Do I miss travelling abroad....not at all

Last August DH and I together with our daughter, son in law and two very excited grandsons, took a cottage in Wales for a week. We had all sorts of plans to explore this beautiful place (for me reliving holidays from my teens) and guess what! The sun came out and sea and sand won over castles and water falls and so we had to file away our 'to do' list for another time.

Well that other time came a couple of months ago. Renting a converted barn near to Bala, we set off with our sister and brother in law and apart from choosing the worst day of our week to do Snowdon, we had an amazing time.

It doesn't matter how many times I visit this beautiful area there is always something to take your breath away.

We managed to fit in so much we needed another holiday to recover, but it was all worth it.

We visited beautiful Chirk Castle, Erdigg House,

 spent a lovely day exploring Bodnant gardens again and meandered through the lanes at Portmeirion,

stunned to realise that it is 50 years since 'the Prisoner' was filmed here. I can see it quite clearly and know that we watched it regularly, though I never did understand it!!

Our non event of walking up Snowdon was our only disappointment. We set off in a bit of drizzle, but by the time we got to the PYG track it was raining and blowing up a real storm.

 The road we drove up on had almost disappeared in the mist and you couldn't see more than a few feet up. Well we are wrinklies and do have a modicum of common sense and so apart from walking up the track a few feet to be able to say 'I was there', we abandoned our plans and headed for stunning Bettws y Coed instead. 

To say this was a fortunate detour is an understatement as the mornings rain had turned a lovely tourist attraction into a phenomenal sight. I can truly say I have not seen such a stunning waterfall ever! ( Never having seen the delights of either Niagara or the Victoria falls) Just awesome, and my pictures do it no justice at all.

We finished off our week with a trip on the Welsh Highland Railway, from Porthmadog to Caernafon and back. It was a beautiful day and we got to spend a couple of hours stretching our legs before the return journey. Caernafon Castle was most impressive, but to be honest apart from that and the harbour the town was very much the same sad site as so many of our towns in the UK. Empty shops, crumbling buildings or cheap bargain basement retailers. Such a shame!

Altogether it was a brilliant break and although we got to see so much, we still want to return to explore other parts around Conwy and Anglesey, but before that we have a lovely holiday booked for later in the year in glorious Somerset......can't wait........

Enjoy the summer break, wherever you are.

TTFN

Jenny xx

Bonnie Scotland

A few weeks ago I took a little break from sewing and hopped on the train to Bonnie Scotland. To Fife in fact to visit my sister for one of our biannual get togethers.
It's a bit  of a knit and natter session, a reading marathon and on my part a week of complete relaxation and charging my batteries.

I love the train journey there (and back) and never tire of the changing scenery as we wend our way north. My sister has lived just outside Edinburgh for about 6 years now, so my journey only takes about four and a half hours. Before this she lived in Laurencekirk and the journey took all day so that I always arrived in the dark!
The  east coast from about Newcastle onwards is stunning. Glimpses of Alnwick and beautiful Berwick upon Tweed, both of which I have explored on past holidays tempt you to explore further.

This journey was in beautiful sunshine, for us here in Lincolnshire the first really warm weekend of the year and the sun glinting on the water by the coast was magical.
My only regret nowadays is that we are tied to public transport as my sister has given up driving. Oh we don't let this stop us altogether and I must say the bus and train services in Scotland are pretty good. It just means that we no longer get to those remote fishing villages which pepper the east coat.
We managed a visit to Dumfermline, and ventured to Sterling by train. We found we could go from Cowdenbeath which is only manned part time and when we went to enquire about tickets the office had just closed. However there was a public information machine which we decided to try, and thank goodness we did! Within seconds of pressing the button for assistance we had all the information we needed delivered by a charming man ( yes an actual live person) with no problem at all. Well done Scotrail!!
On my final day we were kindly given a lift into Queensferry,

... a pretty little town on the banks of the Clyde. It was lovely to walk the full length and take in the sight of the now, 3 bridges. The rail bridge, the original road bridge and the almost finished new road bridge which I have watched taking shape over my last few visits. A stunning piece of engineering. I wasn't able to get a good shot of all three bridges together, but at least I got them individually.

Our kindly neighbour who then picked us up to return us home had to make a slight detour to pop some shopping in to his mum. You can imagine how my jaw dropped when he drove into her driveway!!

