Happy New Year Folks!

Hello everyone! I hope you all had lovely holiday and that new year will bring you lots of joy, filled with sewing of course ;) I haven't been posting for a while. Last summer we have been looking for a house since our flat became too small for our hobbies. After seeing about 30 houses we've finally found the perfect one for us. And so we've moved in September.  And I have finally got my own sewing room! Love. love. looove it! Little sewing I got around to, has mainly been mending and sewing curtains and tablecloths (oh yes, my favorite! Not really ;) But now that most of it is done, I can finally start some projects I truly enjoy <3

I got some new sewing gadgets for Christmas I´d like to show you. 

• Adjustable dress form and polka-dot cover. Thank you daddy! <3 This was really needed since my other dress form has fixed measurements, all too small and most annoying- short back. I noticed it was pretty difficult to work with it while making Victorian boned costumes. 
• Tailor´s ham and roll for pressing curves. These are really great helpers. I've been looking for them for a long time and when I saw them on the internet I ordered them right away. Great for ironing curves on corsets by the way!
• Bee´s wax for easy threading.
• Multi-pack of 4 mm eyelets for corsets.
• Prym Vario pliers for setting eyelets and washers for corsets etc. These pliers are really good, I can recommend them. First I was suspicious about them and got eyelet machine but eyelets that came with it were poor quality and the machine was breaking them. Prym eyelets didn´t fit the machine so I had to look for an alternative.
• Prym Tripod Tool for setting eyelets and washers. I got this one as well in case the pliers wouldn´t work but they did so I haven´t tested this one yet.

And a sneaky book webstore sent me a VIP customer voucher. Of course I could not resist and I ordered some books then. 

• Victorian and Edwardian Fashions from " La Mode Illustree". Great book full of fashion plates in black and white from 1860 to 1914. It has no patterns, only fashion plates. 
• Lucile Ltd. Beautiful book in hardcover (you don´t see that often these days) full of Lucile´s fashion sketches from 1890s to 1930s. It has mainly Edwardian sketches though. I must say her sketches resemble mine a lot. They are like paintings, realistically colored with porcelain faces, none of the modern non-sense. I´m only mentioning this because in time I got forced by teachers in art school to modernize my sketches. Which I didn´t of course, we all have our aesthetics, right? ;)
• 19th-Century Fashion in Detail. Quite thick book full of inspiration for designing your own Victorian clothes. Book is divided into sections: embroidery, trims etc.
• A-Z of Whitework. Great How-to book of whitework embroidery. It has step-by-step instructions with photographs for all whitework stitches. Search Press has published about 20 A-Z books of embroidery, sewing, knitting, crochet. I think I will be collecting them.
• Costume Close-Up. Georgian patterns from 1750-1790. Patterns can be scaled although I prefer to draft them myself, I find it quicker. Book has detailed B&W photographs of each project and a few in color at the end of the book.

Let me introduce the newest member of our family, a seal point Siamese Dottie! Here she is with Lupi helping mommy to pick fabrics for next quilting project.

Here is the first block of "I love sewing" wall-hanging I will be making this ear. The plan is to make one block each month and get it done by December! We´ll see... This block was made in December.

Dottie insisted I take a picture of her as well :)

And here´s another quilt I started. Flower Spool Quilt by Lynette Anderson. I was thinking I´ll make this as double-bed cover. This one will take LOTS of time since all the pieces are tiny! I have almost finished all the patchwork squares and started making yo-yos. Look at the size of the finished yo-yo, it´s about 1 cm!!! I don´t like this :( And I can´t change it anymore because I have pre-cut all the yo-yos required. And the hexagons are going to be super-tiny as well...

That´s all for today, see you soon! <3