Father Christmas Was Most Kind...

Don't forget! You've still got 9 more days to enter my first ever GIVEAWAY :)

This is the joke I got in my Christmas Cracker at dinner *this year.

Q: Where should a dressmaker build her house?
A: On the outskirts.

Father Christmas was indeed very kind to me this year. Perhaps he thinks I've been an especially nice little girl? Maybe if I write him some letters like Ally has, then I may fare even better in 2012 ;)?

My haul this year is mainly books:-

• Patternreview.com 1,000 Clever Sewing Shortcuts and Tips: Top-Rated Favorites from Sewing Fans and Master Teachers I'm already half way through reading this one, it's fab!

• The Theory of Garment-Pattern Making - A Textbook for Clothing Designers, Teachers of Clothing Technology, and Senior Students I heard about this one from Kathleen Fasanella's review of it on fashion-incubator.com
• Winifred Aldrich's 5th Edition of Metric Pattern Cutting for Women's Wear, this book much posted about on sewing blogs surprised me with how thin it is! It's chock full per page with information (so I'm not disappointed) - but given it's coverage in the sewing blogging world I had expectations of an enormously thick tome somehow.
• Grading Ruler, by Coni Crawford. This comes to me all the way from the US (a wee present to myself - my huge thanks to Faye for helping me with this :)!) Finger's crossed that it will help me with my hopes to grade the many vintage patterns I've been buying over the last year from Etsy, I should be able to use it with my pattern grading book I picked up awhile back.
• Fantastic Fit for Everybody I saw this on Karen's blog and knew I wanted to add it to my list of fitting books.
• And, last but not least the Colette Sewing Handbook and the Peony #1017 Dress Pattern from Colette Patterns.

I also received one of these for my cutting table:

Image Source: Amazon.co.uk, Scotch C22 Heavy Duty Tape Dispenser

It takes, x2 75mm diameter-core rolls of tape, up to 25mm (1") wide per roll side by side. I've already filed mine with two-types of the invisible Scotch Magic Tape - normal, and the removable kind.

So, I'm a happy bunny!


*It always strikes me as funny how when in the midst of January we always say "this year" in reference to Christmas - when it was technically speaking last year LOL!