These are a few of my favourite things...

Last Saturday was officially the best.  I spent the day with my mum, dad and cee pea in Horncastle, rummaging through the antiques shops in my element!  We had originally planned this trip for the beginning of February but the weather postponed it, so it was great to get to drive out there and hunt for some treasures.

I totally fell in love with this 1960's coffee service and, despite cee pea trying to reason that we neither drink coffee nor have anywhere for it to live, I knew it had to come home with us!  I love both the shape of the coffee pot and the gorgeously retro blue and grey flowers, but my absolute favourite part of the set is the milk jug; it's just so cute!  When my mum told me that her and my dad had received the same milk jug and sugar bowl in an orange and brown colourway as a wedding gift, it sealed the deal.





For now I've re homed the set on some small shelves in the kitchen, and am successfully ignoring the things that have been unceremoniously evicted from them which will now need to find somewhere to live....a minor detail, right?



Sewing wise I've been busy working on something big, but it's a secret project for now so as much as I'd love to share some photos of the progress I've been making I can't.  It hasn't all been secret sewing though, I was asked recently to make a personalised apron so I spent some time on it at the weekend.  I was so pleased to be asked to make this; it's for a lady who's son had received one as a gift for Christmas, so the fact she wanted to give one away as a gift herself was lovely.



I had no plain blue fabric left in my stash, so I went shopping and found this lovely soft cotton, and picked up some more of this blue spotty fabric for trim.  Like the apron's I made for the Christmas Fayre I did last year, I used the trim on the pocket, apron top and the ends of the waist ties.  I also put press studs on the bottom of the apron so that it can be made 3 different lengths, hopefully meaning it can get longer use from a no doubt fast growing boy!

I spent some time after work yesterday playing around with ideas for packaging, and finally came up with this simple paper envelope.  The thick blue paper is held together with simple stitches, and the flap is held down with eyelets and a piece of ribbon.  I'm really pleased with the way this turned out, although at some point I'll pick up a roll of brown paper and butchers twine and will make some more.

I'm excited about the rest of this week...I'm taking the day off work on Friday to hang out with the lovely Kate of Helter Skelter to do some productive crafting and no doubt a lot of laughing.  On Saturday Kate and I are going over to Sheffield to visit the Reetsweet fair at the Millennium Gallery, and we're both stupidly excited about it! x