First Blog Post

Well here’s a little about myself, I have always had a passion about making things and love nothing better than whiling away an afternoon sewing or cooking.

I love dancing and dressing up, wearing clothes fitting the era of the dance (30s to through 50s). This has meant that, with a desire to have a unique outfit, and being slightly larger than the usual vintage outfit, I have always sewn my own, either using vintage patterns (that I have to resize) or working from a photo and making it up. I am self taught through trial and error or books.

Last year myself and my wonderful and very patient better half bought a house together, a lovely old falling apart un-loved and un-lived-in house.  Most, including the estate agents and my mother, could not see the promise of this building, but we could and did, I fell in love at first sight, although it did smell and the dead pigeons were rather off putting.  Then started a period of intense DIY and very little sewing, this really was intense sometimes 4 hours after work and all of the weekends. Weeks stretched into months and they went on and on, tempers sometimes frayed a little, but we held strong and gradually built the home of our dreams. Six months later we moved in, but please don’t be mistaken that it was finished, we had no water, sink or counters in the kitchen, I hadn’t even rebuilt the cupboards at that stage. We did have cold water and a kettle in the utility, but no drainage so we had to carry the bowl out and empty the washing up water outside.  Slowly but determinedly we have completed all these things and as of last night, my darling better half plumbed in the kitchen sink, only almost 2 months after moving in.  I should point out that he is a lecturer and has only learnt to plumb over the last few months, but I feel nothing is beyond him now. 

But back to the house; I now have a sewing room. I feel very lucky and privileged that I haven’t had to wait for one of the kids to move out for this to happen. I haven’t actually sewn anything in it yet, but will this Friday and I am looking forward to getting back to it.  It may be strange to a non-sewer but all of you out there who do sew will know exactly what I am on about – how much we just miss it when we can’t.  I have rather a lot of projects lined up but gingham curtains for a kitchen cupboard are first, so you see it is still house related. (and then a little top for a birthday party Friday night, got to do a little for me at last)

But while all this was happening the place I work at was also being restructured and there has been a call for voluntary redundancies, well after a lot of soul searching I feel I would like to try bring my hobby/passion into a viable business.  So that’s where I am at present;

• an almost finished house, just a couple more rooms
• possible redundancy on the fairly close horizon
• and a sewing room

what’s to hold me back, how exciting a time could this be……..

I’ll keep you posted.

Ally x