Delicious Fabrics

Look what the postman brought me today!
Gorgious isn´t it?
I love fabrics. It´s a bit of an addiction actually. But there are worse addictions than this I think.
I love them, not only for all those shades of colour they come in; but also for the patterns, the textures -the feel of it.
The smell isn´t always nice though (some people seem to smoke).
I haven´t tasted them yet, so I can´t commend on that.
Anyway, here are the pics:

Here some colourful fabrics from Tanya Whelan, Kaffe Fasset and Philip Jacobs.

The 2nd fabric on the left is a Liberty art fabric.

Lovely fabrics from Timeless Treasures

All these beauties are waiting for me to use them in one of my zest4colour projects.
Warm regards
Kristien

When Ironing becomes Fun.

I made myself a new  Ironing Board Cover (IBC).
The old one was a shame. Full of water stains and burn marks. I even managed to cut a hole in it with the rotary cutter. So it had to go.
I found a very useful tutorial here; I didn´t use the elastic Susan suggested, but just used the strap from my old IBC again. I think it gives a smoother finish.

As you can see, the bias tape colour is not really matching . But that doesn`t matter; you won´t see this part of the IBC at the end.
Have a look at the result. A totally refreshed Iron Board. I am quite pleased with it.

Some of my clutches. Do you like them?

In my online search I found this IBC tutorial from U-Handbag, also very clear and easy to follow.

You are using the margin from your old cover , which should be intact. Mine wasn´t, so I couldn´t use this tutorial. 

Have fun!

Kristien

250!! Embroidery Stitches

Recently I found this book by luck in a shop, between newspapers. It reminds me of the cosy Friday afternoons at juniorschool, trying to master one of those stitches.

There , in that classroom, my love for sewing was born.

Straight stitches

Yes, I´m sorry, this is a book in Dutch or French; not yet translated in English; but the pictures and drawings are clear.

Have a look.

Isn´t this inspiring?

Kristien

My first post!

Oh no, I hear you thinking; not another blog about sewing!
Don´t worry. I won´t pretend I know everything about sewing, because I don´t.
I just want to share with you some of the treasures I found in my - sometimes desperate - search for information; online as well as in books.
The other reason I´m starting this blog is a bit out of frustration.
I´ll explain.
Several months ago I opened a little online shop , www.zest4colour.etsy.com, till now with little success.
For those of you not familiar with etsy: it is an American based online marketplace, where everything handmade can be sold or bought. Recently a European branch was founded.
Etsy is now a very crowded world, where a lot of people are trying to sell the same thing.
Your shop, a needle in a haystack, is very hard to find. You can spend a lot of money on promoting your stuff; seldom a big success.
Also, when you want to buy an item on etsy, you have to register. Although for free, this stops people from buying.
So through this blog I hope to reach the non-etsy crafting world.

Kristien
xx