December...ing

A little earlier in the month this time but I thought I'd make an early start...

Making a winter dress, I bought this fabric a few months ago when I visited my local fabric shop with a friend.  I have only just made the dress as I wanted to save it for Christmas,  I know that when I make something new I always want to wear it straight away so I have saved this for the season.
The fabric is cosmo, it is Japanese and feels like a linen but I am not certain of that.  It is a good weight.

It is now fully complete but I do not have a daylight picture or one of me in it yet I will try to get one over the coming week. I only just had enough fabric so I used binding for the neck and just squeezed enough fabric for strips for the arm holes.   The lining is a combination of black and white lining, I stitched two pieces together to make a piece big enough as I didn't have enough of either colour.
It has a side zip, front and back darts and a couple of small shaping darts at the neckline to stop any gaping.

Here it is when I cut it out, just a few small pieces of fabric left, I

used another shift dress I made previously from my own pattern as a guide to cut around. Most of the shaping and fitting was done on the mannequin with a few tweaks when trying on.

Listening to some wonderful new music on youtube, I found this gorgeous song the other day after hearing it on UCB radio You came anyway by Ashton Lane it is a Christmas song but a little different  but if you listen to it you will hear the story.  Also Matt Kearney The Air I Breathe is another good one.

Designing more bags, I made this one yesterday and added some applique leaves, the coloured cottons are from a little solids sample pack I received with some fabric a while ago they are only about 5cm square but I have found this little use for them.

Paper crafting a card for a friend, I have not made any cards for a while but I enjoyed making this one. They can be time consuming if you make all the parts yourself and then if people just discard them after so you have to weigh up how much you enjoy the process I suppose.  The thing is with other crafts in fabric or yarn you know your efforts will last for more than a coupe of days.

I found a use for old magazines here as the balloons are fabric image pictures cut up.

Thrifting books from the charity shops, a couple for me and a few for friends. I am collecting the original Jane Austin books for myself, I gave up on the Austin project as I was finding they do not do the originals justice.  I picked up The Miniaturist  as I loved it when I borrowed it from the library.  We picked up a couple last week too when we visited but have not got any images of those to hand. I try to find the ones in the best condition.  Here are todays finds...

Eating probably too much in the way of starch, I am finding I need pasta and potatoes and gravy.  Really filling stuff at the moment, it must be the cold weather.  Today I found these gluten free, vegan friendly mince pies in Holland and Barrett.

 I have tried one and they are quite nice if a little crumbly as all gluten free food generally is.

Looking at sewing magazines on youtube, yes I know this sounds a little strange but the idea was that I wanted to get a feel for a few different magazines before subscribing to one.  I was  interested in Burda and Knipmode.  I have tried in the past to get in touch with Knipmode but they never responded to my email.  I found that Saturday Night Stitch on youtube has done browse throughs on both magazines throughout the year so you can get a  feel for them that way.   This was really useful as I  now know that I do not want to subscribe to either as from what I can see a lot of the pattern styles are repeated with very little changes.  What I like is the ideas, so I will use these as a reference point then make the patterns myself just using the images for inspiration.  Go and have a look it is quite fun to look through the magazines and hear the opinions and preferences of others.

Well that is all for today, have a good week.