I bet some of you have been wondering where I have been over the last couple of months - moving house is the answer.  I have left Dorset behind, which is a bit weird given that I have lived there my entire life thus far, and hopped just across the border in to South Somerset to become a resident of Wincanton.  It's a nice small town with some lovely shops and a nice sense of community.  One major find is the local sewing shop called Sew & Sew.  Dianne, the proprietor is lovely and we have a great working relationship already.

My new workshop is now a dedicated space made up of two rooms, one for cutting with lots of storage for all my fabrics and stock, and one for sewing which is wonderfully lit with a nice big window and my own separate entrance.

Cutting room with lots of storage

And the sewing room - lovely and light

It is such a pleasure to work in my lovely south facing sewing room, I can look out of the window and the door into the garden and collect one's self for a moment when doing something challenging - especially working with black - the green of our lovely garden gives my eyes a lovely break.  Never realised how much I missed having a garden while living in my flat in Gillingham.

Already I am working on a couple of bespoke projects for new clients from the area, the first is a Mother of the Bride outfit in printed Cotton that my client and I met up at Hansons to buy the fabric for.

Pattern cutting for the first time in my new cutting room

 Here I am having traced off the jacket for my client's jacket, changing it ready to toile it for the first fitting.

Cutting out the dress toile fabric

You may note how closely I pin on my pattern pieces, I always pin no more than 5cm/2" apart so that the pattern piece stays put while cutting.

Happily sewing away on a sunny spring morning

I really love having a dedicated workshop to work in now, such a treat after working in my living room for many years - actually what started out as a living room with a work space, with my growing business it grew into a workshop with a sofa and a tele!!  For any of you who work from home, you will know exactly how nice it is to finish work at the end of the day in a dedicated room and then 'leave' work at the end of the day, with a commute of around 6 steps - and being able to leave everything out mid making is awesome.

Over the next few weeks and months there will be new shelving and other adaptations to accommodate all the work related things I had squirrelled in my bedroom and every cupboard outside of the kitchen in my previous residence that simply wouldn't fit in my work-space - there was quite a lot collected over the years!!

The very best thing about the move is that my partner and I are beginning our new life together - we went out for a day out to Weston-Super-Mare today, so have lots of new places to explore as I know about as little as he does about Somerset, despite it being so close to Dorset.