L’aiguille en fête

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Hello! I’m writing today with some good personnal news and lots of pretty things to share. First, I’m happy to announce that our Internet connection works perfectly! o/ And my little sewing corner in the appartment is close from being done. I still need a few things to tidy things up and above all, I need a new iron. I don’t know about you but even if I don’t iron all my clothes all the time in “real life”, I can’t sew without an iron nearby! I can’t wait to have one and start sewing again. ^^

So I you can guess the pretty things I’m about to share are not things I made myself (although I do have some simple crochet to show you later, finally managed to get a few pictures last week). I was able to spend some time at the sewing event I told about last time. Not as much as I would have wanted (couldn’t see much of the booths), but enough to want to get better organized next year, and to snap a good number of lace pictures from their exhibition. Here is a selection.

You can find the rest of the picture in their Flickr set (along with some bigger size versions). I’ll add other pics as soon as I find the time to resize and upload them, so check back regularly!

Event

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imageIt’s that time of the year again! Yestarday started this year’s edition of the crafting event “L’aiguille en fête” at La Vilette in Paris. It’s an event centered around what we call in french “the needle arts” (sewing, embroidery, quilting, knitting…), with a majority of booths about quilting or embroidery. They also organize exhibitions and tutorials. This year’s theme is lace. It’s going on until this Sunday 5pm.On a more personal note our moving at the end of january went ok and we’re now in our new lovely appartment! The last room still needing unpacking and organization is, of course, the work/sewing room. ^^; No sewing for me at the moment. And we still don’t have an Internet connection, although we’re supposed to. Hence the lack of posts here. I’m trying to post this through an application on my phone, I hope it will work. We called the company in charge this morning, they will try to find out what’s happening and hopefully we should have access to the Internet within two weeks (fingers crossed!).

2011

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I wish everyone a very happy new year!! May it be (even) better that 2010 and filled with many crafting moments (after all that’s what this blog is about, right?) ! ^__^

I have to say that the year is starting quite well for us: after one year spent in an already furnished place where we can’t really change anything, we finally found an appartment! We will finally be able to unpack everything we brought back from Japan. It feels good, like 2010 was a transition year between our two lives and 2011 marks the end of this transition. Now we’re completely back to France and we can live our life completely again. Does that make sense? ^^; I want to take advantage of this to organise my life better, because I’ve been neglecting some things the past year that are important to me. And I want to find time for sewing and making things, without letting myself be undermined by the routine created by the work I have here. This part is looking good so far, because I found a new love thanks to a Christmas present: crochet!! This will be the subject of my next blog post. :)

And you, in which state of mind are you approaching this new year? Are you planning to start something new in 2011?

May 2011 be a great year for all!

A touch of humor

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This drawings comes from an Elle magazine from earlier this year (I don’t remember which month). It’s from a one page article about craft blogs (especially mom knitting and sewing for their children). I found it funny and thought I would share it. The mum says something like this: “Know that the whole community of blogging mums finds the scarf I knitted you incredible”. I think there might be a kind of joke with the adjective that I don’t know how to translate in English, because “renversante” means “incredible/amazing” but also comes from the verb “knock over”, which might soon happen to the little girl since the scarf is so big. ^^;

Edit: It seems that the drawing is from Margaux Motin.

Variation

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Here are a few pictures of the last thing I made. It’s a set of jewellry (necklace + earings) similar to the one I made for a charity, this time for a friend who really liked the first version. I gave it to her at the end of November when she visited me (she lives in the states at the moment), so I can share the pictures now.

I made a few changes to the design (pearls color, little details), but overall this version is quite similar to the first one.

Here is the necklace worn by my friend (sorry for the blurryness, we took this pictures on the morning before she left and the weather wasn’t very cooperative):

Week-end abroad

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Last week-end we went for a two-days stay abroad with some friends. We left on Friday evening and came back yesterday morning. It was really nice! Here is a little puzzle for you (that will also explain why I’m talking about this trip here): judging from the picture below, which shows some of the items I brought back, can you guess were we went?

