Press

What do you think this photographer is doing peering over our hedge with her camera?




She's photographing the house for Period Living magazine. Niki, the photographer, came, to capture images of the house, with the wonderful Celia Rufey, a fellow fabricaholic and journalist, who talked to me about the house and my business.

Here I am with the lovely Celia looking at her gorgeous fabrics that she has printed onto linen. See her website here.




We had loads to talk about and as she only lives a mere 45 minutes away from me I think we will be seeing more of each other, in fact I will be meeting up with her on Tuesday when I visit a textile fair in Honiton.

It was such a fun day but I'm far too tired to talk about it now. I'm off to bed, all this press malarkey is exhausting! Pin It

Easter Egg Hunt

Well I warned you in the last post that there would be Easter Egg hunt pictures and so here they are. This is a picture heavy post!

Every year we do an Easter hunt with the children with clues taking them round the house and garden finding little eggs and clues on the way until they find their baskets of booty at the end. They start off with pictorial clues when they are very little but progress onto written clues as they get older. Alfie just loves this. He was very quick to work out the clues and amazingly still believes that Easter Bunny put them all out for him, marvelling at how Easter Bunny could have put clues in his playroom while he was just nearby on the computer! Ah don't you just love a child's imagination? I remember my mum and gran doing the Easter Hunt for me in my gran and grandad's flat where they lived above their shop. The place was tiny in comparison to where my children live but the magic was still there, the hunt still very exciting. Children find magic in the tiniest things. Lizzy followed along behind with her tiny basket, scoffing mini eggs as she went. She was delighted with the whole thing. Jasmine feigned an aloofness but was secretly quite interested, especially when her basket was found with the others.

Alfie reads the clue

Hmmm what can it be?

Lizzy looks in her basket

Alfie asks the chckens if they have seen any eggs

He spots the clue (can you?)


Lizzy helps

Down by the gate

Lizzy helps (but is busy eating her eggs!)

GOW helps

Come on Lizzy

Alfie finds the baskets in the garage

They enjoy discovering their booty

Alfie is delighted to find a Little Cotton Rabbit

Little Miss Easter Bunny

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Hope it was as sunny and enjoyable for you all as it was for us. Here are our Easter decorations this year

The Easter Tree

Gorgeous egg cosies from Max

I will be back with Easter egg hunt photos soon (you have been warned!) Pin It

The Fabric Room

The Fabric Room
Originally uploaded by thefabricofmylife.

On Sunday night I was very sick. I haven't been that ill in years. Monday I spent most of the day in bed, sleeping, recovering. I NEVER go to bed. I HATE going to bed because I always think I am missing something, but this time I had no choice. I was proper poorly!

On Tuesday I hobbled out of bed to clean up my fabric room as I needed to take some high-res photos for publicity. It was no mean feat believe me. This room was filled with bags and bags of fabrics that I had bought and just popped into the room thinking that one day I would put them away. The problem with that was there was simply nowhere else to store them. All drawers, shelves and cupboards were full to bursting. So after lots of effort I removed all the bags to be stored elsewhere so that now I have an organised, useable and (I think) beautiful room to work in. My Sylko dispenser is now right at home on the counter. So here, for your eyes only, is the fruits of my labour. Come on into my shop, pull up a chair, let me get you a tea and enjoy rummaging around the shelves. (click on the photos for close-ups) Pin It

Lizzy's 2nd Birthday

Lizzy had her 2nd Birthday this week. She had such a busy day with presents, bubbles, sand, balloons, cake and all her favourite people round for tea. Happy Birthday my little pickle x

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Lovely Day

Had a lovely day yesterday. I went to a textile fair in Ilminster to buy more fabrics. It was a beautiful sunny day, after a rather foggy start. The first person I saw was the lovely Liz who was standing at her stall talking to Niki! What a great start. I bought heaps of beautiful fabrics, hand painted French buttons, trims, quilts and some French embroidered laundry labels. I have put a selection of these below. I managed to resist buying a rather lovely wax head.















All of the above can now be found in my updated shop

I then met up with Sue Niki and Niki's friend Debbie and we all went for coffee in the lovely cafe they have at the Meeting House. We made sure we took some photos to commemorate the blog meet (mine came courtesy of Niki as I had left my camera in the car!) with all of us saying 'Fabric' instead of 'Cheese'.




