Fledgling Dress: Lisette Portfolio – Simplicity 2245

Brighton's brilliant budget fabric emporium Fabricland has produced some fabulous fabrics in their Hill-Berg range recently. This bird print Tweet Tweet heavy linen-look cotton is great! It reminds me of a miniature version of a beautiful Minä Perhonen print design. 

It's the same type of fabric as the Cake Stand heavy cotton I made a Lisette Portfolio dress from in January, and the weight of the material really suits the Portfolio dress. As before I chose a soft needle corduroy fabric for the neck and sleeve trim but this time made the sleeves a few centimetres longer, so that they finish on the elbow.

As an experiment I embellished the small square panel with hand-stitched lines of coloured embroidery cotton.

 

Eclectic Owls in the Ivy Arch shop

I've been busy sewing owls. They started off as birthday presents for my daughter's friends, then seemed the ideal thing to make for Donna's new retro-fantastic flower shop and have been so popular I've made some to sell in my Etsy shop too. Now, you may think the last thing Etsy needs is more owls (according to this highly unscientific study they're the fourth most plentiful creature on my favourite handmade marketplace), but I'm sure you'll agree these owls are particularly lovely.

They're available in two shapes and I made them using up some of the precious smaller offcuts of rare vintage fabric left over from bigger projects, combined with contrasting bold contemporary prints. Original fabrics used include designs by Peter Hall, William Morris, Naito Shoji, Lecien Japan and Robert Kaufman.

They're upcycled toys and I love making them as every different fabric combination seems to give each one a distinct personality. Ivy Arch vintage/modern owls are available to buy now.

Investigating Booth Museum

Brighton's Booth Museum of Natural History is a curious place. Founded by Victorian shooting enthusiast and taxidermist Edward Booth, it houses his vast collection of stuffed birds, butterflies, fossils and bones.

On entering the building we were met by a growling grizzly bear wielding a staff inside a tall glass cabinet – this set the tone nicely. Throughout, the museum is dimly lit and has a musty chemical smell (pervasive but not exactly unpleasant) it all adds to the idiosyncratic atmosphere of the place. My daughter was suitably appalled at the sight of so many preserved dead creatures on display!

We were there for Brighton Science Festival's Investigate the Iguanodon event held in the centre of the museum in a space decorated with cases filled with hundreds of mounted butterflies and moths. Geologist and Booth Museum manager John Cooper presented the illustrated talk which was aimed at children aged 8 and over (though there were as many eager adults present as enthusiastic children). It was simply fascinating and wonderful to see a room full of young dinosaur experts so engaged in the subject. Cooper paid tribute to Mary Anning, teenage fossil collector, dealer, paleontologist and the woman who found the world's first complete fossilised plesiosaur. We learnt that Iguanodon's teeth were found by Mary Ann Mantell (wife of fossil hunter Gideon Mantell) in Tilgate Forest, Cuckfield, Sussex in 1822.

Mary Anning and autograph letter concerning the discovery of plesiosaurus

My daughter loved the talk and really enjoyed exploring the museum's interactive displays though I couldn't persuade her to come and have another look at Booth's most prized exhibits.

 

Love bird ukulele gig bags by Ivy Arch

Hot on the heels of the weekend's RSPB annual Big Garden Birdwatch survey* comes a new range of Ivy Arch bird print ukulele gig bags.
     I've used my Flea gig bag pattern for these soft cases as this gig bag shape is also popular with owners of a standard soprano ukulele (these bags fit both type of uke). I channel quilted the front panels in straight lines to contrast with the oval body shape.

The bird print fabrics are all from Ikea and I especially love their delightful new pale blue Evalotta material (designed by Malin Åkerblom) with its bright orange, red, pink and green exotic birds. 

    All four quilted uke gig bags are available to buy now from my Etsy shop.

* In the hour we spent observing Birdwatch we spotted a song thrush, a jay, a blue tit, two blackbirds, 10 carrion crows and 11 seagulls - most common in these parts.

Worthing's Pigeon War Memorial

The centrepiece of the formal flowerbeds in Worthing's Beach House Park is a memorial to the unsung heroes of the Second World War – the Warrior Birds of our National Pigeon Service. These brave carrier birds conveyed messages and made contact with allied agents throughout Europe during WWII. Most RAF bombers carried two pigeons and in an emergency the birds would fly home so that teams of rescuers could be alerted. Thousands of lives were saved by these tenacious creatures who often flew in extremely harsh skies. Secret armies of pigeons were regularly dropped behind enemy lines and used to relay messages from resistance members to 'Wing House' in London.

This unique memorial was commissioned and funded by theatre director, author, conservationist and celebrated actor Nancy Price in 1949 and opened to the public in 1951. Founder of The People's National Theatre, Price was a star of stage and screen and I was thrilled to discover that she played the role of 'Mrs Crozier' in Powell and Pressburger's 1945 masterpiece I Know Where I'm Going!. There are many local stories about Nancy Price and Valerie Martin is collecting them on her wonderful Findon Village website.

The Warrior Birds monument is a lovely peaceful place to visit and after years of neglect is now tended by Adur and Worthing Council. Unfortunately the rockery is gated and kept locked – perhaps unnecessarily as the park has a warden and is also closed from dusk until dawn. For the past two years a memorial service for the wartime carrier birds has been held in the Beach House Park in November. I hope this is a tradition that will continue and that the birds are remembered for many years to come.

If the plight of wartime pigeons has piqued your interest I recommend watching Richard Cane's documentary War Of The Birds - streamed here.

Ducks and trains in Arundel

The best thing about Arundel is the Wetland Centre. A beautiful and life-affirming sanctuary for wildfowl. The best thing about Ford is The Engine Shed – the UK’s biggest laser cut model railway shop. You don’t have to be a nerd to enjoy this kind of experience, but it helps. If only the real railway system was as well designed and efficient as Karl Gebele’s worlds within worlds miniature reconstructions – but then if it was we wouldn’t have stumbled upon the shop. We left smiling and clutching our Noch catalogues.