Hopetoun House

She doesn't actually live in the 'big' house but in what must have been the dower house I assume. Which in its own right was a lovely building but it must have been quite a shock for her friends the first time they came for tea, as the only access is down the main drive. She hasn't been here for long and her garden is currently under construction, but the views from it are the stunning parkland and woods of the estate which are now managed by the Hopetoun House preservation Trust
A super surprise ending to my lovely holiday. I didn't get to see in the house as it wasn't open until the week after my visit, but I might have to delay my holiday another year so that I can get to see more.

Its always sad when a holiday draws to a close, but at least I can now catch a train straight through on the way back.

And though its nice to go travelling its oh so nice to come home! (Sorry Frank) just had to do it.

Well another busy week ahead for me getting ready for yet another trip to Wales. This time with our brother and sister in law, hoping to do all the things we didn't manage on our holiday with the young things last year. I'm determined to walk up Snowdon at least and plenty more walking too.
The only problem is the packing. Beautiful as it Wales' weather is not exactly predictable.  I think I might need a slightly bigger case this time!!

Have a lovely week whatever you are planning

TTFN

Jenny xx

Marathon

No I'm not back running, but my dressmaking is taking on marathon proportions and my posts even more so.......

I think I am becoming obsessed! Okay those that know me know I am always obsessed with something, but at the moment it is finding the perfect fitted dress pattern.

So I am whispering this as I know I will change my mind again, but I think I have just about constructed my perfect dress bodice sloper. I say dress, but of course I can now use this for fitting tops and blouses too, so I am a pretty happy bunny. Which is just as well as I have purchased so much fabric in the last couple of months that I could almost open a dress shop by the time I get it all made up!!

I printed off the customised pattern I purchased from Bootstrap Fashions and per their instructions still made a toile to check the fit. It was almost perfect, just needed a bit of tweeking at the armhole to remove the tiniest bit of excess fabric there and voila.....

It's really not that easy taking photos of yourself without looking a right dork!

Anyway, bad piccie or not this is the first attempt. The only issue I have is that I should have shortened the waist to bust dart. Other than that I think it's okay and I like the fuller skirt for a change. The fabric is a stretch denim printed with tiny flower sprigs I bought for another project and It's made up  really well. I have at least 2 metres left so DH could be in for a dress or skirt too!

The second is very tongue in cheek. Made from Makower fabric sporting caravans and campers, with mauve check linings to the patch pockets which I have folded over and fastened down with spotty buttons. I think it has a real vintage vibe and will be perfect when I am manning my Olive & Edna stall at the Vintage Flea Market at Lincoln Showground on Sunday 23rd April.
This time I think I have got the fit just right.

Finally I have made up another dress from an old Vogue pattern 2659 which I made about 2 sizes ago!! I love the original that I made in a dark brown firm stretch fabric, but I look like a litter of piglets stuffed in a bag in it now. This version is in Ponte Jersey. A bit thinner weight than my original, and I'm not over the moon with it but it's okay.

I shall have to try to source some fabric with a little more body to it, or lose some of mine lol!!

So that's my dress journey to date and as for the encore......

I told you I wouldn't go to the NEC and return empty handed..

The top is a duck egg blue with a sort of pumpkin design in orange, next down a taupe and white fabric with a London skyline sketch in  stripes across it. There were lots more I could have bought but as I had already made a couple of purchases on line before we went I was trying not to get too carried away. At least I didn't buy another machine this time!
The bottom two are the ones I  bought on line....,
The deep dusky pink is to recreate a 1940s dress I made when we first went to Twinwood for the Glen Miller Festival and the final piece is a grey/mauve with tiny balls of wool unravelling.

As you can see I have plenty to keep me out of mischief at the moment, but I'll be having a little break imminently as it's time for my spring trip to Bonnie Scotland. Shame it won;'t be warm enough to model any of my new creations, but at least we do seem to be getting a few more bright and sunny days now.

Well if you've got this far you're definitely gonna need a big drink, so enjoy and I think I might join you.

TTFN
Jenny xx

Ta...Daaa!.......almost!!

Well as I said after the denim dress I got down to remaking the muslin to address the issues I had with the  fit of the bodice. It wasn't much, or so I thought, but wanting to get it right I went back to the original pattern. This time I decided to do a few more actual body measurements to compare to the pattern before I made the muslin.

What I found straight away was that the distance from the apex to apex on the pattern was too wide for me, so I adjusted that and then found that despite the fact that I had already done the full bust adjustment  there was still too much fabric in the armhole. Fortunately there are lots of super tutorials on the web for dart manipulation and so following one of these I pinned out the excess by creating a dart in the armhole tapering it towards the bust. I then marked this on the muslin with my frictions pen and transferred this onto my pattern. Then by slashing and pivoting the dart I was able to move this excess fabric and incorporate it in the side bust dart. Of course I made more work for myself by starting with a pinafore pattern with much deeper armholes, but eventually I managed a much better if not perfect fit.

