World-travelling lace and notions

Over on the Sew Weekly Sewing Circle, we got a bit of a sewing-related swap happening. A group of us put our names down and elected to send an envelope of lace and other notions to one of the other circle members, drawn at random from the list. So much fun! There were girls on the list from all over the world – New Zealand (me, of course!), Australia, the United States, Italy, England, Scotland. It was great to see such an international group coming together with our love of sewing and vintage things, and sharing them with each other! (And if there’s anyone reading my blog who isn’t interested in that sort of thing, this is where you can tune out. But then, why on earth would you be reading my blog if you weren’t interested in sewing and lovely vintage clothing, fabrics, patterns and trims?!?)

I was super-excited when I got home today and found a little package addressed to me, all the way from the lovely Meg from Meg the Grand, in Chicago. Yippie! And I was even more excited when I opened it, and found this super-brilliant stash of loveliness!

Isn’t it gorgeous?!

Meg was kind enough to send me the following:
– a length (around 2 metres) of stunning silk graduating from bright to dark blue
– 6 vintage buttons her Grandmother gave her (thanks, Meg’s Grandmother! 🙂 ) (you can’t tell in the photo unfortunately, but they’re kind of zig-zagged shaped around the top, which is a rather awesome retro style in my opinion!)
– some buttercup yellow vintage double-fold bias tape (also from Meg’s Grandmother)
– some single-fold blue bias tape (I do love me some bias tape!)
– beige seam binding (which is something I’ve been meaning to try using – clearly you read my mind, Meg!)
– flexi-lace seam binding (which I’m going to have to do some visible seam binding with, coz it’s so pretty)
– vintage white ric-rac with sparkley gold zig-zags on it (so so awesome!)
– 4 yards of very cute white ribbon with little multi-coloured tulips on it (which also look like the PacMan ghosts if you hold it upside down – I can’t decide which way up is best, in fact! Maybe I can make it stretch to two garments and have some each way….)
– and a very lovely card she wrote me!

As you can see with all the exclamation marks, I’m somewhat excited by this stash of goodies. 🙂 It was such a great thing to come home to today as well, since I ended up working 12 hours today (yes, on a Friday! Argh!) and had that horrible feeling of knowing you’ve left so much urgent work still to be done when you leave. Gah. So, thanks Meg, you’ve brightened my day lots! 🙂 Now I have to think about where I’m going to use these goodies! Yay!