More vintage deliciousness

At Christmas, whilst staying with my parents, my mum pulled out a huge box of fabric she had been given by my aunty when she had moved house recently. Much of the fabric had lain undisturbed in a box for the best part of forty years. Some of it was beautiful Thai silk which my dad had purchased when visiting there before he was married.

The pink colour is absolutely fabulous, it is a combination of pink and orange and shimmers in the light!

This photo doesn't do the blue justice; it has a purple shimmer running through it.

We then unpacked lots of wonderful cottons ...

And oohed and ahhed over the fabulous patterns ...

And the oh-so sixties colour combinations!

This one is particularly fantabulous, I think:

Sadly they are mostly bits left over from dressmaking, so most pieces are barely a fat-quarters-worth.

So I shall have to be very sparing in my use of them!

Which is your favourite? Do let me know!

Putting a little light on the subject

At last, it is finished! The first of my long-term projects which I showed in close-up earlier on this month. And here it is all done:

This is not its final resting place, as it will be going out in my shed/studio when that is decorated, but I put it on my bedside table just for now so you can admire it.

There's a lot of work gone into it. Firstly I wrapped the wire frame in pale blue silk. Then I crocheted squares in the right sizes to fill the gaps, attaching them as I went along. This was perhaps a little easier than you might think, as crochet is very stretchy so I didn't have to faff about with the pattern to make it fit the shape, just stretched it into place! For the second row down, I just used a slightly larger hook and slightly thicker yarn (I've used a mixture of silk and cotton, all hand-dyed by a lovely artist friend of mine).

The third row down was the trickiest as I had to increase the square towards the bottom - however after a bit of trial and error I found it easy enough to do.

However it really looks its best when you switch it on ...

Pretty, huh?