I’ve been debating for several days whether I was going to blog about this project or not.  I have very strong feelings about sewing this dress, some positive feelings and some guilty feelings.  I’ve gone so far as to check with Stephanie first since I never want to illicit negativity on the web between us sewing bloggers.

You see… Stephanie of Star Spangled Heart blog had sewed up an incredible dress last week.

I feel head over heels with the print that I (guiltily) went and hunted down the same fabric to use on a dress of my very own.

The pattern that I’m using is Marian Martin 9227:

So, you can already see… it’s looking more and more similar to Ms. Stephanie’s dress.

The catch is that she spotted this fabric on a OTR dress and had went about recreating it for her very own.

The Bernie Dexter dress looks very similar to Gertie’s new dress pattern too.

Here’s the link to fabric.com if you want to get some of this awesome fabric for yourselves!  :)  Yarr… It’s on sale now too for $7.63 a yard.  I missed it by that much.

This could be a really perfect one to use too:

Michael Miller Ahoy Matey

So I’m having lots of guilty feelings about this dress since I feel like I’m basically ripping off another blogger, who was also putting her own spin on dress she saw in a shop. I’d feel much less guilty if I were recreating something I saw mass produced but I do know it all boils down to the same thing.

I know this post is really loaded with all sorts of ideas like consumerism, copyright, crafter’s free license to create, etc.

But the one thing that is ticking in the back of my mind is: I’m doing all of the work and fitting sewing this dress up for myself… so technically it’s my own dress, kinda…. right???

When I don’t think about all of these topics, I’m having a really fun time sewing up this dress for myself. I haven’t made a summer, sleeveless dress in well… forever really. Most of my dresses either have cap sleeves or short sleeves attached since I’m just shy like that. I’m not used to showing off my shoulders/arms. But this dress makes me feel flirty and ready for a summertime picnic.

Here’s my my bodice muslin:

And the back has a surprise:

Shirring!  This addition was all me.  :)

I got all of my pattern pieces cut out, but the only assembled piece I have so far is the bodice back:

The shirring took quite a long time.  I didn’t bother to match up the pattern since I thought it would be too busy anyhow.  But after looking at the back bodice, I wish I had matched up the patterns at the center back.

I was going for functionality over beauty since the center back will have a zipper and I wasn’t sure if I had to add/remove more fabric here for a better fit, after all is said and done.

Getting back on topic…

So having such happy feelings about this dress, I wanted to figure out a way to share it with you all in a transparent way.

The only thing that makes this all okay in my mind is the fact that I love Stephanie’s dress. I loved hers so much that I wanted one for my very own.  Mega compliment for Stephanie!  But there are peeps out there that would get really offended and territorial on their creations.  Heck… I would if someone recreated something I’d made (but not given me credit).

And I think that’s the thing!  Giving credit where credit is due is the key.  It’s one thing to be inspired by something and it’s another deal to 100% copy a design.  But in either situation, I think the key is noting the original to give credit where it’s due so that you’re not trying to take all the credit and pass it off as YOUR original creation.

Yay’s/Nay’s? Thoughts?

Note: I know this will illicit very strong thoughts in either case, but please be polite as you guys always are. :)

But here I am…. buying my own iron for my own (belated) birthday gift, and a lovely new ironing board cover to boot.

From *then* till now, ironing is no longer a chore but a necessary step that enables me to create lovely garments; it’s an essential tool for any sewer and it comes second (dare I say first) to my sewing machine.

When I first started sewing regularly, I was using a cheap $15 iron from target that my dad had bought me in my college years.  I didn’t own an iron or an ironing board and he thought it necessary that I own one…. since he was crashing at my place on a business trip/s and had no iron to use for his own clothes.

I don’t even remember the name of it, only that it was blue and white, and that it did a decent job with my ironing, when it wasn’t spitting out calcified junk on things in its remaining years.

Last summer I upgraded myself to a Rowenta DZ 1700 Autosteam (or the updated DW2070–> which seems to be the same model).  I was going back and forth between a Black and Decker (of some sort) and the Rowenta.  The Rowenta seemed like a *sewers* iron and it was like $30 more money than the B&D… so I assumed it was better.

