Very Berry Handmade

by veryberryhandmade | May 20, 2012

Weekly Fabric News

Focus on Dragonfly Fabrics

I’m adding a new shop to the Big List today – a big welcome to Dragonfly fabrics.

As you can see from the logo, dressmaking fabrics are the main focus, so this is a great place to go for jersey, linen and corduroy as well as cottons. You can browse by season (great if you are looking for dressmaking fabrics), by colour, by type of fabric (always useful) and by designer. The main brands stocked at the moment are Hilco, Westfalenstoffe, Tilda and there are also lots of beautiful bio-linens, amongst all the other goodies. Another nice touch is that you can order fabric samples before you buy. Payment is via Paypal (you don’t need a Paypal account to use this) and the standard price for First Class delivery is £3. They have a brand new blog and a Facebo ok page too.

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Other News

After a long wait, Lu Summer’s Summersville has arrived almost everywhere (M is for Make, Seamstar, Sew Me Happy, Celtic Fusion Fabrics, Eclectic Maker, Ray Stitch amongst others), so I guess it’s just a question of going to your favourite shop to stock up on it, it’s bound to by flying off the shelves. But, if you CAN wait, I hear that Seamstar are going to be having a Summersville giveaway really soon – it make sense to sign up for their newsletter so you don’t miss it.

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The M is for Make limited edition bundle is looking good, as ever. There’s 10% off this collection sweet squirrely fabrics and it’s available until 8am on Wednesday 23rd May. Limited edition bundle from M is for Make

M is for Make is also now stocking a selection of Kona solids.

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Over at Quilt Me Happy there’s a rather wonderful 20% off Parson Gray’s Curious Nature. Look at all the lovely possibilities:

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Sorry it’s so short today! It’s been a long day and I have to go and sort the wreckage in the wreckage in the kitchen before I can have my supper… And watch the final parts of The Bridge of course. Enjoy your Sunday evening!

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Filed under fabric, fabric news

Tagged as dragonfly fabrics, parson gray, summersville

by veryberryhandmade | May 19, 2012

I don’t call this making do..

I mentioned before that I’m making some props for a friend of mine who is stage managing a production of a show called Ordinary Days, and I’ve been taking the opportunity to use up some of my stash of thrifted fabrics. I’ve had such an enjoyable couple of days putting together pouches out of upcycled fabrics (spruced up with a bit of new) – it’s been really nice to have the opportunity to play around with ideas and patterns I haven’t used before.

My brief is to create a set of pouches and purses for the show’s main character, intriguingly, one of the pouches is for a nutmeg grater and fresh nutmeg. Fortunately I already had a mini-grater to use for my measurements! I had an inspiration that Michelle’s cute dumpling pouch pattern would be ideal for this, and here’s the result.

The purple fabric is from a set of cotton napkins I found in a local charity shop, and the snazzy accent fabric is, of course, the gorgeous Bloom from Ruby Star Spring.

The other pouch was considerably less fiddly to make, although making bias binding always takes a little patience!

For this one I’ve used some grey corduroy from an old pair of trousers for the main outer fabric and some red linen for the lining. The floral binding is made with some Laura Ashley fabric that my mum and I bought in a remnant sale in 1988. I remember the date because we also bought some fabric to make the dress for my school leaving dance! 24 years definitely makes it vintage I would say (which makes me ancient!). I think the outside is a little bit plain, so I’m wondering about adding some red linen flowers to jazz it up a bit. Not too much though because I think the heroine of the show is feisty rather than floral..

It feels brilliant to be led by the fabrics that I have available to me rather than buying the fabric specifically for the project. I really would like to make room for a bit more of this in my sewing.

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Nearly forgot! The winner of the Make Do and Mend book is:

Kerry left comment number 45, so well done to her – Kerry, I will be in touch for your address.

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Hope you are all having a great weekend. I am off to watch the second half of the Champion’s League final, enjoy a beer and crack on with some crochet. I’ll be back tomorrow with lots of lovely fabric news.

6 Comments

Filed under craft, fabric, sewing, vintage fabric

Tagged as giveaway winner, pouches, upcycling

by veryberryhandmade | May 16, 2012

Make Do and Mend: Review and giveaway

Anyone else obsessively save old clothes because ‘that fabric might come in handy’? I have an entire cupboard full of jeans, cords, cotton shirts and skirts that aren’t really fit for the charity shop, but I can’t bear to throw away because it just seems a terrible waste of good fabric, zips, buttons, scraps…

If you’re guilty of this kind of stashing (I am refusing to call it hoarding in case Channel 4 come round and make a documentary about me), then Make Do and Mend by Rebecca Peacock and Sam Tickner is just the thing for you. The book is aimed at people who are newish to the Make Do and Mend philosophy and who might have to blow the dust off their sewing machine before they get started, so there’s lots of really useful sewing basics in here, as well as lots of ideas and techniques for actually mending clothes in the first place. These are such fantastic skills to have, and such a shame that people don’t learn this kind of thing any more. It’s great to learn the basics of darning, for example.

