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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Parallel Universe?

I was over at Lark checking out Allison's delicious blog when I came across her post about her budget tin. It reminded me of the tin I bought just before Christmas that I hadn't shown you. During my visit to Saffron Walden I found this delightful tin for saving for those good things in life.





On Wednesday I won some lovely egg cups at a local auction and had taken photos to show you. Allison has just posted about her recent find, a Big Ears egg cup from the 1960's. I have collected these for a while now and some of them were mine from my childhood so I was delighted to win 3 more to add to the group (even if they are a little battered).




So you see, we are living a parallel universe Allison and I. Me up here and her down under!


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Busy

This week has been a busy week. Once half term was over, and life started to get back to some semblance of normality, I got my head down and my thoughts turned to business. I have had some lovely new cards made up for the website business. Thanks to Sarah, and her beautiful artwork, they are just lovely and I am thrilled with the end result.







I have been filling the shop with spring-inspired fabrics (more about that here), discussing changes to my website with my designer, opening an ebay shop, sourcing fabrics, parcelling up and sending fabrics to all corners of the world and meeting with my bookkeeper. It's all very grown-up and business like I can tell you.

The website is going very well and to all of you who have supported me and made a purchase a very big THANK YOU. You make it all worthwhile. Pin It

Loony Lunar

We went out for a lovely meal last night to celebrate my Father's birthday. We visited a little thatched pub in the centre of a pretty, mostly thatched, village. The food was lovely, fresh and very tasty. We sat by the log fire and enjoyed a proper country pub meal. The landlord came over and told us that he would let us know when the lunar eclipse was taking place so that we could all go outside and see it. It was a beautiful clear night with the fullest of full moons so it promised to be quite a sight. And it was. I took photos of it and as I was doing so Paul said they would be the most boring photos ever, just a black square with a white dot in the middle! So I apologise if they are boring but, hey, look, it's a lunar eclipse everyone. I spared you the full eclipse as I thought a photo of a totally black sky would have been a bit much!


I wonder if the moon has anything to do with why I have felt so mad these last few days? and if it had anything to do with why my car wouldn't start this morning. After dropping Jazz off at her bus stop I stopped for the Sunday papers at our local shop. Nothing, click, nothing. I had to walk up the lane, in the rain, as I had no phone on me, get home, call Green Flag, walk back down the lane, in the rain, to wait up to an hour for the said Green Flag man to arrive, wonder if car might now start, turn key and..................................... yes, you've guessed. Loony old Lunar!





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Half Term High Jinks!

Half term was wonderful, chaotic, mad, shambolic but wonderful! Tanya and her lovely family came to stay for a week from France. Poor things were treated to far more rain than they are used to but I guess that is always a risk if you visit North Devon in February. We shared some great times together this week, we laughed, cried, ate the obligatory cream tea, listened to great music, drank, shopped (despite toddlers, tantrums, grumpy old men and endless rainfall), were treated to a show put on by the kids, thrifted, marvelled at how our eldest girls have grown up, talked and talked and talked (despite having 7 children in permanent earshot), celebrated Floss's 13th birthday early and generally caught up after having been apart for the last year. I miss Tatty so much. Since she moved to France we use the telephone and emails to keep in touch but it is no substitute for being together and lately my girlfriend has needed a hug (or two). After being in each others company for a few hours it is like we have never been apart. The same thing happens with our children, they just pick up from where they left off a year ago. Lovely, like Lettuce says, 'Good friends ease the heart'.

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My website

My website is live boys and girls! Go and take a peek, tell me what you think. I need feedback. Pin It

All the fun of the thrift

I had a great day thrifting on Friday. I spotted some mannequins for sale in the local paper. Mr Big Stuff had been looking for some for quite some time and the little old man who was selling them was retiring from running his clothes shop in Ilfracombe and was selling up. Thinking he may have some old shop fittings I accompanied MBS there. Sadly the shop was completely gutted ready for refurbishment but the mannequins were fabulous and just what MBS had been looking for. While he was loading up I decided to venture into town as I had spotted some charity shops on our way through (It's the first thing I look out for when entering a new town). Now I don't go to Ilfracombe very often, especially in winter. It's a funny old down-at-heel North Devon seaside town, all fudge and fairy shops, but the charity shops were great. I love going to charity shops in places I don't normally go. Their stuff always seems more exciting and unusual somehow. I also liked the fact that the charity shops were scruffy, independant charity shops for obscure charities. I find that some of the bigger charity shops like Oxfam, Barnardos and CLIC are a little sterile these days. Their stuff is sometimes too new and I wonder what happens to the old smelly stuff. I fear the worst! Anyhow I found some great stuff like this........

Flour shaker to go with my sugar shaker



A gorgeous pile of crockery in ice cream colours



A scottie



A shabby chic jug









Some tablecloths


A linen Teatowel





And my favourite thing of all, a kitsch poodle tin full of buttons!!

I know, I'm easily pleased! I also got some fabric, some old kids books and a teletubby rucksack for Lizzy who was beside herself with love for this tatty old thing (like mother like daughter!). Oh and I still had change from a tenner!

After all that thrifting I was quite hungry so we went down to the quay and had lunch in Damien Hirst's restaurant. It was lovely. As it was a fine, spring-like day we took our time driving back along the coast marvelling at the views and reminding ourselves how very very lucky we are to live here. I just wish I had remembered to take my camera.

When I got home I sorted out boxes and boxes of stuff for a lady to take away for a local jumble sale. She had a car load and could have held a jumbly with my stuff alone! It's my new regime, one out, one in.

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