Sunday 23 March 2014

Meeting up with sewing buddy in Birmingham

Hi Guys

I apologies for the lack of posts, but the new house is all consuming with various jobs to do, and life seems to be getting in the way of any real sewing projects.

I have done some utility sewing, namely shortening some ready-made curtains and then using the excess fabric to cover a wooden pelmet,then  my headboard and lastly the dressing table stool. I have two small squares of fabric left, and I am going to try and incorporate the fabric into a couple of cushions to go on the bed.

The curtains look fine (probably not the exact fabric choice I would have made if I sewed them myself), but at least we don't have the sunshine illuminating the bedroom at 5:30 am in the morning.  Finishing the curtains has resulted in  me now wanting to paint the bedroom so I don't have green walls with blue curtains.  Gosh there is another job on the to-do list lol.

Friday afternoon I hit to motorway to make my way up to Birmingham to meet up with my good friend Vivien.  Originally we were going to go to the Create, stitch and craft show, but decided to see what the Birmingham rag market had to offer instead.

The rag market was around 15-20 minutes walk from the car park, so we set off early and took our hearty breakfast of egg and bacon sandwich with a cup of hot tea, from one of the food vendors in the actual market and sat at the outdoor table and chairs at the edge of the market watching all the vendors setting up their stalls.

Regular readers of my blog will know I love a bargain - I think I get a bigger thrill finding excellent fabric at a bargain price, rather than going to a really posh shop and paying a premium because of the ambiance and costly overheads, and Birmingham's rag market will provide that for you.

Of course I don't need any more fabric, but a £2 for 1.5 mtrs of fabric, or 50p a mtr, or £1 a mtr how can you resist.

After the first 1.5 hours I was armed with 4 bags of fabric and my hands were getting sore from the thin plastic bags and I found myself getting shopping trolley envy..................No they are not trendy, they are not cool, but boy are they practical and made lugging those heavy bags back to the car a piece of cake.

So let me end on saying thanks to Viv who was an excellent guide and it was lovely catching up on our thoughts on the Sewing Bee, who is sewing what on what forum together with gardening, and baking tips.

So what is every sewing enthusiast's biggest sewing aid????  A fabulous floral shopping trolly - what a couple of babes eh??????

A week on Monday I am flying out to The Netherlands and will meet up with the lovely Sigrid.  We haven't seen each other for ages, so I am sure we will have lots to chat about too.

Catch you all later.