I was wrong!  After a year, this iron is shutting off for no reason (after 30 seconds) and it takes all much of my patience for it to turn on again since I have to twist it to and fro for it to understand that I’m still using it.  Plus the edge of the sole plate has a rust spot on it and it’s only a matter of time that it spreads.  Great for being stainless steel!  Pfffh  Not to mention the periodic spitting of calcium steam junk on my fabric.  Again… it’s only a matter of time before it ruins something.

Almost without thinking… I saw a great review of irons(namely the B&D D2030 iron) on Madalynne’s site and I just went on amazon and bought it.  I figured if I was between these two brands in the past, the B&D one has to be at least as good…. if not better than my ailing Rowenta.  (Plus Megan and Consumer Reports likes it too).

I know I use my iron A LOT.  But seriously… I’ve only had it a year and it’s not cooperating anymore.  My first cheap-o iron lasted me at least 5 years before it stopped cooperating.  So for a Rowenta that I paid $70-$80 for should last me just as long, if not longer.  Am I right?!

To play devil’s advocate:

Yes, I’m sure there may be better Rowenta models out there that would do the job better than the one I had.  And yes… I’m sorry if I’ve offended you & you love your Rowenta and swear by it to others.

But I am done with Rowenta.  The name brand has lost all lustre for me and I’m moving on to what hopefully is a lasting relationship with a B&D.

So far… it’s much heavier than the Rowenta but it holds twice as much water.  (Yay for not filling it all the time).  The weight doesn’t bother me much since it feels like a sturdier machine and so far it’s pressed some silk charmeuse quite nicely as well as the linen dress I’m currently wearing.

But…. only time will tell if this iron makes it past the one year mark without angering me.  If that is the case, perhaps I may suck it up and buy a mega steam generating like the great K.King recommends (scroll to the comments).

Thanks for reading today’s iron rant.  What kind of iron are you gals using?  Do you have a love/hate relationship with your iron too?

I went to the flea market for the first time this year with my mom, for Mother’s day.  I’m really not ashamed to say that I love my mom and besides my great hubby, Felix she’s my next favorite person.  She’s instilled in me a love of table linens, McCoy pottery, and many other things.  So it’s no surprise that what she loves to do, I also love to do…. namely flea market shopping.  :)

I woke up at 5:30 am (yes!  It’s soo crazy early for me) and got on the road with Felix by 6am, in order to get to the  flea market by opening time: 7am.  I can’t even imagine what time the flea market vendors have to wake up in order to set up a booth at the flea.

Anyhow… We had fun shopping around.  It was the first time this year that either of us had gone to the flea.  Felix snapped some photos of what he saw around the flea, and then we met up at 8:45am to head out to breakfast.  We just went to a local diner and also joined up with my step-dad Bob, who wanted to sleep in, instead of going to the flea.

One of my great finds was a guy who had tons of fabric.  I mean boxes & bags full!  I picked out two pieces of wool (or what I think is wool), and no moth holes to boot!  The red is a coating weight and is 3 yards length which may eek out a cute coat.  And I bought a bright blue piece of bemberg lining, and the navy wool piece I thought was a full length, is mainly 1/2 a yard with some longer/narrower strips.  But still… it was a steal for $4.

I got two great steel boxes with small drawers for $10 and two black glass beaded necklaces for $5.  The one long jets (black glass) necklace was made in Austria, too.

Moving on to silk tap pants…

I’ve long been meaning to make some silk charmeuse tap pants for myself, but also for my mom.  What I was thinking would be a great Christmas gift, is now a Mother’s day gift.  I drafted a tap pants pattern for my mom using Sew Vera Venus’s tutorial and worked up a muslin for my mom to try on.  (There was no way I was going to work up a final pair without her trying them on for fit first!)

I bought this silk charmeuse online in coral for my mom and when it arrived it was really thin and (kinda bad quality) hot orange.  I had no intention of making my mom a hot orange pj set so I ultimately decided it was perfect for a muslin.  I could fit it using nearly the same fabric and it would give me some extra practice working with the material before the real deal.

