Eleven Stitches

Four Dresses and a Suprise

Even though it's the last one I've finished, I'm going to show you my favorite dress first.

This is another version of Butterick 5315, with fabric that I bought in Bristol last summer.  I used the red-polka dot bias tape to finish the neckline and the hem.  I love the combination of prints. The vintage buttons (courtesy of the button lady who is at New Jersey Sheep & Wool), also were a great fit.

This dress is easy to wear, and I get compliments on it whenever I wear it.  Yay, it's an instant favorite.

This is the A-Line version of Cambie, using some of my favorite batik fabric from Indonesia.

 

I think I would be happier with this dress if it fit a little better.  I think it looks OK, but it's a little tight so it doesn't feel as OK.  Maybe someday I'll either lose a little weight or alter it :)

I think I used the pretty edge print well in this dress, showing it off at the hem and the neckline.

And finally here are two Vogue 8764s.  I like that they're so simple, but I'm not liking the second one so much since I've seen it photographed.

This first one is white linen, and I enjoyed wearing it this summer.

The second one is a really drapey grey fabric, and it's not doing me any favors right now!  But when that's the case, using a kitten to distract is a good solution.

Meet our new baby boy!  We adopted him a week ago Saturday, and we named him Oberon.

He is a sweetheart and we think he will be a great addition to the family.  Sasha and Philana are not convinced and have spent a lot of time hissing at the scary kitten who is 1/3 their size.

 

I've found that it is a little bit harder to sew because there is often someone now demanding attention and getting in the way.  It's a good thing he's cute!

Things from England

I wasn't kidding when I said the Libery store was overwhelming.  It was huge.

I didn't realize how many types of Liberty fabric there is.  There was a lot of the lawn, of course, but there was also corduroy, silk, knits, and other types. 

This store had a lot of lawn pre-cut in 3 meter lengths.

I ended up choosing two pre-cuts, one of which was not Liberty and therefore much cheaper. (There was one short shelf of non-Liberty fabrics.)  I also got a 4 yard cut of the multicolored paisely and a 2 yard cut of the orange paisely.

The trees fabric is not Liberty, but I loved it so much.  The fabric feels like it might also be a lawn. 

Back in Bristol, I also found a store that has a lot of patterend bias tape.  I don't really enjoy making my own, so I was thrilled to find these.

 

I bought the stack on the right one day, and then went back later to get the stack on the left.  I'm planning to use the thicker orange dot to bind a quilt, and I've already put the red dot tape to use. 

 

Gone A Long Time

David and I took a long trip this August, and in the weeks leading up to it, I found that I was running out of time to do everything that I wanted to do.  So, I had an inadvertantly long blog break, and I'm just now feeling like I'm really back home even though we got back two weeks ago.

We were in England, and we got to arrive in London right in the middle of the Olympics.  And through a bit of good luck, we got to attend the Olympics. Yes, it was pretty awesome.

Before we went to our venue, we watched the women's marathon flash by.

And then we went to the ExCel Arena to see Table Tennis.  It was so cool!  I took some pictures with me in them, but given that I had just flown in on a (stressful) redeye flight, I don't want to show them to you :)  But this is what I saw.

The games were exciting, espeically the match between #2 South Korea and #8 Portugal, where Portugal fought for every point and made the match run an hour longer than scheduled.  Everyone in the stadium became a Portugal fan, but they lost in the end.

I was so impressed with the ease we navigated through the city and the venues.  London really had the games figured out, and we never waited more than a couple of minutes for the train or in any line.  It was so cool just to be there and be a part of it.

After we did that, we got to settle in to our hotel in Bristol, and I got to travel while David went to work.  And we both traveled on weekends. 

Well, the first week I didn't travel because I wanted as much of a British Olympic experience as I could get!  There was a public sqaure near our hotel that had a huge screen and deck chairs for Olympic viewing.  It was a great place to be, and so fun to be in the crowd when Team GB won gold.

If it was raining (as it tends to do), I watched the BBC coverage in my hotel room.  I liked it so much better than the coverage we got in the US.

And then we traveled!  We went to Edinburgh.

I went to Wales.

I took a day trip back to London so I could shop for Liberty fabric.  It was overwhelming.

We went to Berlin.

I visited the next most famous stone circle after Stonehenge, Avebury, which has a town in the middle of it.

And I explored the beautiful things that were close by where we were staying.

It was a wonderful experience, and I'm so grateful to have had it.  I am also happy to be back home!  I'm way behind with sewing and knitting content, so I will be back here soon to show it to you.