So the answer is: we went to London! Our friends lived there for some years, they shared their favourite places with us. It was my first time going to England. Of course we had to go admire the beautiful Liberty shop. I’ll share a few pictures once they’re sorted. But it wasn’t there that I bought my fabrics. Liberty is less expensive than French shops, but Shaukat is even less expensive. Something I found quite funny: the place was filled with french women! There were at least 6 of us, and I’m not sure I actually saw an english speaking person while I was there. Are French people especially found of Liberty? Do all french sewers go to Shaukat when they’re in London?

I was surprised by the look of the shop, I was waiting for something fancier. Most of the fabrics are in the basement, so the ground floor seems a little empty. It was very hard to choose which fabrics to bring home. There were so many beautiful prints! I decided to stick to cold weather fabrics to reduce the choices available (cold weather => no Tana Lawn => less choice). Here is a more detailed shot of what I finally got:

1. Liberty, 2. Liberty Mollybish, 3. Liberty Martha Grace, 4. Liberty

Two corduroy fabrics (I love corduroy, and it’s not easy to find some around here, especially this cute), a cotton-wool blend and cotton twill. Now I have work to do! I hope to quickly transform all this into nice garments, so that I can enjoy pretty winter outfits. A wool skirt would be nice considering the crazy cold temperature they predict. For now I’ll just go to bed, since I caught a cold with all this walking outside with the cold temperatures we have right now. I wanted to add more pictures to this post, but it will have to wait as I’m not feeling well at all. Sorry!

Spotted: Wedding dresses and Couleurs françaises

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I got my sewing machine back yesterday! And of course I didn’t need it for the project I worked on today… Here are the covers of two new french books I saw in the bookstore on Friday.

This is a book by Teresa Gilewska, author of the series about pattern making of which I showed the first two volumes last week. I found it funny that she has another book out just when I buy her first ones. Sadly all books were packed so I couldn’t check the inside, but it’s about making wedding dresses, and I guess you have all the steps from making the pattern to sewing the actual garment.

This second book is the French translation of a japanese book: フランス色の布で作るバッグと小物. It is inspired by french fabrics and is about bags, accessories (I think I remember seeing a hat) and small objects for the home. I’m not looking for that kind of projects, but I think that in this style it’s probably an interesting book. It’s separated in different sections, each related to a type of fabric: toile de Jouy, fabrics from Lyon city, florals from Paris (and I’m probably forgetting some). There seems to be some description of each fabric style, which I find nice. There are also two pages at the end of the book talking about two fabrics museums in France. I only remember the Toile de Jouy museum in Jouy en Josas, which I’d like to go visit.

New toys!

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We went shopping Sunday everyning and since I had some birthday money left, I decided to make myself some presents: sewing related books! ^_^ I was so happy to finally find a book about 50′s fashion in a bookstore!!

If you read this in English you probably can’t  read French, so let me describe the two books at the bottom: they’re flat pattern making books. The first part is about shirts (with details about sleeves and collars), skirts (with details about pockets) and linings. The second part is about transformations and talks about jackets, pants, raglan sleeves, kimono sleeves, hoods, capes, bustiers and overskirts. I like that the second book talks a little about grading (I wish it were a little more detailed, but it will give me some basis). I read very good reviews of those books online, I hope they’re as good as people say and they will help me with pattern making! Some of the pieces shown (to learn how to transform your basic pattern depending on what you want to do) are a little weird and too 80′s looking for my taste, but this book is not about making things exactly the same as shown, so I guess it should be okay.

And, we also got another new toy, which will be usefull to you readers: a printer-scanner combo! I’m so happy, I finally have another scanner (my family kept mine when I left for Japan)!! Which means no more crappy photos of the books I want to share with you! Once I finish with the pictures I’ve already taken, I can share real scans with you. Isn’t that great?