She loved the idea and tried them on… and there were minimal alterations!  Wooot!  I only have to tighten the elastic waistband and take out a tiny bit of width at the lower hem.

The hard part is going to be making a matching camisole for her.  She’s quite busty (39″ bust) but has a lower bust measurement of 35″ and an upper bust measurement of 37.5″.  I’ll be working up a muslin for my mom using Colette’s Cinnamon pattern.

This is really the first time I’m making something for someone other than myself.  I know what alterations to make for myself (for the most part) and it’s going to be a whole ‘nother ball game making a garment for my mom (and her much more generous *ladies*).  An FBA may have to be factored in… but I’m going to start off making a size 18 for the bodice cups, and grading to different sizes as needed for the rest of the camisole.

Wish me luck!

I decided that I’m going to forge ahead with the same yarn I had been using, the cascade heritage, instead of starting over with a new cotton yarn.  Since I’ve never worked with cotton (or cotton blends) I thought it would be too much of a gamble to start with such a complicated project.  So instead, I’ll have to plan a cardigan or something to wear over top of the jumper to layer while at the office.  I’ll still get some normal wear out of it when the weather is in the 70′s by wearing it on its own.

I’ve officially finished the first section of the motif and have started in on the second row of flowers.

It’s not the best intarsia/stranded work out there, but being my first project I think it’s ‘okay’ so far.  There’s a few sections of the flowers where I’ve not wrapped the yarns quite right and other sections where I’ve over wrapped the yarns.  And I’m still having tension issues, yet I continue to pull my work to ensure my wraps aren’t too tight.  *hmph*

I came across another helpful intarsia link that other newbies may benefit from: Advanced Intarsia Tips by The Natty Knitter.

Natty Knitter talks about my over-wrapping of the yarn and not needing to wrap when you’re doing left-leaning color work.  This is just what I needed to further improve the look of the white floral motifs.

Okay… enough about my project.  Today’s free knitting pattern comes from No. 139 Sweater News edition of Chadwick’s Red Heart Wools publication from 1939.

Click on the following link to download the pattern as a pdf: Boulevarde Jacket Pattern.

I bought this pattern magazine issue over my birthday weekend up in Michigan.  I bought it since I loved the cover pattern, I didn’t have time to go through it page by page.  But when I saw this pretty little jacket/cardigan guy, I feel in love.  If I wasn’t working on my floral jumper…. this one would be really hard to resist.

Gauge:

The gauge is given as 7 sts to an inch and 9 rows to an inch using a 3.0 mm needle which is right between a US 2 and a US 3 needle.

I couldn’t find any information about the original pattern’s yarn: Chadwick’s Red Heart Shetland Floss.  On Ravelry it was stated as a 4-ply fingering weight, but I’m not 100% that that information is correct.

For my personal knitting, 7 sts per inch would be a sport weight yarn using a size 3 or 4.  But perhaps this jacket is supposed to be quite dense…. which I could see using a sport weight yarn with the smaller sized knitting needle.

Either way, you have the freedom to select your yarn and needle size to get a gauge of 7 sts per inch.

Size:

This pattern is quite detailed about the sizes of the jacket when blocked, which is refreshing to see.

The jacket is drafted for a size 16, which seems to match a 34″ bust.  And the blocking circumference at the underarm is 33.5″ which makes the case for 1 to 1/2  inch of negative ease.  (Don’t forget you have to remove 4 sts total to allow for seaming-which is why I have a range of negative ease).

Doing some maths really quick…  The circumference at the waist hem is 23″ which doesn’t include that little bit at the center (or I really hope not!!) heh  *Whew* I read further on and the 23″ waist does NOT include the front belt.  The belt is 5.5 inches long which means that the full circumference of the waist is 28″ (give or take with some seaming).

Well… that’s all I have to say about the pattern.  I hope you gals like it.

Hope you all have a lovely mother’s day weekend with your moms, grandmothers, children, and godmothers.  My mom and I are heading out to the flea market ourselves to start the Sunday  morning off right.  :)

Pin curls are the easiest and most comfortable to sleep on but I’ve attempted pin curls once and the result was *blegh* looking, not to mention the curls lasted for all of 20 minutes.  I’m sure it was a user-error on my part, but I’m not jumping to try them again anytime soon.

