I hope you’re all enjoying the holiday season, whether you’re sewing gifts for family and friends, or taking time out for yourself, or as I’ve been doing – a bit of both! I had some excess holiday days to use up at my office job before the end of the year, so I just took some random days off here and there, earmarking the last one for a “stash replenishment” trip down to Ditto Fabrics in Brighton.
I know I’ve talked about Ditto quite a bit here but they probably are my favourite physical fabric shop on earth (with Kantje Boord coming in second!) – the owner, Gill, has an uncanny eye for fashion trends, picking up great bargains from the Italian design houses and it’s just one of those places where you know absolutely everything is high quality, but the prices are really reasonable, too.
I also really like the way the store is organised, too – rather than grouping the same fibre types together, or all the same colours together, or something like that, the fabrics are placed to encourage discovery and browsing, with complimentary colours and printed placed next to each other, which I love. This shelf featured muted, pale turquoises and yellows, and I, err, bought two fabrics off this one alone!
Since I knew which day I was going down, it happened that Claire was able to join me, too, which makes shopping SO much more fun!
It was a really leisurely shop, with a tea break in the middle, then deciding on our purchases, with some of my highlights being a wool Fair Isle-esque sweater knit, a muted turquoise french terry with bows & arrows, a watercolour print silk noile that is just heaven to touch, a matte sequin remnant, some of the robot print jersey I’ve been eyeing up online, and a muted turquoise lace that I’m sure will become a dress by springtime. And two lengths of denim, because Ditto do the best denim and I’m too spoiled by it to try anywhere else now!
I left a very happy lady indeed.
I had just enough time to drop off my purchases at home (the bags were really heavy!) before heading into town to meet up with Susan, otherwise known as Measure Twice Cut Once, on her whistestop tour of England! We only had an hour or so to chat, but it was so nice to meet in person since we’ve geeked out so many times online about lingerie and activewear sewing. She even brought me a bunch of reflective activewear trim, including some stretch reflective tape and a glow in the dark zipper, too! Aussies should really check out all her fantastic reflective and glow-in-the-dark haberdashery, it’s really great stuff!
Another bit of excitement is that Fehr Trade Patterns have been featured in the Sewing World magazine January issue, which is on sale from today! We’ve got some great company in the article, sharing the stage with Winnie, and the article mentions my VNA Top, Duathlon Shorts, free Running Armband Pocket and Surf to Summit Top patterns. So if you’re a Sewing World reader, welcome!
And finally, if you’re a fan of podcasts like I am, than you should have a listen to my recent interview with Marathon Talk, which has been a constant companion on my long runs for several years now. These guys interview Proper Athletes like Olympians and professionals, so I was over the moon that they wanted to talk to me!
My interview starts at 54 minutes 30 seconds in and we talk about the World Transplant Games, my bone marrow transplant and recovery, outlook on training, my bucket list marathon, how to get more women running, and how I have zero athletic prowess in my genes! I usually talk about my running stuff more in depth at RiverRunner.co.uk if you’d like to learn more.