Shopping for a few essentials

We escaped the office today and braved the rain to go into Birmingham City centre. Now that we know what we're making for the fashion show we needed all kinds of stuff. There are fewer and fewer shops selling haberdashery these days so we're lucky that we can travel into the city and take advantage of the Rag Market.

We don't get there very often so it's a real buzz to enjoy the old fashioned atmosphere of the market with the traders all doing their best to get our attention. These organzas were hard to resist at £1 a metre!

There are no fancy displays, just an abundance of everything you could possibly want. After a good rummage I did manage to find the perfect colour zip amongst this heap.

With so many fabric stalls it's easy to be distracted but we were on a mission. We knew exactly what we wanted and left the market behind to go across the road to the Fancy Silk Store. They live up to their name and have an amazing choice of gorgeous silk fabrics as well as floor to ceiling displays of every other kind of fabric you can think of. We came away with so many carrier bags weighing us down our fingers turned blue! Absolutely no excuses not to be sewing now - we just have to get on with it!