Doing a quick search online led me to the following tutorials for rag curls:

• Fun Hair for Girls: Rag Curls  –> This was the clearest picture tutorial on how to curl the hair, all the way down to the ends, which is essential for a newbie to see!
• Vixen Vintage’s Tutorial on Rag Curls –> I’ve been following her for ages but saw this was from back in 2009, which was a fun surprise.
• Bell’s Belles Vintage: Rag Curl Tutorial –> Using your finger instead of a tool to curl the hair
• While it’s not a tutorial, in an image search of Rag Curls, I found none other than Ms. Gertie herself sporting some rag curls from 2010.

I find that no one tutorial is the best and I take important information from each to do my own hair.

I cut around 16 strips or so of some basic cotton fabric from my scrap pile with the dimensions of 1.5″ wide by 6″ or 7″ long.

If you have the strips too long it looks more of a mess on your head and may be tricky to find which ends belong to each curl/knot.  But if you cut the strips too short, it’s hard to tie them up as needed.  I found 7″ in length was good enough for me.

I spritzed each section of my hair with setting lotion (lottabody watered down, as needed) and did one curl.  Then I spray another section of hair, and curl that.  I can’t spray my whole head at the same time since by the time I do one side of my head, the other would be dry again.  I’m just that slow…  So I only spray each curl by curl, as I go along.

Methodology of a Rag Curl:

You can use your finger, a pencil, or whatever ‘tool’ you have handy to curl your hair around.  You curl your hair around ‘tool’ and around the fabric strip at the same time, and then tie it once you’re done curling the piece of hair.  Essentially you’re making curls of hair without a foam roller in the middle.

Naturally, I found some long knitting needles to try out as ‘tools’ for curling my hair.  I had three different sizes and finishes of knitting needles and settled on using my jumbo US 35′s (15mm) of wooden needles for the bulk of my hair.  It seemed the most similar size to the foam curlers I had been using, so I thought the curls would be the same in the end.

For the short hair at the nape of my neck, I switched to a much smaller diameter of knitting needle (US size 13′s aka 9.0mm) so that the ends would stay tied in and I could get a few rotations of the tool to create the curl.

Surprisingly, it was easiest for me to curl the back of my head and tie a knot than it was to do the front of my head.  (This is the opposite of sponge curlers… where it’s harder for me to do the back vs. the front).  At a few points, I walked into the office to ask Felix to tie a knot for me since the sides were tricky to knot myself.

The first time trying anything new with my hair takes me F-O-R-E-V-E-R.  It took me around an hour to do this rag curl set.  But I’m a total newbie to doing my own hair, so don’t let this put you off from trying it yourself.  Next time, I’m sure it will take me less time as I’ve gotten a better hang of it.

Sleeping:

I will say that sleeping in rag curls was a bit better than sponge rollers.  But I still woke up at several times throughout the night to get comfortable.  For me, I can only find 1 or 2 ‘less pain filled’ positions in which to sleep in with sponge rollers.  Whereas with the rag curls, I could sleep the way I normally do with less pain, but it was still like sleeping on tiny knots of fabric.

After sleeping :

I tied all of the  curls pretty tight, and only tied a single knot, instead of a full square knot (tying the knot twice).  I only tied a full knot on two curls that were at the base of my neck since those were the shortest and most likely to fall out.  But after sleeping, none of my curls came loose.

I brushed out each curl individually when I removed the rag, and this is what it looked like:

At this point, I noticed that the curls didn’t seem quite as tight and sproingy as when I use the sponge curlers… But I proceeded as I normally do with brushing my hair out.

After running the brush through a few times yields this lovely sight:

My hair looks like it could be that of an evil Disney character, no?!

But don’t fear!  Continued brushing fixes most of this.  :)

This came with much more brushing.  But I found that it was still a bit too full than my normal, sponge curl set so I tacked some pieces back on either side with bobby pins.

