I'm still here ....

How did we get to the end of October so quickly, I can't believe how fast this year is going.

I haven't managed to get any sewing done this month but I did have the wonderful PR weekend to attend with so many wonderful ladies and thought I had better follow up my promise of the Self Stitched September Wrap Up.

Even though it is a bit of work, I really do enjoy participating in the Self Stitched groups as it forces me to not take the easy option each morning by just pulling out the regular outfit for work, but to have to mix it up and make it look different has shown me that even though my wardrobe is small I can still get quite a lot of different looks.

I did receive a couple of questions about the Kerry Linen I used in my shirtmaker from RebeccaHoward and kbenco and hopefully I can help.

The Kerry Linen was purchased mainly for the fact that I was looking for a linen for the shirtmaker dress and the colour just had to come home with me.

I do love linen, but all my other pieces (brown dress and skirts) are either lined with Sunsilky or underlined/lined with Sunsilky which reduces the wrinkles in the linen during the day but of course it doesn't completely stop them, which is okay by me.

The shirtmaker is the first linen garment I have that is not lined. I feel it wears reasonably well and here are some late night, terrible photos to try and show how it looks after being worn all day.

Looking at these wrinkles, they are no worse than the 100% linen garments that I have lined, so I can see more Kerry Linen making its way into my stash wardrobe.

Now here is the collage of my outfits for the month of September.

And you know I said I was getting in the car for a 6 hour drive on the last day of September, well this is what I woke up to, big fat snowflakes!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that November will see me and my sewing machine spending some quality time together.

Pattern Review Weekend in Sydney

The SSS Wrap-up was delayed as I was finalising the organisation of the Pattern Review Weekend here in Sydney which has just finished and what a weekend we have just had.

It all started at 9am on Friday morning with 26 of us boarding the coach for the all important fabric shopping tour and Gay and Lena have posted some great photos and information about the shops we visited and here is most of the group at the end of the day.

Saturday morning was a Knits: stretch and shrinkage factors workshop with Lena and a Come Alive with Colour workshop with Wendy, with others sewing or taking measurements for others. In the afternoon Wendy took the measurements for the Simply Stylish: Your Ideal Silhouette workshop which continued on Sunday morning, while others headed back to The Fabric Store or Tessuti after having had their colours done.

On Saturday night we went out to dinner at The Clove and had a very enjoyable Indian Banquet and then seeing it is PatternReview.com's 10th Anniversary this year, I organised this very tasty Bon Vivant from Cuisine Patisserie and topped it with an edible image from Custom Icing for dessert.

Sunday saw half of the group complete their workshop with Wendy, while some sewed and others took turns in wrapping each other in glad wrap - Saran wrap pattern making method.

Here I am wrapped and MelJ is marking in my waist line, before packing tape is taped on top the the glad wrap on centre front, centre back, shoulders, waist and neckline.

before it is cut off along the centre front and centre back lines,

I had to do some further cutting to get it home, and I will share this later.

It was a really fun weekend, and getting to meet the girls from the Sewing Down Under board on PatternReview.com was just wonderful.