All posts filed under: Miscellenia

The Wellington Sewing Bloggers 0Degrees of Sewing Separation Challenge

It started, like many grand, elaborate, ideas, quite simply. I was in Palmerston North visiting Juliet of Crazy Gypsy Chronicles, going to Fabric-a-Brac and generally having a lovely time. At Fabric-a-Brac I picked up a gorgeous vintage rayon, with red and purple and rust flowers on cream. After Fabric-a-Brac, Juliet and I showed off our purchases, and Juliet displayed one of her treasures: a gorgeous vintage rayon, with red and purple and rust flowers on cream. At first I thought my fabric had accidentally ended up in my pile, but nope, we’d both bought the same vintage fabric. This got me thinking. The sewing world is so small, and always has been. Nana in Whanganui and Grandma in San Diego had some of the same fabrics from the 1960s. Every time a WSBNer makes an outfit one of us has the same fabric or pattern, or has already made something from it. Sewers around the world end up using the same fabrics and patterns. Only a few weeks before I’d done a bulk Decades of …

How to fix cricket

Published by The Dreamstress

If you read my blog a lot, you may have picked up on the fact that I’m not exactly what you would call interested in sports. Mr D, however, is very interested in sports. Two sports in particular in fact: cricket, and rugby league (though he will also watch rugby union, football (the kind where the foot actually hits the ball a lot, not the kind where they throw a ball around and call it football anyway), basketball, hockey (the field kind, not the ice kind) and even netball if there is nothing else that involves ovoids or spheres flying through the air on TV). So, there is a lot of sports on in my house, and, despite my best efforts not to, I’ve acquired a rather impressive amount of sports knowledge by sheer osmosis. And when I say a lot of sports, I mostly mean cricket, because cricket comes in a variety of forms of a lot: too much (20/20 – basically a whole afternoon); even more (1 day matches); ummm…this is getting ridiculous …

Clothings Swaps

Published by The Dreamstress

Last Saturday I got to host my own clothing swap for the first time. I’ve been going to friend’s swaps for years, but never had enough space to host my own, but courtesy of exciting big(ish) new house, there was space! So how does a clothing swap work? You set up a time, and invite tons of people. It works best if you can invite people from a variety of different social groups, so that you get a lot of cross pollination of clothes and styles, and don’t end up trading the same stuff constantly. I invited my sewing friends, my vintage friends, my Theresa & Chiara friends (yes, you ladies get your own group!), and my swing dancing friends. Everybody goes through their closet and fishes out the things they never wear, don’t fit, or don’t love, and then shows up on the day with bags of clothes and fabric and shoes. If you are lucky they also, to use the classic Kiwi phrase, “bring a plate” (of food, of course). As hostess, I …