What I’ll do different next time:

My rag curls weren’t as precise and tame-able as the sponge curler set usually is.  I’m going to try and curl/style them a bit differently next time.

In order to sleep better, I’m going to use a smaller tool and start the curls lower down on my head.  This will get me a relatively flat crown but with tighter curls at the bottom of my hair.  I’m thinking that moving the curls further down will help me have a flatter head-surface to sleep on more comfortably.  :)  Doing this will make my curls look a bit more 30′s than 50′s.

But again, the rag curls were still better to sleep in than sponge curlers.

As to the styling, I think I’ll brush less and try to finger pick through my hair instead.  Since the rag curls wern’t as tight as the sponge ones, I’m thinking that a good finger picking through the curls may yield different & better results.

I tried to brush and style like I do with the 50′s style sponge curl that I do, and I don’t think I can do the same styling with a different curling method such as these rag curls.

While I’m pleased with my first attempt, I have a bit of refining to do in order to sleep better and style my hair a bit nicer.

Have any of you gals tried rag curls before?  Thoughts?  Tips?  Or do you have thoughts on an alternate curling method (no heat sets please) that would let me get better sleep?  :)

Stranded knitting (or more commonly known as Fair Isle) is when you knit with two colors on the same row, alternating back and forth, bringing the strands across the back of the work.

This isn’t the traditional look of a fair isle knit, but it shows the difference quite clearly when you look at the back of the piece.

Right Side of Fair Isle:

Image Via Lion Brand Yarn

Wrong Side of Fair Isle:

Image Via Lion Brand Yarn

This creates a thicker fabric since it’s two strands in each row, not just one.

Intarsia knitting is when you have one color motif and other colors on either side of it.

Right side of Intarsia:

Image Via Make Magazine: Intarsia 101

Basically you knit the right portion (right of the motif) with one strand of yarn (white), the motif in its own strand of yarn (blue), and use a third strand of yarn for the section to the left of the motif (white).

While this may look very similar to the first swatch of fair isle above…. Here’s the back of the square for comparison.

Wrong side of Intarsia:

Image via Make Magazine: Intarsia 101

You see, instead of carrying the white across the back of the blue motif, the threads are twisted and dropped (and later woven in).  In each color section there are no floats along the back just one color in each section.

Now…. recall my floral blouse pattern:

It has loads of white floral motifs, but on either side there may be stripes of pink or navy.  What I’ve decided to do is the intarsia method for the white flowers-so I have 5 separate white bobbins for each of the flower sections.  And for the stripes of other colors, I’m working those using a stranded method (or carrying the threads of yarn through the back of the flowers).

Crazy for a first project, no?!

I only just started the flowers so here they are so far:

And the wrong side:

Floral motif detail:

You can see I’ve stranded the pink and navy rows across the back of the white flower, yet the white is contained within the flower.

Things I’ve learnt so far:

Tension is Key!

I’ve already spotted a few places on the bottoms of my flowers in which the tension is too tight.  The white flower is pulling the yarns all around it.  To fix this as I continue to work upwards, is to pull the fabric after each twist of my yarn to ensure I’m not holding the yarn too tight causing more of these puckers.

How to Wind Butterflies of Yarn:

Using intarsia, you need separate lengths of yarn for each motif.  You can use bobbins or clothes pins or create center pull butterflies of yarn.  I did the last one and used this youtube video to learn how to do this.  It was kinda fun actually.  :)  Doing this helps keep all of the colors tame & tangle free as you work.

How to Twist my yarn to prevent holes when switching between colors:

Again, this is another key thing you have to do while you knit with multiple colors.  If you just drop your yarn and pick up the new color, you’ll have a small gap or hole between the two colors.  So you have to twist the yarn as you go (at the back of the work) to prevent holes.

I Should Have Used a Different Yarn:

I’m using a cascade wool: 75% merino wool and 25% nylon.  While I think my yarn is perfectly adequate for this jumper, I fear it won’t get much use in a Chicago summer.  I should have taken more time to look for a fingering weight cotton.  But what’s done is done… and I’m still working forward on my jumper.