I really do love the dress now, but am going to search my stash of patterns to find a regular sleeveless bodice that I can really fine tune. I made a belt as well for this one and like it both ways

In the meantime I have purchased a custom fit pattern from bootstrap fashion, which allowed me to put in all my correct measurements including chest, under bust, full bust, hips etc. as well as indicating if I have a flat or rounded tummy, shoulder width and even the circumference of my arms! You can in fact  add even more measurements if you wish, but for now I just stuck with the areas that cause me most fitting problems ..
I've printed  it all out now,  assembled it and compared it to the final draft I made myself and it looking pretty promising.
I shall try it out (on a muslin again) over the weekend and report back,
I hope I haven't bored you too much, but I like to keep a record of my fitting journey to refer back to as I don't always remember what I did with each pattern I use. I should really keep a note book!

Happy sewing or whatever is your happy place

TTFN

Jenny xx

Denim Love

Although I'm not a designer jeans kind of girl, and in truth don't really understand what anyone can do to a pair of jeans to justify them going from a few pounds to several hundreds (especially when they rip out half the fabric you pay for), but I do like denim as a fabric.

Anyway when I stumbled across a lovely soft washed denim in of all places our local Boyes, I couldn't resist it.

I had just the pattern I wanted to use from Angela Kane. It's called a pinafore as it's cut to allow for a tee shirt underneath, though I intend to wear it as a simple dress.

In the unlined version on her site, she has suggested just turning the seam allowances in. That's not something I could live with and so I decided to go with a self made bias binding. I usually do the continuous binding method, but didn't have enough fabric to do that this time, so I just cut my regular 2 inch strips along the bias and joined them all separately.

I mostly use a Frixion pen when needing to mark things nowadays as with a mere touch of the iron it disappears.
I subscribed to the Angela Kane site a few years ago and have made several of the designs. All very classic, but one of the benefits of the site are the wonderfully detailed videos. Even as someone who has sewn for years I have found some very useful tips.
Of course that doesn't mean to say that everything always goes right. When like me you have to lower the bust apex as well as do a full bust adjustment, it can and did give me a bit of a headache. Add to that a sway back and you can understand why I sometimes still have to refer to my fitting bibles....

I made a muslin first, which I did fit, but as you can see from my mannequin,when I made up the denim I somehow managed to make the top too big! That must be a first.

Admittedly the dummy is a bit smaller than me at the top but it still required a bit of adjustment.

So here it is with the further adjustments made.

I'm quite pleased with the final result though not so much with the vertical bust darts. So I have already made a new muslin correcting that for my next version. I intend to make it again in the pretty green spotted cotton I showed here, though this time I will line it. (And there's a video for that too).
I just realised when I took this photo, that the skirt I was wearing was an Angela Kane too and even had the same pockets!

It's only a few weeks now to the Knitting and Stitching Show, and so it looks like I will have used all the fabric I bought at the last one I went to. I'd better start saving again then. I can't imagine I will go and not bring anything home.......

Have a good week

TTFN

Jenny xx

Baby it's cold outside...

So if you're anything like me you will be hunkering down in the warm, and what better place to do that than in your cosy kitchen rustling up homemade soup.

(of course if I was a true food writer my soup would have had its swirl of cream and snipped chives to dress it up, I was just anxious to take the picture and eat it!)

A few years ago I was lucky enough to be sent a book 'Hungry' by the lovely people at Innocent. I've made several of the recipes over time but the section about soup has made it my go to bible when I want some inspiration.
This sweet potato soup recipe comes from that book and it is deeelicious!! Just the job for warming you up on these cold days. And the added bonus is there's usually enough to pop some in the freezer for another day.
The leek and potato recipe comes from The British Cookbook  which I bought at Asda some time ago and is a particular favourite. Can't seem to find it anywhere but on eBay now!

I know this blog is known mainly for sewing but I do love cooking when I'm in the mood and my kitchen is somewhere I love to be. It is one of only two rooms in the house where I have allowed my vintage collecting to influence the decor, (the other being my sewing room of course)

So do you have any favorite warming recipes to share I would love to hear from you if you have. In the meantime I am off  to snuggle down on the settee with a good book and an equally warming whisky and soda.

TTFN

Jenny xx