Charity Shop Treasure

I found myself with a little free time on Saturday morning and decided to indulge in a little saunter round some of the local charity shops (Op shops, Thrift stores, Goodwill). I was after some light reading for my upcoming holiday and of course I am always on the look out for a bargain!

I was happy to find these two vintage Agatha Christie novels, a little heavy for my holidays but I do enjoy her works and have been reading them on and off since I was a teenager. In the past 6 months I have been seeking out her books whenever I pop into a charity shop, they are, however, becoming rather thin on the ground so it is always a bit of a thrill to find one.  I really enjoy the age and life shown on the books from the fading on the covers to the pencilled notes by one of the previous owners.

My holiday reading has been provided thanks to another Agatha, Agatha Raisin written by M C Beaton. The character is a PR guru who retires to a sleepy Cotswold village and ends up turning detective, it is written with a lovely lighthearted touch.  I enjoyed the Sky TV's version of a "The Quiche of Death" that was shown a couple of Christmases ago and am really looking forward to the new series which starts 7th June.  We visited the Castle Combe village last year and they were in the process of filming there so I have been eagerly waiting for it to be shown.  Without giving anything away I can reveal that at least one episode will feature a garden centre and a gnome!

A small haul for my sewing and vintage haberdashery collection. A nice piece of what appears to be a wool based fabric that I think will be big enough to make a straight skirt from, however, I think I may need to venture into the unknown territory of lining a garment, but as the fabric was only £2.95 it gives me the confidence to have a go without worrying about cost.

I picked up the little card of lace with a thought towards possibly using it to wrap a jam jar and pop in a tealight, if you are a regular reader of this blog you will know that I love decorating jam jars! or that I could thread a thin ribbon through the holes and use it as a trim on something.  I did not however, look at the front of it untl I had it at home and realised that I had brought a small piece of social history.  It is a sample card from a Nottingham based lace company, the pattern is trademarked in 1968 and the sample is date stamped to 1982.  The Birkin family were one of the great lace making families of Nottingham, sadly this industry as with many in the area is no longer active and the Guy Birkin company no longer exists.

The final purchase of the day was this pack of stencils, I thought they could be used on one of my many blackboard paint projects,  I hadn't realised there were quite so many until I it home and unpacked it, not bad for a pound,

I love buying in charity shops, it keeps things out of landfill and gives them another life, it raises funds for the charity and you never know exactly what you will find.

I seek out Agatha Christie books, what do you look for when you visit charity shops?

Sew-jo inspiration

My sewing mo-jo has taken a vacation and it feels like it is time to get it back to work so I have dressed my newly painted  mantle piece with a spot of vintage sewing haberdashery to fire up my Sew-jo

Vintage Sylko boxes

Vintage sewing pattern

The Vulcan children's sewing machine

Ladybird book of sewing

Vintage haberdashery

Sew-jo inspiration

 The framed vintage sewing patterns were from this January post Free make 2 I don't know if my sew-jo has returned but I certainly need to organise my vintage haberdashery collection and share a few more pis and pieces on here.

How is your sew-jo? have you got any projects on the go or do you need a bit of sewing inspiration?

... paper play with autumn leaves

The weather here has taken a distinctly autumnal turn, cardigans have been in daily use and the big debate about is it cold enough to put the heating on has begun ( we have resisted so far).  My Pinterest feed has been popping up with images showing that I am not the only one to have noticed the change in the season and my Leaf me alone board has been getting regular pins fed into it.

Autumnal dispaly

I enjoyed my  adventures with recycled paper play and still have plenty of pages of the book left along with some brown paper that had been on a parcel delivered earlier in the week so I decided it was time for a new mobile.

paper leaf mobile

I toyed with creating different textures by screwing the paper up or by folding it in half to give it a sharp line.  The leaf shapes are a combination of free hand cutting and drawing round some small cookie cutters that I had, it has resulted in a variety of shapes and textures that I am very happy with.  I love the shadows that are cast, it gives the whole thing another dimension.

Brown paper leaves

Once the mobile was up I had to carry on and dress the rest of the mantle, my vintage Sylvac pottery is perfect for an Autumnal display.

Sylvac Squirrel

Sylvac mouse

Sylvac deer

I jumped on the idea of using some of my vintage button cards to complete the display, this is in the room where I do my sewing so I can look up and  see these little lovelies while I am working. It seemed to be lacking a little punch of colour and I hit on the idea of using some of my sewing threads which seem to do the trick.

