Making a quilted voile Ogden Cami

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Making a quilted voile Ogden Cami

A little bit of 18th century Provence

A spinkle of Alabama Chanin style

An echo of Sashiko

A twist of Danish flare……..

That sounds a bit of a concoction doesn’t it?! Hi there, glad you’ve landed here today as I have an interesting dressmaking project to tell you about, which was in short, an experimental idea using a trusted pattern. The inspiration, as you can see, came from all sorts of different sources and spun around in my mind over a few months until it fused together to become this idea. I had no idea if it would work and maybe the jury is still out on that one, but it is so fun to experiment with stitch and texture and well, anyhow, I will let you be the judge of it.

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Making fairisle arm warmers

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Making fairisle arm warmers

This project has brought together threads from all sorts of unexpected and sometimes long forgotten thoughts. I am so keen to visit Fair isle now as well, all the Sottish Islands come to that. I rediscovered a beautiful book that I so enjoyed to read. From the very first page ‘Love for Lydia’ enchanted me with it’s gentle descriptive narrative of an english winter. It could have been here …. “Across the valley the floods of January, frozen to wide lakes of ice, were cut into enormous rectangular patterns by black hedgerows that lay like a wreckage of logs washed down on the the broken river. A hard dark wind blew straight across the ice form the north-east…… It was so cold that solid ice seemed to be whipped up from valley on the wind, to explode into whirlwinds of harsh and bitter dust that pranced about in stinging clouds. Ice formed everywhere in dry black pools, polished in sheltered places, ruckled with dark waves at street corners or on sloping gutters where wind had flurried the last falls of rain. Frost has begun in the third week of January, and from that date until the beginning of April it did not leave us for a day. All the time the same dark wind came with it, blowing bitterly and savagely over long flat meadows of frozen floods.”

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The Green Gables Quilt

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The Green Gables Quilt

As a finished project I think this is the most wonderful little quilt, a mixture of old world charm, freshness and nostalgia. It is true, what they say, that what you read as a child, stays with you forever and these books are certainly firmly lodged in my heart and now I think so is the quilt.

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Making the Hinterland Dress (but really the #OutlanderObessed Dress)

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Making the Hinterland Dress (but really the #OutlanderObessed Dress)

Hello and welcome to a New Year on the blog. I hope you will join me in my sewing adventures this year and to start things up, I am putting another item into Ruby’s wardrobe of extraordinarily pretty things. As a novice dressmaker, I am slow and a bit sceptical about making my own clothes, but you don’t know until you try and my quest to find clothes that I like (as a 57 year old) and that fit me (as a 57 year old) is never going to be easy. The Hinterland Dress by Sew Liberated often pops up on my instagram feed and it looked like the kind of easy wear dress that would be good in winter or summer weight fabric.

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Making a freestyle garden needlepoint box cover

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Making a freestyle garden needlepoint box cover

This is a lockdown project if ever there was one!!! I actually can’t believe it is finished and I can’t believe how pretty it is either. It has been a real journey over the past few months and it has kept me company in the kitchen beside the Aga on chilly autumn days and opened up a whole new world of possibilities to me. My whimsical…free style… garden needlepoint box …. I am just so proud of this and feel a new heirloom has been born.

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The Great Gatsby Embroidery - Literary Threads No. 4

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The Great Gatsby Embroidery - Literary Threads No. 4

Ever since I saw the latest film adaptation of Gatsby, I knew it would be on my list of Literary Threads and here it is. I know I have been dragging my heels over here with this, but finally it is finished and you know what….. I am thrilled with it. It’s a dramatic statement for sure, but what else would you expect with F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby and indeed all his works provide a great backdrop for an embroidery pattern that encapsulates ‘The Jazz Age’. In fact it was Fitzgerald who coined that phrase and set it in gold as a tribute to an era that was just loaded with glamour and glitz.

