My first weeks as a blogger and a happy dance!

Can't remember why it took me so long to start a blog. If anyone out there reads this and is wondering whether or not to start one: go for it, it's so much fun!

Quick recap: In the first week I joined two sewalongs. The first one is the Little French Jacket sewalong, hosted by Leisa of A Challenging Sew and Inna of Thewallinna. Inna kicked off with some awesome posts about colour theory and body shapes while Leisa wrote some indepth information about fabric and lining. When using couture techniques you can spend as many as 100 hours on sewing your LFJ, so careful selection of fabrics and patterns is in order to make sure the finished jacket is flattering both colour and stylewise.
Obviously the best fabric options for a Chanel style jacket are wool boucles and tweeds with textured surfaces. As I'm allergic to wool I asked if anyone could give me suggestions for non wool fabric that could work. I immediately discovered how supportive the online sewing community is. Leisa spent ages reading fiber contents on different sites. She was concerned lighter weight cotton or silk tweeds would not have the loft needed for quilting. Belinda in Singapore test quilted some samples of non wool tweeds and posted the results in the LFJ Flickr group. Other sewists sent links to fabric suppliers where I ordered some swatches.Thanks girls, really helpful!

I also joined the By Hand London Anna dress sewalong. So far it's the extras that makes this sewalong very worthwhile. The BHL girls have been posting interesting information on full bust adjustments (looking at me??) and adding a 3/4 sleeve to the pattern.

http://byhandlondon.com/2013/09/20/anna-dress-sewalong-2-tracing-and-altering-the-pattern/

And.....Remember that Negroni shirt I blogged about here and here ?

It was my entry to the Super Online Community Sewing Match, hosted by Sew Mama Sew. And guess what? I won a prize! A $35 gift certificate from Colette Patterns. Yay, happy dance!