Where the book really comes into its own is with ideas of what do do with stuff that’s just too far gone to repair. There are bags made out of T-shirts, scarves made out of blouses and T-shirts, skirts made out of old jeans, jewellery out of T-shirts and buttons. There’s also lots of ideas for making household bits and bobs like coasters, cushions, blinds, curtains, laundry bags out of remnants and thrifted fabrics.

The instructions are good and very clear, although I really miss the presence of colour photographs to illustrate the projects, but that’s a little quibble, and it feels harsh to moan about it, especially when it’s a book so full of good ideas. It’s just that I’m just the sort of girl who needs a bit of colourful styling to get inspired! A big plus point, on the other hand, is the lovely list of resources, fabric websites and good blogs at the back of the book. Just the sort of info I like!

If you’d like a copy of this book, I have one to give away. Just leave a comment on this post before midnight on Friday 18 May telling me the last thing you mended… The last thing I mended was Danny’s homemade Kikwi toy - the nagging of small children is very persistent!

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Funnily enough, I have been delving into my stockpile of thrifted fabrics this week, because I’ve been asked to make some props for a musical that a friend of mine is stage managing, and they want to keep the costs down. It struck me that a good way to make the recycled stuff look good was to pair it with some smaller scraps of new stuff. Here’s the first pouch I’ve made:

I’ve used some recycled denim and some polkadot cotton from a Top Shop dress (which sadly you can’t see!), snazzed up with this fab floral from Melody Miller’s Ruby Star Shining collection. It was great to make a dent (no matter how tiny) on the huge pile of ‘just in case’ fabrics… Hopefully there’ll be more to come, otherwise we’ll have to give up even more of our cupboard space….

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Speaking of fabric hoarding… there’s some more Liberty charm packs available in my shop right this minute, if there’s a little space in your stash for them. They’re only small..!

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Filed under books, fabric, patchwork, reviews, sewing

Tagged as book review, Make Do and Mend, Melody Miller

by veryberryhandmade | May 15, 2012

The Fabric Marketplace Giveaway Winners

I hope you’ve all had a good look round at The Fabric Marketplace, and even done a little selling and buying yourselves. Emma wants to pass on a huge thank you to all of you who took the time to complete the survey so thoughtfully.

So, the winners:

Prize number 1, the fabulous bundle goes to Helen – congratulations to you!

Prize number 2, the lovely patchwork book goes to Janet of Caribou Crossing Chronicles.

And finally, prize number 3, the voucher for The Fabric Marketplace, goes to Ann.

Well done everyone! I am about to email you right now, so keep an eye out for my message.

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And, just to let you know, especially for people who were after 5″ Liberty squares, I will have more coming to my Fabric Marketplace store later on this evening (definitely by 9pm!).

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Filed under fabric, fabric news, giveaway

by veryberryhandmade | May 13, 2012

Weekly fabric news

Seamstar have 10% off all printed fabrics with the code 10%OffPrints - this promotion will end tomorrow (14 May). And if you are planning to by some of Lu Summer’s new collection for Moda, Summersville, then you will be glad to know that Seamstar are going to have the complete collection, including the coordinating plains and laminates.

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The Sewing Boutique is introducing a new weekly special offer called Favourite Fabric Friday. Each week they will be announcing a favourite fabric which will have 20% off for an entire week. This week’s fabric is this very cute cupcake print.

Photo © The Sewing Boutique

The best way to keep up with these weekly offers is probably to follow them on Facebook.

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The Quilt Room are offering free postage for this weekend only. Time to stock up on lots of fancy rulers, or maybe one of their funky 5″ strip rolls. Also, if you are lucky enough to be going to the Malvern Quilt show next weekend, you can download a voucher to get 10% off at The Quilt Room stand.

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The Croft Mill have looked out of the window and realised that we don’t need beautiful light cottons and voiles for a warm spring and summer, we need PVC coated ripstop prints like this funky number:

Beautiful ripstop fabric from Croft Mill

Photo © The Croft Mill

How cool are these?! I just wish we didn’t need them! The Croft Mill are also now on Facebook, so pop round and follow them if you want to keep up with their new arrivals.

