Purple rain!

Wow, I finally managed to not only create the correct link, but also post it! So, without further ado, here is my map of the London Fabric Shops!

As I mentioned yesterday; Please have a look, and let me know if you would like to see anything added or removed. I have not had the chance to visit all of the shops of course, so your help will be greatly appreciated. Also, please note that the list of shops is not yet correctly alphabetised, so it may be easier to try and find your shops by location on the map than by name on the list. I'm hoping to sort that soon, but that feature of Google Maps is very slow, so it will take quite a bit of time.

I've tried to organise the mess by creating:
purple place markers for fabric shops,
yellow place markers for haberdashery shops, and
blue place markers for "other" shops (such as fashion magazine shop, museum)

Oh, and I've added "NTS" to the address descriptions of the shops, meaning "Nearest Transport Station". This could mean either train or underground. So there. Go shopping!

Take them to the cleaners!

Last (UK Bank Holiday) weekend I finally got some real sewing done: The KNIPmode trousers are done! Pictures to follow; I want to have them drycleaned first. I did not pretreat the fabric (linen, call me silly), because it frays so easily and I couldn't fit all of it in my washing machine in one go, so I will only dryclean this set of clothes. I'm hoping the drycleaning will get rid of the stiffness of the fabric, so that I can wear the trousers and not look pregnant (coz I'm not, but that's what it looked like to me). Anyway, next project: the jacket.

For the last few days I have also been working on creating an updated map of fabric stores in London (thanks to Melissa letting me know how to use Google Maps) , and a printable list of those same stores. The map and list will be updated from time to time with short reviews, and as soon as I find out how to publish them on my blog, please have a look. Should you know of any shops, markets or other information that you think would be useful to others, please let me know and I'll add them.

Håndtaske

The first thing I did today was repair the handbag I bought years ago in Covent Garden. I always take that bag with me when I go on short trips because it folds up small enough to fit in my handluggage when I'm not allowed to bring both a handbag and carry-on luggage on a flight, yet is big enough to hold all I need during the day. Last Tuesday I left for a 3-day trip to Copenhagen to visit my friend Marlene who moved back there after having lived in London for a number of years.

Unfortunately Marlene had to work during the day, but another friend of ours, Vanessa, was also visiting, so the two of us wandered around town to do some sightseeing and try all the wonderful food and drink Denmark has to offer. I even managed to squeeze in a visit to a little fabric shop we happened upon, and was very surprised to see that the fabrics they sold came mainly from Liberty's (most of which is not my style), and even though the Udsalg was on (50% off almost everything), I came out empty-handed.

During the 3 days I managed to completely wreck the zip of my little bag, and because I couldn't find a new bag I liked, I decided I'd have to repair the old one. Yeah, right. I almost had to take the whole bag apart before I could put the new zip in, and am not happy with the result, but it will have to do, I guess. Due to that project not going too well, I decided to leave my sewing machine alone for the rest of the day, and finish my book instead.

Keeping my eyelets open

Walthamstow market is open from Tuesday to Saturday, and - like any market - is full of people milling about, trying to find the best deals on anything from apples to zips (20p!). My WM and I walked up and down the mile long market for about an hour, and met up with a friend for lunch afterwards. I went specifically to find fabrics that would go well with the gray linen I bought at the Curtain Factory Outlet a few weeks ago that I'll be using for trousers, a skirt and a jacket, although of course I kept my eyes open for other fabrics as well.

Interestingly, I ended up buying fabric at the shops along the High Street, not at the market. At Fardin Fashion Fabrics (I couldn't find it anywhere online), a shop selling mostly beautifully colourful Indian sari fabrics, I found a light cotton "feather" fabric, and at the Textile Centre I bought a pink/grey/white eyelet.

The eyelet will be the short sleeved NewLook 6704 and the "feather" will be the top I saw in KNIPmode June 2008, with a bit of contrast fabric left over from the linen.

Puzzled

Yesterday I did some more pattern tracing, and I used an older KNIPmode (2001) than the one I used last week (2008). Firstly, it struck me that the colours on the 2001 tracing sheet were different: only light blue and red were used, whereas the 2008 sheet used green, red and black. Also, the way of finding the correct pattern part to trace seemed not as straightforward as I had just experienced with the newer issue.

This made me remember some of the really funny "mis-traced" parts that I sometimes ended up with a long time ago, so I went and had a look through my stack of KNIPmode (when it was still called Knip) and I found a coat pattern I saved from 1987. Yes, I know, ridiculously old, but a great pattern, and as the Dutch saying goes "Wie wat bewaart, die heeft wat" (ehm: don't throw it away, you may need it someday?)! And, to no surprise; in the "old days" the sheets were even more complicated! Have a look at the picture and spot the differences...it's ridiculous how complicated it was, and great to see how much improvement has been made over the years!

Anyway, after all this tracing I still need to get a load of fabrics so I can actually make something, so I'm off to Walthamstow market now!

Things to do and people to see

Last weekend my WM and I visited a friend who lives close to Leeds, and on Sunday we managed to find some time to visit the textile town of Bradford before heading home again. We went to the textile mill and workers' village called Saltaire. The textile mill is a beautiful building that is on the UNESCO World Heritage list and has been converted into a contemporary arts center, containing a number of different art galleries and also restaurants and shops. I was surprised that their fabric collection (hidden in the basement) was a bit limited.

Yesterday I finally sat down at the front room table (it's just too cold and wet outside to use the table tennis table) and traced a few patterns.

On in London:

Until 4 January 2009 the V&A is hosting an exhibition called "Fashion v Sport". This exhibition explores the creative connections between the two worlds of fashion and sport and sounds like a fun idea for a rainy afternoon to me!

Liberty announced the relaunch of the Liberty sewing school. They're offering a range of special craft, knitting and sewing workshops from August to October for £35 per person per session.

How you Bedouin?

Friday night WM and I went to Makro to buy a party tent because the weather forecast said it would rain, and on Saturday afternoon we were very glad that we’d done that! It only rained for about 20 minutes, but we were nice and dry under the tent, and the effect of the cushions with the tent (and later in the evening the added burning candles and lanterns) gave the whole garden a bit of a Moroccan Bedouin tent-idea; magic!

We had such an amazing, fun, wonderful party that I needed a few days to recover. The BBQ started on Saturday at 13.00 and lasted until Sunday morning 08.00! It was great to see so many of our lovely friends, and we ate, drank, danced and chatted the night away.

We took many pictures with our new camera (yes, it finally arrived!), but I had to delete quite a few because of poor quality: we need to learn how to use the different settings. Trial and error will get us there in the end, so bear with me for the time being.

I’ve still not started on any real sewing projects yet, but my tracing paper did arrive with Esther’s parents, and WM and I thought we may actually keep the party tent in the garden to form an outdoor sewing room (I can set up the table tennis table and leave it there for me to work on whenever I want). The green stuff would probably die, but since there’s more weeds than grass in our little patch of green, maybe that’s a good thing…