Pretty little things

Isn't this pretty:
It's a chiffon rosette attached to some tulle backing and these things are sold by the yard. I paid SGD$4 for half a yard (minimum cut) and got four large black/cream polkadot rosettes.

You just hand-sew the rosette to an article of clothing (or bag or whatever) of your choice, trim away the tulle ... and voila, you're done!

The rosettes and other pretties can be found at Brighton Accessories House in Chinatown. Brighton started out as one store about maybe a year or so ago and has since grown into two units diagonally across from each other.


Brighton is the place to go for trimming by the yard, lace, ribbon, buttons, needles, wooden yardsticks (SGD$5), zippers (including fancy, decorative exposed zippers), pins, covered button kits (SGD$6.50), tracing paper and other doo-dads. Prices are pretty reasonable although I do think they've gone up a little since the store opened last year.

It's a place you can easily go nuts in, so if you're anything like me, it's best to step in with a PLAN or you'll end up with a bunch of lovelies that you have no idea what to do with. Hahahahah!

At my last visit recently, I was extremely restrained and bought half a yard of these pretties below (SGD$7/yd) and got six rosettes which I'm going to use to dress up a plain tee for my darling little monkey. I don't think I need so many for her, and so will probably do a mommy-daughter matching tee thing. The colours are so sweet, aren't they?


Good thing is, Brighton is open every day. But if you're planning on shopping at the other stores too, don't bother visiting till closer to lunch time as most stores in the complex start to open at about 11.30am only.

And if you're wondering where Blk 32 New Market Road is, it's the building between OG and People's Park Complex. There is a hawker centre on the ground floor and, confusingly, is also called "People's Park". Why are there so many buildings in Chinatown, all in close proximity to each other, with "People's Park" in their names???

Happy shopping!

Quite good / Not too bad

For six hours, we trekked through Arab Street, Chinatown and Tanglin Mall, ate a little Egyptian, chatted like long lost friends ... and almost didn't buy any fabric.

Almost.

In the end, though, a metre and a half of swirly olive/cream cotton jersey (from Thye Guan in Chinatown) went home with H ... and some pretty Anna Maria Horner cotton voile (from Quilts & Calicoes in Tanglin mall) came home with me.

The AMH will become an outfit for my darling little monkey. That's my story and I'm sticking to it :-))

For now though, I really need to recover from this idiotic flu. I hate being sick!

Work got in the way

It has been a CRAZY time at work, to put it mildly, and I'm tired of slogging through the weekends. Plus, we're all down with the cold bug at home, so there has been lots of sniffing and middle-of-the-night interruptions.

BUT (and this is a "but" of the nice variety), I'm taking some time off tomorrow to meet a new friend (and fellow fabricaholic) and we're going to go gallivant around the fabric shops in Arab Street and hopefully Chinatown too!!

This new friend is relocating to Singapore soon and we were "introduced" by Jeremy of Hot Patterns. He's so sweet -- he put us in touch with each other when he heard that H was moving to Singapore.

So far, H and I have communicated by e-mail only, so it will be terrific to meet her in person tomorrow. Only thing is, I really have to control myself and NOT BUY ANYTHING. Hahahhaha!

Anyway, here is some fabric news:

1. New Liberty prints at NicoleXavier - I just called Nicole and she said that most of her new shipment is IN! There is a last batch coming in tomorrow, but most of her new Liberty stock is IN IN IN. She has some classics as well as some of the latest from the upcoming season.

2. New fabric at Malin Textiles - I haven't written about Malin yet, but it's one of my favourite stores for cotton, especially Japanese cotton. It's just two shops to the right of NicoleXavier. They have new stuff in, including some Kokka prints!

3. Sale at Spotlight - It's on till 4th July. All patterns are 50% off and it's also 20% off all elastic, buttons, thread and interfacing.

I'd like a Ctrl Alt Del please!

In the past couple of weeks, I've had the great joy of meeting up with some classmates and teachers from waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back when. Meeting up was tons of fun and I truly appreciated the opportunity to reconnect, laugh and look at our younger selves through hopefully) wiser eyes.

But there was a rub. Hmph, isn't there always one?

While many of these lovely ladies have retained their youthful looks and figures, I haven't. And I thought I was ok with that. After all, my body has served me well all these years and even managed to nurture a long-awaited darling when all hope seemed lost.

But when you hear "Oh. You look so .... different, I didn't recognise you" again and again, welll ... it can get to you. And right now, I could do with a "Ctrl Alt Del" on some parts of my life. Or a nice cool glass of wine. LOL!

Kimono for a cutie

Sewing for kids is fun because their outfits take little fabric, are generally easy to put together and well, they're fun! So instead of buying something for a friend's cute little munchkin (3 months old and 100% ADORABLE), I decided to sew a few things.

Here is a kimono top:

Pattern is from an Amy Butler book (Little Stitches for Little Ones I think is the title) and fabric is from Spotlight (I believe it's Michael Miller's Bot Camp for the main fabric and MM's Sprokets for the contrast).

I also made matching pants, but need to put in elastic for the waist, so no photos for now. The instructions were fairly straighforward if a little wordy. I also didn't quite like the way they have you put in the contrast trim, so I'll do things a little differently next time & note the differences here.

On and I also added lots of topstitching for the heck of it :-)) Here is a close-up view: