Spring Sewing

K and I have started thinking about new clothes for the warmer seasons.  She wants dresses - and I want colour.  Here are some of our early plans:

A pair of Colette 'Clover' pants for myself in a 'greywacke' cotton with a slight amount of lycra.

A Colette 'Jasmine' blouse in this cotton/lycra 'coolio' fabric that I got for $5/metre.  Yeah!  I got these patterns from 'pinkchalkfabrics.com' when they had a 20% sale and their postage for patterns is also very reasonable.

 A selection of Lisette cottons from Spotlight for Christmas gifts for little nieces.  Love the colours!

An orange reproduction quilting-weight fabric with tiny bows - I'll make a dress for K - but I'm not sure which one yet.  Either the badminton outfit as a dress, or the croquet dress.  What do you think?

And I have to make another Ice-cream dress - this time using the pink ice-lolly print from the Lisette range and a contrast colour.  I've already made this pattern six times - but it is such a lovely summer outfit.

Some gorgeous bamboo/cotton knit to make a slip for myself and singlets/slips for K.

For a loose blouse/shirt for myself.

And I have this silk with a green base that I purchased from 'The Fabric Store' in Dunedin when it was 'Global Fabrics'.  This chain of New Zealand fabric shops has spread to Australia and I see they are opening in Los Angeles soon.  Lucky them!  I'm looking forward to the re-opening of their Christchurch store sometime soon - it has been closed since the February 2011 earthquake.

I am lucky living near Christchurch and having access to some good fabric shops - my current favourite is Harald's in Birmingham drive - a very old-school retailer with great service.  I've picked up some great bargains there.  

Clothing fabric in New Zealand is reasonable - I can usually get good quality cotton - knit or otherwise for about half the price (or less) per metre than I would pay for quilting fabric.  I would never sew garments with quilting fabric I've paid the usual $28/metre for... it's just uneconomic.  Spotlight always has bargains - and a good selection - but I've got my best deals from shops that have random rolls of fabric.  You have to look through the 'trash' to find the treasure.