There is possibly nothing, nothing, as wonderful as a charity shop find. For me this find came in the form of two beautiful old suitcases.
Now, if there is one thing I know nothing about...then it is suitcases. I have no idea how old, or how young, these babies are. I don't even have a clue what they're made of (plastic? But not hard plastic- is that a real thing?) and I have no clue what I'm going to do with them.
There's a bit of a story behind them. I saw them on Thursday morning, lying in the charity shop with their ridiculous price tags on them (the wee one was £3 and the bigger one was £2). I had a look around them, picked them up, put the overnight case over my shoulder to see how it looked. Then I made the fundamental error.
Reader, I walked away.
My thought process being that I had no room for them and no use for them.
Anyway, I got home and realised how silly it was not to buy them, I could use them for all kinds of stuff, I take the train down to England quite a bit and one of these would be the perfect size for a weekend visit. Or I could keep my craft supplies in it. Or I could decopatch it and use it to store my cushions in. Or I could photograph my cushions in it. Or or or.
I went back the next day. It was Good Friday. And it was shut....
I was more preoccupied with my suitcases than my Easter Eggs over the weekend, but thankfully my Dad drove me down on Tuesday and they were still there!
So that's my sad little story of how they came to be mine. I'm still not sure what to do with them, I'm leaning towards painting the little one and using it for trips. Or maybe I should use the big one for trips. Or maybe I'll cover them in some sort of fabric (not sure how I'll do this...) or maybe I'll decopatch them both using the Complete Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson. (Bad English student)
Any ideas for me?
Other than the beginnings of a quilt I haven't really had a lot of time to sew. I did start going to a class but gave up after a few weeks as I just didn't have the energy. However, a good friend got married in August and I made her this as a gift - it's another Harris Tweed and Liberty combo (I don't know what I'll do when I finally run out of tweed!).
My favourites were definitely Jo Avery's stall - from which I bought an embroidery sampler pattern - and Favourite Fabrics who were indeed true to their name. I've included some photos of my purchases - I love Michael Miller Eiffel Tower fabric which I've bought in different colours in the past. 
The prices at the fair were pretty good - I've bought from Favourite Fabrics online before and of course buying at Creative Stitches meant we skipped the P & P. The non Eiffel Tower fabrics above were £2 which is awesome given the blue flowery one is almost double the size of a FQ. The Michael Miller fabrics were £3.25 each which is very reasonable. 
I now have a rather large stash of fabric so I'm really going to have to start quilting a lot more! These are just some of my FQs - I'm thinking a baby pink and blue quilt might be next.
Speaking of quilts this is one strip of about 5 from the quilt mum and I are working on just now. We've got our own little system now of who does what and who is good at what (Mum - cutting, ironing, sewing, buttons, binding. Lynsey - threading the machine). At the moment we're just about to square off the strips and cut the strips for in between. I'm thinking this will be pretty awesome when it's finished. I adapted measurements from a quilt over at Oh, Fransson! - the larger quilt was too big and the baby quilt too wee. So hopefully this will be just right. 