The old mobile has now been consigned to the log burner to have one final useful role in helping to start the fire.  Who says recycling can't be fun.

How are you marking the change in the season or are you hanging on to Summer a little longer?

... Simplicity 2373

With my dress project completed I had time to spare in my sewing class to start something new.  I have decided on Simplicity 2373.  It offers a choice of sundress, a camisole top, short sleeved jacket and wide legged trousers.  I am interested in making the sundress for my holidays but wanted to be sure that I could get a good fit and that the straps would cover my bra so I decided to make the camisole top to test the pattern as the only difference is the length of the body.

I had brought this cotton fabric from myfabricplace last year with the intention of using for wearable test pieces, it cost about £2 or £3 per metre so I am not too concerned if it doesn't end up as something I wear.  There is a lot of trim on this pattern which I felt was a bit too fussy for me so my plan is to use some vintage ric-rac (approx 1960's)  that I had in my vintage haberdashery collection.


I am going to run a line at the top and the bottom of the top band and two or three rows towards the bottom where the lace is shown on the illustrations.  I love this colour combo and you can see how well this is going to look when it is complete.

As class time is limited and I am fairly confident at cutting out I chose to do this at home beforehand which is just as well as finishing the dress took longer than I had thought.  However, I did have enough time to make a start, but all my good preparations were in vain when I took everything out of my bag and found that the page containing the first instructions was missing!  Disaster was averted by our wonderful tutor Lisa who is very experienced and just looked at the pattern pieces and said start attaching the bodice top pieces together.


When I got home from class the first thing I did was check in the dining room where I had done my cutting out but I just couldn't see the instructions anywhere.  I finally found them hooked over the horizontal bar of the chair leg, no wonder I hadn't spotted them.




It seems that I am bang on trend with my ric-rac trimming as I spotted these lovelies on the Cath Kidston website.

What do you think of the ric-rac trend?  Are you planning to use it on anything you are making?  Have you ever lost your pattern instructions?

...vintage thread

I must confess to being something of a vintage haberdashery collector, some (my family) might say obsessive hoarder! When I started buying a few essentials to get me started in my sewing I found myself drawn to the vintage items, this is partly due to childhood memories and therefore familiarity and also my love of good utilitarian items.  I am fascinated by theses every day household items that have been kept in drawers and sewing boxes just in case they came in useful.

 This quote from William Morris kind of sums up how I feel about my collection, all are useful by the nature of what they do and yet they have a beauty of their own,


 “If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” 
― William Morris

My latest acquisitions have been these lovely sewing threads, the small wooden bobbins are adorable and brought a smile to my face. We live in an era where we are reducing product sizes but we can see here that the size has increased, I wonder how many women just had to have the new sized bobbins. They still hold 100 yards of thread, although I doubt if anyone ever measured to see if they got their full quota.

I am trying to find a way of dating the different designs, I think that Sylko ceased trading around the early 1980's but I am happy to be corrected on that, so that would make everything at least 30 years old.  In the top picture can you spot the one that has a price ticket on from Woolworth's,  it says decimal on so I think that was probably from around the early 1970's when decimal currency was introduced to the UK, and the 1/2 p was done away with in 1984 so it can't be any later than that.  I think I will put on my Miss Marple disguise and do some further investigations.

Does anyone else have a love of vintage haberdashery or am I the only one?  Have you inherited a great stash of sewing goodies? If you have any vintage haberdashery that you no longer want please let me know, I could probably find it a good home.  If you have found away of dating vintage sewing threads please share.

...learning to sew

I made a post a couple of weeks ago describing some of my sewing fears (Saturday morning sewing), and I have decided to do something about it.

Sewing is supposed to be something I enjoy and when it gets to the point where it is not enjoyable and I was beginning to question why I was doing it I took a step back and had a think.  I decided that I was being a bit hard on myself and that because there is so much free information and self help videos on the internet that I can learn all I need to know and while this method has been very helpful it has not given me all the answers I am looking for, so I have signed up for a 6 week sewing class.

We will be using the new look 6176 pattern

http://www.simplicitynewlook.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=6176#.VRfahvnF-QA



The course sets out to

• show how to measure yourself to get a correctly fitting garment

• how to interpret all the pattern markings

• cutting out and tacking your garment in preparation for sewing

• techniques for darts, seams, hems, buttonholes and zips

This seems to tick off a lot of things that I have been struggling with and that in turn should help with building my confidence.

I am also looking forward to the camaraderie and inclusion that usually comes in this type of learning environment. 

Have you made new Look 6176? Do you have any top tips?