After I just wrote that, I keep thinking….

Do you guys think I should stop now and pick a different yarn before I get too much further?  What would you do?

I found this knit picks yarn with 75% cotton and 25% nylon that could work.  (It doesn’t have a great navy color, but I could use the black or a brighter blue in between the pink.)  I’ve never worked with cotton yarn before, so I was always hesitant to go this route, but I’m having second thoughts.

All thoughts are welcome!

Top Down:

Side View:

It’s basically a rubber coated foot that has wide gaps to allow for stitching the holes of the button to your garment.

The button foot is one of my favorite sewing machine feet that makes quick work of sewing on your buttons.  Now you can’t use it for everything, but it’s perfect to use for light weight fabrics such as blouses and some skirts.

You can’t use it for heavy weight garments since you’ll need to build in extra space between the button and the fabric to allow for ease of movement between each layer of fabric (ie: the use of thread shanks).  Do you know what I mean?  Sewing on buttons with the button foot doesn’t give you much (if any) wiggle room between the buttons and buttonholes on the other side of the opening.

How it Works

Place the button foot on your machine and get your button handy.

Place your button on your garment, in the correct position and slide it all underneath the button foot and lower the presser foot lever to secure.

Adjust your machine to a zig-zag stitch AND do one of the following:

Either:

• Set your machine to ‘darn’ if you have that option, so the feed dogs aren’t engaged

Or:

• Set your stitch length to “ZERO”, so that your zig-zag stitch doesn’t have a lengthwise movement, it only has a width-wise movement.

When you don’t have any stitch length while your machine is on a zig-zag stitch, the needle just moves left-right-left-right which is what you want in order to sew your buttons on.

A good tip is to find your appropriate zig-zag width on a scrap of fabric first.  I always use the fly-wheel by hand as to not damage your needle by bashing it in the button (and missing the buttonholes).

Once you have the correct width selected, you can use the foot pedal and zip right through your buttonholes in a matter of seconds.

After I’ve sewed on all of my buttons, I always take a needle and thread the left-over thread ends from the right side of the button to the wrong side and tie them in knots before trimming the thread ends off completely.

And there you have it!  Quick easy buttons sewn on by machine in a matter of seconds.

My finished blouse with machine-stitched buttons:

Buttons with the buttonholes over top:

Sewing on buttons with my machine is one of my favorite things to do and cuts the time in half (or more).

Have any of you guys tried your button feet before?  Once you try it, I bet you’ll never want to do them by hand again.  :)

I feel as if I’ve been making do with what I have but at times my outfits don’t feel very coordinated as much as I’d like.

Black and white blouses aren’t the most fun things I could be sewing with summer nearing (hopefully).  I’d much rather be sewing some flirty new skirts or pretty new sun dresses, but I’ve just decided that I have to make some blouses instead, and some basic ones at that.

I generally dislike making blouses.  I believe it’s primarily due to the fact that I have a difficult time fitting the armscye.  While I’m a pear-shaped gal, I have a very petite upper body with narrow shoulders.  That coupled with the fact that I have forward rotating shoulders (due to poor posture while at my computer) and slightly sloping shoulders makes pattern changes somewhat complicated.

I generally have to:

• Shorten the armscye/raise the underarm seam up at least 1/2 inch
  • Which means that I have to adjust the sleeve pattern to match
• Adjust the angle of the shoulder/ sew the shoulder seams deeper toward the edge of my shoulder for my slight slope
  • Which means that I have more sleeve adjustments to make to match
• Narrow the shoulders
  • I have to narrow the shoulders so much that I can’t just take the extra width at the shoulder seam, but find sneaky ways like adding in darts or taking long wedges out of the pattern piece
• Add width from the waist, downward to accommodate my hippy hips

For my basic white blouse, I picked out a basic 40′s/50′s blouse pattern:  McCalls 7838.

Thank you guys for all of your well wishes!  I count myself lucky to have so many lovely blog readers such as yourselves, wishing me well.

During the whole drive on Friday, through Indiana and up to Michigan, I was telling Felix over and over how happy I was NOT to be at work.  heh  It was such a giddy feeling to be out in the fresh air instead of in an office building toiling over charts and data.  I felt like I was getting a ‘ditch day’ from school.