Niki bought along a beautifully wrapped present for me. Inside was this lovely piece of fabric, which will be going in with my put-away-and-stroke fabrics! It was such a lovely gift, so me, thank you Niki.





After a bit of refreshment we hit the town's charity shops where we all got a few more goodies. I found more fabrics, some vintage children's books and a couple of old dress patterns from Fenwicks. Back to the Meeting House to pick up our goodies, another cup of tea and then goodbyes. It was a really lovely day, meeting lovely ladies, and made even lovelier for me as I got to go alone, without any children, utter bliss! Pin It

Friday Night Project

A lovely glass of Cava, a bit of deeply dark coffee chocolate, a pile of Country Living magazines and some folders. I'm sorting out my magazines, finding all the inspirational pages and filing them so that I can find them easily. The rest can then be recycled and I get a bit more space in my house.

Oh yes, I know how to live, Friday night, hey rock and roll! Pin It

Thrifty Tuesday

On Tuesdays I try to do a quick whip around the charity shops to see if there are any lovely things that I couldn't possibly live without. Very often there isn't or maybe there will be one thing. This Tuesday I was very pleased to find a beautiful blue jug with two tiny yachts inside for the grand total of 40p!




A beautiful blue teapot. I am trying to introduce more candy colours into my kitchen and this teapot is perfect.

A pretty little spring time tablecloth

But the piece de resistance has to be this wonderful vintage sylko cotton dispenser. I am not ashamed to say folks that I begged the lady in the shop to sell this to me as she didn't want to. They were selling the cottons individually and she was quite reluctant at first. I can be very persuasive when I need to be and she made me very happy when she said I could buy it, cotton reels and all. How perfect is that for my vintage sewing room? I won't ever have to buy cotton again!


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HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Happy Mother's Day to all you remarkable mothers out there but mostly to my mum, a woman who showed me the true meaning of unconditional love. I love you xxx
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Recycling

Thank you for your many comments on the last post. I thought you might find that piece of fabric interesting. I just want to clarify though that it was in no way a dig at Cath Kidston nor was it an accusation of copying. Cath is one of my heroines. I am so grateful to her for making vintage chic once again and for bringing us many vintage designs, that would have otherwise been lost to us, making them fresh and new once again by adding her own hallmark. All power to her, she's a great designer. It is perfectly ok to rework old fabrics to update them for today's market. I have a client who regularly buys 19th Century French pieces of fabric from me to rework them for Kaffe Fassett and Sanderson and I have a meeting next week to talk about getting some fabrics reworked for Country House.

It's the same with fashion and music. My 17 year old daughter is currently wearing very similar clothes to those I wore in the 1980's but has added her own touch to make them contemporary and new looking. The Top Shop playlist has Adam and The Ants, David Bowie, Blondie and Nick Cave playing alongside The Shins, The Horrors and The Gossip and all of them sound fresh and new and frankly very good. Oh yes I'm all for a spot of recycling and although I am a vintage girl at heart I am not adverse to a bit of 'vintage-style'. Pin It

Vintage?

I found this recently, a vintage piece of fabric which was obviously the inspiration for Cath Kidston's bird fabric. Which one is which?












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The Little things

You know sometimes it's the little things in life that bring the most pleasure. Take for instance the other day, when I was in Woolworths. I found the most beautiful pink and floral broom for the princely sum of £3.50. I gasped and said to the lady standing next to me 'isn't that the most beautiful broom you have ever seen?' She looked at me askance and said gruffly 'it's alright'. Well, it made me happy!!

In fact it made me so happy I bought the matching dustpan and brush.

I have also had some great vintage finds recently. Here are a few of them:

I love this little Scottie with his smart polka dot scarf. He is a pepper pot. I only wish I had the salt pot to match!

My favourite Forties floral fabrics

Lots of vintage Rick Rack braid

Some cute vintage Scottie dog ribbon

A delicious polka dot teacup and plate

And a great vintage shop display hand

The background was another purchase. A couple of ex-display items from Accessorize which I bought for 50p along with 2 gold disco glitterballs, hollowed out, for putting our speakers in for the bar. An eclectic mix, that's me!

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