Presents for Me!

I must admit, I’ve been a bit ‘spendy’ recently. I rarely buy new commercial patterns as I have a stock pile of eBay’ed vintage ones, Burda magazines and printed out Burdastyle PDF’s that would take two years solid sewing to get through. However, I tend to keep a close eye on the projects section of Burdastyle and a myriad of blogs and I’ve noticed some really nice creations using current commercial patterns. A couple of which are so close to some design ideas I’ve been forming in my head to help use up my fabric stash, that it seemed kind of silly not to just buy them. After blabbering about these patterns at home the other day, my boyfriend said I deserved to buy some after the success of Me-Made-March. I don’t need his authorisation of course, but it felt nice hearing someone say it. Although whether or not he would have still said it if he knew the full extent of my eBay pattern ‘winning’ addiction, is another matter! So I bought these:

A note to those who live in Europe: you won’t find this out until after extensive form filling out and frustration, but you can’t buy patterns on the US Simplicity website and get them shipped to Europe. There is a European site (and a UK site, Australian site and South African site), but I didn’t find any of the patterns I wanted there so after some enquiries, ended up emailing my order and details directly to some office to get the order processed manually. US Simplicity: FAIL. I know the US is pretty big but Europeans and other parts of the globe like sewing pretty current patterns too, it might be worth their while financially to make them available! Anyways......

I also bought some fabric. Hold on! Before you fly off the handle about how I’m meant to be Stash Bustin’, let’s check the stats. Sarah at Color Kitten has had the genius idea of tracking her ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of fabric yardage to check she is on the wagon with the Stash Bustin’. I wish I’d had the fore-thought to do that, but looking back through my blog since I started the Stash Bustin’ challenge at the end of January, I estimate I’ve used up approx. 24m to date (including the garments I presently have in progress but haven’t been unveiled on the tinternet yet). That's a lot of fabric! Me-Made-March was a motivator for some of the makery. I’m not sure I would have got round to attempting a cardigan, jumper dress or coat if the threat of a lingering winter hadn’t been present.

So, I feel justified in buying 1m80cms of blue cotton for a pair of high waisted trousers, 1m of red poly/cotton for a pair of Capri pants and 2m of awesome check cotton for a shirt for my boy. I promise that’s it until another significant chunk of fabric gets turned into wearable clothing. Promise.