A couple of days before Christmas Ellie came up for a short visit and we decided to go and do a bit of fabric shopping. I am trying not to buy things and to be good but I do need to make several new Steampunk outfits and I just do not have enough yardage of any one fabric to make all these so I thought I would treat myself to some for Christmas.

We are lucky enough to live near Bradford which has the most amazing Asian fabric shops, our favourite being the wonderful Bombay Stores which we have visited several times, notably to buy Amanda’s and Kerry’s wedding fabric. As well as fabric they have Asian wedding dresses so we always have a quick look at that section to marvel at the beauty of these. They also sell amazing bags, shoes and jewelry, this video gives you a quick overview of all of the fabulous things.

I adore the Asian dresses, if you are not familiar with them then I have found a couple of Pinterest pictures for you to admire. The colours and the embroidery, beads and crystal are amazing and there are so many different colours available as well as traditional red.

We were really lucky that day as they were having a sale – brocades at £1.25 a metre and satins, organza and lining fabric at 75p a metre! I had been planning just to buy a sari set to get enough fabric to make one outfit as these are very good value at between £20 and £30 depending on style but instead got a total of 35 metres of fabric plus silk and embellishments for under £40.It was indeed a very happy Christmas to me 🙂

I am taking my inspiration for the first outfit from a few sources. I love this outfit by Yaya Han, who is a cosplayer and model and wanted to make something peacock inspired. I have not bought this pattern as it a little too fitted for me so am planning to use one of my other Steampunk patterns.

I have also found some lovely hats like this one below and I love the colours they have used so wanted to have a peacock hat as well.

I also have a set, bought from Bombay Stores as a present by Amanda, to say thank you for making her wedding coat. I did not have time to make up before her wedding so it has been in the stash ever since . It has a fabric for a full length tunic with the most amazing embroidery as well as fabric for lining.

I bought the turquoise fabric with lining and the turquoise and gold organza in the picture below intending to just use that but they all go so well together that I am going to use all of them for an outfit which will be a turquoise jacket embellished with embroidered motifs.

I also bought some small pieces of silk in peacock colours as well as these gorgeous jewels to make peacock embellishments. I think they will made wonderful decorations for my purple top hat which I plan to wear with the outfit.

The other part of the haul was 10 metres of this amazing brocade plus some gold lining fabric.

 

I was not certain which pattern I was going to use for that however my lovely Steampunk Seamstress Squadron Facebook sewing friends alerted me to a 50% off Simplicity pattern sale last night so I bought this coat pattern. I am think of making a fairly straight skirt to go with this coat as an evening outfit for the ball at Lincoln Asylum event in August.

I also was lucky enough to have some fabric and a bag of very cute charms for Christmas from my brother Ben and sister-in-law Amanda, I love these patterns and am going to save the charm pack and fat eighths ones for a future quilt as I think the autumn colours are gorgeous. One of my retirement plans is to make lots of quilts for different seasons for my bed.

I have lots of things that I have made over the past couple of months that I have not posted about yet and some other plans for evening making as the outfits will have to be weekend work, which thankfully I have so many more of this term! I have just finished knitting a little hat for my great-niece Ava, now to knit some dinosaur spikes to go on it.

I hope you are all having a fun weekend with lots of nice crafting or other things planned. Thanks as always for visiting my blog, I have just upgraded my WordPress subscription to get rid of all of the adverts as they were becoming very irritating so hopefully you will all enjoy your visits even more now.

Take care and I will see you all soon.