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Literary Threads : My favourite books this year 2020

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Literary Threads : My favourite books this year 2020

Something a little different as we head towards the festive season and Christmas shopping quandaries. I love to read and during this extraordinary year I have read more than usual. In doing so I have discovered how much I love to curl up with a good book, a quilt and a scented candle and just let the pages absorb all the anxiety of the times and replace it with glorious fiction, biography and tales of other times and other lives.

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Making an 'Outlander' tartan Quilt

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Making an 'Outlander' tartan Quilt

Do you love ‘Outlander’? I am as they say #Outlanderobessed’! Well maybe that is a little strong but did you know that there is actually a hashtag for it!!! A relative latecomer to the whole thing, I was immediately swept up in the whole time travel idea. As a fan of historical fiction, I suppose it was always going to be a winner, for me, but it is just a fantastic story to read and watch and laden with glorious Scottish scenery and tartan fabrics ….. perfect for snuggling up with under a quilt on a winter’s day. After beginning Season 1 on amazon, I started to read the book and uncover this whole ‘Outlander’ world on the internet. I watched an interview with the author, Diana Gabaldon and was absolutely enthralled with her story of how she came to write these books. Did you know that her initial inspiration came from on old episode of Dr. Who from way way back when Patrick Troughton was the Doctor and his side kick was a guy in a kilt. I am always full of admiration for people who write beautifully crafted stories that so clearly have the most enormous amount of research behind the carefully placed words. Outlander seems exceptional in this respect. Its creator is both a scholarly, industrious and immensely talented and I have say, if I had the chance, she would be on the top of my wish list of people I should love to meet. At least two of my kids have had J K Rowling on the top of their lists for years and with the discovery of Diana Gabaldon, I understand.

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Making Merchant and Mills Top 64

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Making Merchant and Mills Top 64

Over the past few months, I have collected a few japanese dressmaking books and am constantly inspired by images on instagram. Following on from my love of japanese embroidery, these books are extremely enticing. I love the japanese aesthetic - simple, clean lines, a little bit vintage, a little modern, practical and pretty at the same time. They use gorgeous fabrics too - fresh cottons, wool and silk and the look is a careful one. No sloppy stretched t-shirts, but with comfort in mind and just tiny details which make a difference. I wasn’t feeling brave enough to attempt one of the patterns - they are all in japanese script and so it would be a diagram only effort… but I did want to make something with the feel of these lovely garments. The Merchant and Mills Top 64 pattern has been sitting on my cutting table for a while…. it was time.

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Ruby's Wardrobe: Making an embroidered Dressing Gown

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Ruby's Wardrobe: Making an embroidered Dressing Gown

For the next item in Ruby’s wardrobe of extraordinarily pretty things, I wanted to make a dressing gown. I’m thinking sort of country house weekend …. you know, the sort of thing you could take to wear whilst staying at some rather grand house in the rolling hills of …. wherever. Well, a girl’s gotta dream! Anyhow, generally, I think a lightweight, easy to pack robe is a useful thing to have and with the PJ’s also in mind to make, I set about planning the project.

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Making fabric baskets

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Making fabric baskets

Being in lockdown has been an interesting experience. In some ways a chance to recalibrate and reorganise. I have spent the last few weeks reorganising my sewing space and really looking at what I have been collecting over quite a long period of time. Of course I am a fabric hoarder - but it’s no good stashing fabric if you cannot see it and don’t always remember what is there. I decided I needed a better way of sorting my fabrics and protecting them too. Making storage baskets is a great idea….a great way to use your stash and really not at all complicated.

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Breakfast at Tiffany's : A new Literary Thread

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Breakfast at Tiffany's : A new Literary Thread

After ’Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Little Women’, I felt it was time for something a little bit more modern and Breakfast at Tiffany’s was my daughter’s suggestion. What is it with being 20 something and Holly Golightly?!!!! Of course it was an absolute pleasure to work on and I am thrilled with the result. I think it turned out to be a thoroughly contemporary design …..

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