High Tea and Hydrangeas

I love Instagram! Some of my best shopping buys of late have been found through my Instagram feed and I draw endless inspiration from the passion of the fellow creatives I have discovered. So it was perfect timing when I discovered The Fabric Store just in time for there final days of their 50% off sale! So off we headed to Surry Hills bright and early Saturday morning, on the hunt for the perfect wool for the Tessuti Fabrics New York Cape. The Fabric Store is my new happy place, with a well edited selection of fabrics at great prices even before the discount, I will defiantly be back soon. With the perfect wool in hand (amongst some other amazing finds!) and after a quick trip to Tessuti for some Mokuba fold over wool binding and buttons I was set for a Sunday of Selfish Sewing!

I have lusted over the New York Cape for some time now, though could never find the right wool for the job. Either too pricy for a first attempt or just not quite right, I can’t tell you how excited I was to find this Italian wool, and at $20 per metre I was game to give it a go, even if the binding was going to cost more than the fabric!

Being the first print at home pattern I have used I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to piece the pattern together and cut it out, only taking a little longer than tracing and cutting a store bought pattern. I pre shrunk my fabric and binding by running it through the steam cycle of my washing machine several times, which seemed to work perfectly much to my delight! So much easier than hand steaming it.

The New York Cape pattern was a pleasure to sew with the only downside being the Mokuba Binding. In hindsight I really wish I had just hand sewn the binding rather than using the machine. And whilst there was some points at which my poor old 1959 Singer 99k struggled with sewing through all the layers it made it, even if there were a couple of broken needles. There is defiantly room for improvement with this cape, though I am really happy with the results. And with fresh eyes after a good nights sleep even the mismatching of the plaid on the shoulder seam doesn’t bother me quite so much. The perfect cape for a Sydney winter.