Felix booked a really charming B&B right off Red-Arrow Highway called Rabbit Run Inn.

Sadly there were no rabbits in sight, but I did have Lulu the french bulldog as a cute consolation prize.

French Bulldogs are on my top 3 fav dog breeds.  Isn’t she a sweetie?!

Felix did a much better job than I did document and taking pictures over the weekend.  I was determined to snap a photo for instagram/twitter at each stop of our journey, but I think I only managed to get three pictures.  *Fail*

I posted up the map of our stops on Friday; while we didn’t get to make all the stops on the map we managed to add some ones that I found via google searching while in the car, en route.

We made three (or four) stops on Day 1 and I got really, really overwhelmed at the last antique mall we hit up.  It was just massive and everything started to become a blur.  I couldn’t focus and felt short on time since they were closing soon.  That being said, I bought a 60′s mod tulip bracelet that I instantly fell in love with at that last mall.

The prices of the antiques all along the highway were very much retail prices, as all of the vendors truly knew the market prices of their inventory.  I really didn’t get any whooping good deals, but there were tons of great goods and I still had fun shopping and browsing around.

On the drive, I was being bad and checking emails and such…  But I was happy to read all of your lovely birthday wishes.  On a suggestion from Lisa I decided to drive a bit further than planned to fit in a fabric shop called Field’s Fabrics in Holland, MI.

Holland looked like a nice town to grab lunch in…  But since it was the last stop of Day 2, we just grabbed coffee at Lemonjello’s and headed back on the highway for home.

Having blouses on the brain, I bought this cute Americana seersucker plaid, which I’m hoping to turn into a fun button-down blouse for the summer.  Thanks for the tip Miss Lisa!

Left to right, top to bottom:  Navy & White Polka Dot ‘kerchief for my hair, a 60′s white with pink flowers blouse, 2 yrds cotton blend plaid from Fields, Yellow Tulip Bracelet, iridescent glass bead necklace (changes with what color you’re wearing) and a long stringed necklace of black beads.

I bought a random bag of buttons for $1 and true to form, I felt a massive need to match them all up.

The rest of my finds:

L to R, Top to Bottom:  3 sewing patterns (1 blouse, a dress, and pj’s), 2 knitting magazines from the 50s, hunter green buttons from the 40′s, white and navy rayon seam binding, and a pair of Wiss pinking shears.

I’m always hesitant to buy scissors, especially vintage ones unless I can test them out.  When I took them up to the counter, I cut through a napkin and it was like cutting silk charmeuse!  They cut with such ease and nicely, too!  I bought them for a whopping $10.50 and they’re much nicer than my cheap plastic handled ones from the craft store.

All in all, it was a great trip!  I didn’t buy anything huge although I have to admit… there was a white featherweight machine going for $325 that I was really falling in love with.  But I need another machine like a whole in the head, especially since I have yet to get my current black beauty in running shape.

Can’t wait to go back in the summer months when more shops are open with fresh stock!

Anyhow…

Felix asked me a while back what I wanted to do for my birthday.  I immediately told him I wanted to go to NYC and go fabric shopping.  After checking on airfare, I starting singing a different tune since I didn’t want to pay $300+ for a quick weekend getaway  on one airline ticket.

So he’s planned a vintage shopping excursion which is almost better in a way.  :)  It’s been a complete surprise up until last night!  I didn’t know where we were going or what we were doing.  He’s planned the entire weekend trip!

He created a map of our stops!  Our B&B is about 1.5 or 2 hours outside the city; far enough to be a getaway and close enough to well… have a short drive.

And I have to say for the record:

I am thrilled I am NOT to be at work!  Let me reiterate:  I AM NOT AT WORK… WORKING!  Wooot!

Work has been really bad and stressful as of late.  It’s not letting up and I’m at the end of my rope.  So this trip is totally what I need, and NOT working on Friday is the best!

I’m not off for a leisurely breakfast before hitting the road!  Cheers and I hope you all have a lovely weekend too.