The Party's Over!

Hooray!

My son's birthday party is now but a distant memory. Now don't get me wrong, I adore my eldest and am thrilled that he and his friends had a great time (as the mud up my carpet stairs is confirmation of) but blimey it was stressful. The Pinata, that my exasperated husband (EH) always takes great pleasure in making, was going well until EH decided it would be a stroke of genius to make it using wallpaper paste...cue the next scene of me with a hairdryer the day before Dominic's party. Sadly to say the pinata didn't dry out (which it
would have done has we used flour and water as we were supposed to!) and we had to buy a shop bought one. Fortunately I did learn something new...6 year olds have no emotional dilemmas battering a Winnie the Pooh pinata with a baseball bat!

Anyway, once again I digress. I now have my dining room back (since I burst all of the balloons with my dressmaking pins!), obviously I have to share it with my family but primarily my fabrics are slowly taking over again...oh the joys!

Currently Tanya Whelan is featuring prominently right now on my table, I am a huge fan of her Dolce collection but am quite taken with some of the prints from her Delilah collection, the Rosie print is very much like Buttercups from Kitty Yoshida's Prospect Park (one of my all time favourite fabrics).

Most of all my daughter loves Tanya's prints...I mean what better confirmation can you get that a fabric is perfect for a dress than the opinion of a three year old funky sprog!

For How Long Will Vintage Fabrics Be Vintage (and a little bit of Take That!)?

Simon (aka Long Suffering Husband) and I have just had a fantastic weekend, we drove to Simon's parents, dropped off the sprogs and then drove on to Manchester to see Take That in concert. I have to admit that my excitement was slightly quelled by the fact that I had never had a night away from my two little ones and I will freely admit that I had moments of being on the verge of tears....fortunately they didn't and were happily putting together their train set as I said goodbye and didn't even appear at a window to see their parents disappear off in to the distance!!!

Anyway, I digress!

When we returned my Mother in Law had found another sewing book for me in her treasure trove of boxes. It was a Simplicity Sewing Book from 1965, it is fantastic, yes the pictures are dated but the information and instructions are as up to date as any book you could buy from Amazon!

It got me thinking though, I am a great collecter of vintage fabrics, I rarely use them for children's clothes because so many of them would melt if you walked past a fire let alone stand in front of it! However I do use them for me, I love the bold prints and colours that were used with such abandon, the quality of them that means they make you itch or sweat or even go boss eyed because the printing would sometimes blurr! Now it is much easier to find retro prints that are made in 100% cotton a much more child friendly material for our funky sprogs!But with all the repro retro prints how long will vintage be vintage? Amy Butler with her geometric designs, Michael Miller with his fifties Space Cadets or Rocket Rascals prints or even his Retro Mod collection? All of these styles of prints are based on the original prints of the 50's, 60's and 70's. In fifty years time will we be typing Repro Vintage Fabrics in to our Google search engine or our Ebay accounts?Who knows, either way we will have a wonderful source of quality fabrics to choose from with fabulous designs, but for me I will always gasp with joy when I discover a dodgy print that will make me itch!