Things have been quietly busy. The weather has been hot and I've been reluctant and bored of working on my own. My good friend came to help me out in the studio last week and it was such a relief to have helping hands. It's not even about the amount you get done but the rhythm you get into when working with someone else by your side is something I've really missed.

Many hands make light work. Not even many hands, but perhaps just an extra pair is a good place to start.

/ / Shirt - old old H&M / Skirt - homemade \ \

I thought I'd lost this film as I opened the back of my camera when it hadn't finished being wound on. Then I just thought I may as well get it developed and it turns out all the pictures are there in tacked, which is nice.

We went to the Netherlands back in April and these photos where taken on a sunny afternoon in Amsterdam. We stopped off for lunch in a pretty little cafe and then had a beer in the park. I fell a bit in love with Nether-Netherlands.

After seeing so many lovely quilt creations over on Junkaholique, I was inspired to make this quilt for a friend of mine who recently had a little bub. It's made from scraps and left overs from dressmaking and is mainly Liberty fabrics or organic cotton. The whole thing is very blue and really quite wonky, but it was my first attempt so I'm pretty chuffed. I was quite surprised at the amount of little squares you could get from what seemed like a useless amount of fabric. Definitely something I'll be doing with all my other mountains of scraps I create every week.

These are photos from a lovely customer Lisa Marie's blog. I made her a custom Liberty print dress a few months ago using one of my favourites the Ianthe pattern in a glorious pink.

I've just realised whilst typing this that I have been thinking that 'Ianthe' is 'Lanthe' for years now and have just noticed I'm wrong. Turns out lower case Ls and upper case Is looks similar. Oh well.

I really like Metronomy and I really like this song and video. The pen marks are good and satisfying. The main man is from Torquay originally so that is a nice thing too.

Over Easter we went to Holland but before we set sail we had a few days staying with my sister in sunny Southend. I loved it. The weather was beautiful and it felt so classic and British summer sea side towny. A lot of time was spent collecting shells and beach glass and people watching along the sea front.

With all the beautiful beach huts, long piers and fair ground rides I felt thoroughly inspired, so I'll add it to my never ending list of places I'd like to use for summer photoshoots.

Over the last year I have been putting the occasional flower into a big book and leaving it under the leg of a desk and forgetting about it. Recently I have been thinking more about pressing flowers regularly, to keep a diary of the passing year and to look back on and think how old fashioned and timeless they seem.

I found Polly's blog and see that she is well ahead of me. I think her pictures are simply beautiful.

These photos make me want to dress up. Brightly coloured net and lace goodness. That yellow one on the left is pretty much perfection.

 Photos from here.

It's difficult to talk on this subject without sounding preachy, but honestly it's something that I put more and more thought into as time goes on. It is tricky to not end up hating all the words like 'ethical' and 'sustainable', which is a shame because it is so hard to describe. Really these words should not exist and it should be the norm, just 'fashion' and 'clothes' without needing the extra adjectives. But that's not how it is, and we need them, and we need to think about how our clothing is made because so many people don't.

Proper information put in an intelligible way is here.

/ / Dress - Old ASOS / Jacket - Oxfam / Floral top - Recycling Centre \ \

Yessss! It's National Trust season again and we've already stuffed our faces with cream teas at two different places in the same amount of weeks.

Stunning pictures by Rebekah Campbell and Ben Giles for Yen magazine. They are so powerful but simple. I found them via Drifter & the Gypsy and the images source is here.