast of old and new.  Together we basted the quilt, quilted it with straight-ish lines (which was a wee bit tricky due to the slippery fine fabric) and bound it.    Dad pottered around us saying things like " I remember dear, you had a skirt in that!".  It got us talking about the past, when Mum and Dad were young and about when I was growing up.  Funny how a bunch of old fabric can make that happen.

We finished the day before Mum and Dad left to go back to the UK and  it now sits cheerily on our bed  - a quilt that is full of stories and memories, nearly 50 years in the making.

Just looking at it makes me happy. And LittleFB likes to match up the squares too.