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Over at the Celtic Fusion Fabrics blog, Gwen is holding a wonderful charity raffle. Her OH is doing a huge bike ride (all the way to Brussels!) to raise money for a brilliant charity called Brainwave which helps children with developmental delays of different kinds. The raffle prize is this amazing bundle of fabrics:

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Simply Solids have a special offer on charm packs, at just £7.50. With free postage this is an absolute bargain! But you need to move quickly because there isn’t much left!

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The M is for Make limited edition bundle this week is another total winner:

This lovely bundle of 8 FQs is available until 8am on Wed 16 May (unless it sells out before then) at 10% off the usual price.

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At Backstitch, Alice has been putting some gorgeous bundles together too – she’s another shop owner with a way with fabric combinations (so useful!). There are seven new bundles available (you can see them here on the Backstitch blog) – I am finding it hard to choose my favourite, but I think it might be this one:

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That’s it from me this evening – hope you enjoyed all those goodies . Time for a G&T, my supper and catching up with The Bridge (anyone else watching this crazy Scandi-drama?!). I wont be blogging properly for the next couple of days (other than to announce the winner of The Fabric Marketplace Giveaway on Tuesday – you still have time to enter!), because I really want to make time to have a proper visit to other people’s blogs. So, see you Wednesday!

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Liberty, linen, are you bored yet?

I find my flighty thoughts are always running away, thinking about what I’m going to make next (which is, more often than not, something entirely different from what I am supposed to be making next..). At the moment, given any opportunity, they dash off to the lovely world of nubbly texture and florals that is linen plus Liberty. It seems nothing else will do! I am currently planning a Very Important mini-quilt which has been entirely in my head up until now, but I really wanted to make a few blocks, to see if I what I have in my head will work in reality. So I gave myself a bit of time off money-making sewing to have a play.

So here’s my first block – based on a flower block from my Japanese book in French (yes I wanted it that much!) - The Daily Quilt. It worked out so nicely I decided I couldn’t resist making it up into a pincushion – not what I meant to do at all, but you have to follow your impulses sometimes:

I interfaced the Liberty with light iron-on interfacing because I have it in my head that it really needs to be a similar weight to the linen. I wonder if my quilting friends know whether this is a good thing to do, or is it technically frowned upon? I hand-pieced the blocks, using the technique I have learned from Japanese books by Yoko Saito and Suzuko Koseki – it’s a method I find very relaxing, but it is slow, so I am wondering about trying to make a block like this with my machine. The pieces are really tiny though, and I’m not sure about those tight angles. Wish me luck!

Hope you have lovely weekend plans, whether you’re sewing, playing, crocheting, baking, gardening, relaxing… enjoy it!

6 Comments

Filed under fabric, patchwork, quilting, sewing

Tagged as Liberty of London, linen, pincushion, playing

by veryberryhandmade | May 10, 2012

Oooh, lovely fabrics!

I feel like I have spent most of the day cooing over fabrics… In the post this morning I got some beautiful new Liberty fabric to add to my growing collection. It’s the the lovely Wiltshire, which is definitely one of my favourites. I also got an instalment of fabrics from The Eternal Maker’s Japanese Swatch Club. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that I’m a real enthusiast for the work of Japanese quilter and designer Yoko Saito, so I was thrilled to receive swatches from her 2011 Etoffe Imprevue collection for Lecien (not great pics sadly, but you get the idea). Can’t wait for the yardage to appear at The Eternal Maker – it’s really lovely, I have a plan to make cushions for our living room with these. Membership of the Swatch Club was my prize for winning the Pings and Needles Scrap Bag Challenge last year, with my patchwork baby bootie design. So it’s a a pleasing coincidence that the only picture (of mine) that I have to share with you today is a pair of completed booties…

I’ve actually made 2 identical pairs of these… I sew the soles on by hand (you can do it by machine but it brings me out in a cold sweat), and good grief did my fingers hurt afterwards. I need more thimbles, or some kind of protective gauntlets (I’m joking I think, but I bet you can buy them..).

My final attack of fabric lust broke out when the latest True Up blog post arrived in my inbox…. with previews of some lovely new collections due later this year from Moda – I’m excited about the look of a new midcentury modern collection from Jenn Ski, but as it’s not out until September, I guess I will have to wait a while! There’s also some smashing new Christmas (!) fabrics, including some ADORABLE prints by Aneela Hoey. And as I scrolled down the page I caught site of the gorgeousness of Heather Ross’s new collection for Kokka, called Nursery Versery (argh, too too cute – sweet little mice!).

And THEN I thought I’d just go and have a look at Sew Mama Sew (anyone else planning to do the May Giveaway?) and spotted post about Denyse Schmidt’s new collection called Chicopee, isn’t it lovely?