A few ideas.

I had the pleasure to meet some wonderful ladies that sew via Rachel's Melbourne meet up and the other Rachel Social Sewing days. While I was at the last Social Sewing day, the matter of floral frocks and high tea event came up. I believe this was Melanie of Poppykettle's idea that she had been thinking of for sometime. I'm very keen to do these sorts of activities with like minded people, as I'm sure you are too.

I was hoping to see if there would be any interest in an event cross between Julia Bobbin's Mad Men Challenge and Oona's Promaballoona that would involve a night of fancy frocks, fun, cocktails and maybe a meal? I'm happy to organise this for next year as the silly season is almost upon us, if there is any interest of course. Please let me know if your interested, and any interstate-rs we could always arrange dates around you!

Also I'd like to organise a fabric shopping trip day. My sewing teacher has organised a few and I've been to two so far, they are very interesting days, but exhausting. Again, let me know who's interested, and will schedule it for 2013.

Spring time

Blink and September is gone, spring is finally here in Victoria and whilst we have some perfectly lovely weather we have had some horrible days like last Friday.

For the most part, I have taken advantage of every weekend to get my front garden and some parts of house in order.

The day after the meet up, we had a working bee in our yard. We didn't think we would get much done and boy were we wrong! Since then I have been using every sunny day of the weekend to my advantage, and I have to say the front yard is coming along nicely.

During September, I have planted camellia, hydrangeas, 7 David Austin, fox gloves, plenty of lavender, daisy and 12 other plants that I have no recollection of their names, I would like a cottage garden/ country look to our front yard.
The main colour  of the front garden is Apricot, all the roses are hues of Apricot, I've used existing shades of purple, white with touches of blue and red, I'll admit I'm not a fan of red but I refuse to rip out mature plants based on colour.

We have progress so much that we are now at the stage of ripping up the old brick/pebble path to lay new bricks, my father in law knew we were after old red's for paving and found just under 400 red bricks for $40 off eBay and he picked them up for us. What a good man.

We also plan to add to our steps up to the veranda, currently the steps are only good for one person to go up or down and don't have rails, so we plan to double the width and add rails on at least one side.
Ben is very keen on putting balustrades around the veranda and I couldn't think of anything worse! He has some time off in November to do house stuff, so I might come home one day to find balustrades, I have threatened divorce over the issue but he still resisting!

So that means little is going on, on the sewing front. On Saturday I went to the sewing social, I cut out Vogue 1247, I made a mistake by cutting my usual size rather than going down two sizes as recommended, so I'm hoping a bit of altering will work on this top. I'm making a muslin out of rayon from spotlight before I cut into my nice fabric, so if its a wadder, I don't mind.

It was a really nice day to sit and chat at the sewing social, I went for the chatting rather than the sewing, I'm definitely going again! It was a great idea of Rachel's, so well done on organising it Rachel!

I'm going to organise a give away soon, I still have more items that I don't need, and since I'm suppose to be decluttering our house, its a good excuse to be generous to others, and it allows for more room for fabric!!

Thanks for reading,

Kat

Swimmer, choice ahoy!

I've signed up for a swim wear class in November with the CAE.

I'm really looking forward to it, as we are renting a beach house with my sister and brother in law over New Years, I plan to swim as much as possible, hence the need for new swimmer.

I've always wanted to make some bathers as I find the fit on my lower half so hard, last time we had a beach holiday, I planned on spending big bucks on good quality swimmers, I tried 4 different shops, all different types of  bathers but nothing made me feel comfortable, which to me is more important than looking good.

As I want to use my class time wisely, I'm thinking about making a one piece, as the fitting might be easier? I'm very drawn to the Mrs Depew pattern (last image), as I think the grading won't be so much of an issue on my pear shaped figure. The one thing I'm wary about is I haven't seen any made up, there are thousands of sewing blogs out there and if no one has made one and blogged it, well in my experience its not good thing.

I have the first three patterns at home, but I'm willing to go another direction if I can find the right pattern.

Do you have any suggestions of good swim wear patterns with a vintage feel? Any advice or tips, would be greatly appreciated.

Kat