It’s always wonderful to be able to take a break from winter! I’ve just spent a couple of fantastic weeks doing a “road trip” that my husband and I took starting in Key Largo, through the everglades of Florida to the west coast then up to the northeast coast ending in our favourite Florida city, […]
It’s the dog days of summer here in Toronto. The humidity is high and the temperatures soaring. I’ve just returned from a two-week road trip to the east coast where it was cooler for at least part of the trip. It was a great trip, but now it’s back to writing (a new book is […]
My husband and I ready for the evening at sea. Yikes! All that dark hair I had! A few years ago, my husband and I were on a kick to figure out what the concept of “luxury” means to people these days, and by extension, what it means when we say something is “luxurious.” We […]
Thankfully for anyone reading my blog regularly or even only occasionally, I rarely rant. Today, however, I need a bit of rant space. Today I’m thinking about fashion (couture sewing is related to fashion, n’est ce pas?) with a particular emphasis on what passes as “fashion journalism.” In another life, I actually write other things […]
[*Little Black Jacket sometimes referred to as the LFJ or Little French Jacket] I now have to cut apart the toile that I’ve grown so fond of! Now that I’ve created a toile – fitting muslin – for my little black jacket project, I know that it’s time to cut it apart. But I’ve grown […]
Can we talk about sewing pattern reviews? Do you use them? Love them? Hate them? Or not even know they exist? As for me, I usually forget they exist. I am a member of the online pattern review site, cleverly called―you guessed it―Patternreview.com. I have posted exactly one review. This is odd coming from a […]
Well, I never thought I’d ever write or even utter these words: this is the beginning of my man’s shirt project. It’s the last “project” of 2019 and it was unexpected, to say the least. Anyone who knows me knows that my design and sewing projects are pretty well confined to me, me, me. My […]
It happens twice a year. Canada’s behemoth, online fabric store has a sale. They clear out seasonal fabrics with a sale that a fabric-lover finds hard to ignore. They offer three metres (one metre is a little over a yard for my US friends) for the price of one. And they won’t sell you any […]
We don’t actually have any snow..but it’s cold! It’s the dead of winter, and there is nothing more quintessentially a part of urban Canada’s landscape than the unrelenting black uniform of the downtown residents and workers. Sometimes it just eases in during November, but it was never more apparent to me than last year when […]
Buttons from my collection – individual pieces just waiting for the right place to embellish something. I’m not a fan of stashes. In fact, I truly believe that “stashing” away fabrics is akin to hoarding. I’m kind of a minimalist that way. (No judgment here – it’s just not my thing. Well, maybe a tiny […]
Coco Chanel herself in her soon-to-be-iconic suit in 1954 She was brilliant, wasn’t she? Of course I’m talking about Coco Chanel. When she relaunched her couture house in Paris post World War II – well, she waited until 1954 – she took the fashion world by storm. She upset the status quo. Her new designs […]
As I prep for my weekend fashion/style/sewing activities, I was strolling down Yonge Street this morning (before the mercury hit 33C) and thought this might just be the thing to get me through my next challenge. Hope it makes you laugh!
It’s hard to imagine how innocent and naïve we were back on January 1, 2020. Just imagine having plans for this year! Well, that hasn’t gone quite as we expected, has it? As I write this, I should be finishing up a few last-minute additions to the European travel capsule wardrobe I’d been planning to […]
The lovely Victorian gardens in Halifax on our road trip My husband and I have just returned from an almost-two-week road trip. We started here in Toronto, headed down through northern New York state, through New Hampshire, into New Brunswick and then relaxed for five days in Halifax, Nova Scotia with friends and family. We […]
